Ever since I dove deep into the personal development and health space, I’ve seen 30 day challenges all over the place.  In my opinion, Steve Pavlina is the master of 30 day challenges; it seems like at any point in time he is doing ten different challenges at once!  30 day vegan challenge, 30 days of writing 500 words challenge, 30 days of writing an article a day challenge, 30 days of gratitude practice challenge, 30 days of emotional deep dive challenge, and the list just keeps going.

30 day challenges are in my opinion the best way to develop new habits, and they are brain-dead simple!

Let’s say you want to start the habit of exercising daily or get rid of the habit of eating sugary foods.  We all know that the hardest part of anything in life is just getting started, and that’s why making a habit change is tough.  The first few weeks of a 30 day challenge are usually rough, annoying, and sometimes even painful. But once you overcome that inertia, it’s smooth sailing from there.

I would dedicate some time to tell you how to overcome that initial “new habit shock”, however, I have previously written about How To Overcome Procrastination and I think that fits pretty well here.

Now that I think about it, there is another technique that you may find useful.

Think Short-Term

When thinking about starting a new habit, we tend to put all of our focus on ensuring that the new habit becomes permanent.  To your mind, making a permanent change seems like a huge undertaking. You might find yourself getting easily overwhelmed, not knowing where to start or how to start and then you end up doing absolutely nothing.

There’s a better way of thinking.  Promise yourself to follow through just for the first 30 days.  No permanence. You’re just trying something new. You can count down the days to freedom. You might be thinking, “Jacob, I want my habit to be permanent.  How is this helping?” Here’s why changing your mindset to short-term goal achievement is going to make all the difference in the addition of your new habit.

First, if you actually end up completing your 30 day challenge achievement, you’ll have gone far enough to establish it as a new habit and it will be 100x easier for you to continue that habit if you so choose.  Secondly, you’ll have broken the addiction of your old habit in this time. Thirdly, you will have 30 days of success behind you. That’s a lot of compounded success right there… That will give you so much confidence that you can continue.  Lastly, you’ll have 30 days worth of results that you can use to find out if a habit can realistically be a part of your lifestyle. You’ll have real data of your feelings, thoughts, emotions, actions, and experiences that you can interpret to know what to expect if you are to continue this new habit.

Therefore, once you’ve finished up those first 30 days you’ll be immensely more likely to continue on with that habit.  So much so that it might just become permanent.

And don’t get discouraged if the habit you tried doesn’t work out for you.  Sometimes, that’s just how things work out. If it’s a habit that you know will change your life – try again.  But this time, adjust and re-calibrate. Identity the things that held you back and work around those obstacles this time.  You can do this.

30 Day Challenges I’ve Completed

Steve’s ability to turn ideas into immediate action has been an inspiration for me to start doing my own 30 day challenges.  Here’s a few examples of 30 day challenges that I’ve used to develop new habits in my own life.

I started a 30 day cold shower challenge back in July, 2018.  At that time, I was starting to follow a bunch of entrepreneurs, personal development junkies, and digital nomads online and through social media.  I noticed a pattern among a lot of these highly successful people; they would often times mention cold therapy or cold showers as something they do on a daily basis.  And, funny how google works, I eventually started getting Cold Shower Challenge videos in my recommended on YouTube, one of which was by Wim Hof… the man famous for defying the laws of science and medicine through his 3 part method.  Part one of that method – spending time in an ice bath or taking a cold shower. I was so intrigued by everything he taught and as a true believer in alternative medicines, I wanted to see what these cold showers were all about. So July of 2018, I started my challenge.  And holy cow it SUCKED. A cold shower isn’t just a new habit that you casually add into your life with a 30 day challenge – it’s something that makes you extraordinarily uncomfortable and seriously stretches your mental discipline. The first 1-2 weeks I hated every minute of those showers.  Most days I would stand in the shower for like five minutes debating with my own mind whether I really wanted to turn that cold water on. It was so hard. But after those first few weeks, it got easier. I adapted to the cold quicker, I hesitated less when turning on the water, I learned to focus on my breathing and the cold would just start to disappear.  Once the 30 days was up, I felt so accomplished and honestly felt like I had so much more mental strength. Since then I’ve continued the habit (it’s been about a year) and I literally crave the cold water now. It might sound funny, but when I walk in the shower I hype myself up and literally say out loud, “I want this” “Give me the cold”. Am I crazy? Maybe.  But this habit has been a game changer in my ability to take immediate action and go into uncomfortable situations.

Back in 2016, I started a 30 day diet challenge.  Well, it wasn’t really a 30 day challenge, but I went to a holistic health practitioner who said I should eliminate gluten, dairy, soy, sugar, and grains from my diet.  This was at a low point in my life (read The Transformation Of A Lifetime) and my mother was already changing her diet so I readily jumped on board with the radical diet changes.  All it took was small adjustments every single day and surrounding myself with information about food, health, wellness, nutrition, etc to become fully accustomed to my new way of eating.  I found replacements for all of the foods I loved and substitute ingredients for my favorite recipes and I became an actual “healthy person”. I shed my identity of living an unhealthy lifestyle and eating fattening, sugar rich foods for new healthy habits.  I lost 40 pounds, got in the best shape of my life, and am now one of the healthiest people that I know. But none of that would have happened if I just focused on the diet. The reason most people that start a diet almost always fail or give up is because they still have their old habits and their old mindset.  For the diet to actually work, you need to change your habits. Your habits = Your reality

This past month I just did another 30 day challenge relating to diet.  It was called the Revive Summer Shape Up Challenge. It’s a challenge that was actually created by my chiropractor, Dr. Brandon Shriner, and includes 28 days of high intensity workouts and a super clean diet with ZERO sugar(literally, no honey, no dates, no coconut sugar, nothing).  The challenge started with a full day fast, then the first week I could only have smoothies as nourishment, the second week I could add nuts, seeds, and fruits as snacks and start eating according to the Max Living Advanced Plan (no grain, no dairy, no soy, no sugar, etc) which was a piece of cake for me, and during the final week I could add in sweet potatoes and quinoa.  The eating was easy only because I’ve been eating clean for the past three years, however, the one difficulty I had was getting away from the processed “healthy” junk food and chocolate and foods with natural sweeteners. I learned just how addicted I am to all of that stuff – valuable information that I am now using as I move forward to make better snack choices.

In the summer of 2018 I did a 30 day Miracle Morning Challenge.  It included waking up around 6, naturally with no alarm clock, then doing Hal Elrod’s SAVERS.  Silence, Affirmations, Visualization, Exercise, Reading, Scribing (journal). This 30 day challenge changed my life… and I honestly think that reading Hal’s book, The Miracle Morning, was a wake up call to me wanting more from my current situation.  It was unbelievably transformational and I definitely recommend you go read that book. After the 30 days, I kept the habit going as much as possible, but when my first semester of college started in the Fall, I fell off the tracks with this habit. Now that it’s summer again, I’m reintroducing this habit and even after a few days I’m noticing just how powerful of a tool it is to start my mornings.

Here are some other ideas for applying 30 day challenges:

Give up T.V – You can record all of your favorite shows to watch after the 30 days is over.

Give up watching the news – The news is 100% negative.  It does something to your subconscious mind when you flood it with negativity every single day.  You won’t miss out anything from skipping the news.

Meet someone new every single day – Startup a conversation with a stranger and get out of your comfort zone.

List something new to sell on Ebay – purge that clutter and make some moola.

Drink Sole water – Sole water has proven health benefits and is super beneficial for those with autoimmune conditions and allergies.

Eat a clove of garlic every single day – Peel it, Smush it, wait 10 minutes, then enjoy.  Tons of antibacterial and anti-inflammatory goodness.

Go out every evening – Every night has to be someplace different.  Enjoy the memories that you are going to be making.

Ask someone out on a date – 30 days of asking someone out means you’ve got at least one date this month.  Congrats, make it count 🙂

Give up soda, candy, or junk food – That stuff is not doing you any good.

Call a family member, friend, or business contact

Write a blog post every single day

Write 500 words every single day

Complete 30 minutes of exercise every single day – It doesn’t matter if it’s walking, hiking, cycling, rowing, or weight-lifting.  All you have to do is move your body

Add tangible value to someone else’s life – Some of the most successful people in the world talk about their humble beginnings where they would work for FREE for YEARS to get close to their mentors and try to learn a thing or two.  They gave, gave, gave, before asking for anything in return.

Read for an hour every single day – 30 minutes when you wake up, 30 minutes before you go to sleep

Meditate for an hour – The benefits of meditation cannot be found anywhere else, this will transform your world.

Go for a long walk

Take one Instagram photo – that’s 30 days worth of content right there

Remember

You don’t need to continue this habits after the first 30 days if they don’t suit you.  And think of all the benefits you receive just from those 30 days; it’s going to be crazy!!!

If I were you, I’d pick a 30 day challenge and get started NOW!  It’s going to add so much more productivity, fun, excitement and growth to your life.  It’s just small actions every single day that will lead to something huge in the future.

Give these 30 day challenges a try.  If you’re ready to commit to one right now, let me know in the comments what you plan on doing.  I might start a Challenge Page on my blog in the future where I’ll host my own 30-day challenges and provide guidance through videos, motivational emails, all the good stuff to help you achieve your goal!

If you’re interested in going paleo, I wrote a tutorial that will explain everything and help you get started right now.  In college? I’ve got a super detailed guide on how to maintain your diet and find the resources you need to stay healthy !  Have any questions about anything? I’m happy to help!