15 Exciting 30 Day Challenges To Jumpstart Your Goal Life
When it comes to living the life you want, I find that a push in the right direction can be helpful. Whether it’s motivating yourself to perform activities that will make your body healthier or ones that will promote mental health and wellbeing, challenges can be a great way to get yourself moving in the right direction. If you’re competitive, you can look at your self-improvement journey as a series of challenges, incorporating newer habits along the way. They say it takes 21 days to form a habit, so completing 30-day or month-long challenges can definitely help you move in the right direction toward your goals. So, if you’re looking to embark on some 30 day challenges to jumpstart your health and wellness, here are some challenge ideas that will set you up for success!
Do Yoga
30- day challenges to complete yoga are designed to tailor to your mind AND body, promoting good circulation, flexibility, strength, etc. Furthermore, you might just find your body feeling better after moving and stretching intentionally for 30-days. I embarked on a 30-day Yoga With Adriene challenge on YouTube last year and after finishing my 30 days, I just kept going. I found that my body started craving yoga practice, and completing yoga as part of my routine became something I look forward to instead of dreading to complete, like how I am with a lot of workouts in general. If you’re looking for specific, guided 30-day challenges, like the ones I followed on YouTube, I’d recommend programs by Yoga With Adriene’s Adriene Mishler. One, called “Home”, aims to help you feel at home in your body and understand and learn how to use it to its potential. The program I started out with was called “30 Days of Yoga” and it helped me learn that Yoga is way more playful, fun, and about observing your body than I anticipated. Both challenges would surely set you up for success in your Yoga journey.
Journaling
Journaling is such a good way to decompress and sift through your thoughts and feelings at the end – or beginning – of a day. I, however, have the hardest time actually setting out to do journaling on a regular basis, so having a journaling challenge in place might just be the way to make this healthy habit a routine. On top of being a good activity for easing anxiety, it can also promote your writing skills, implementing more practice into your routine. It may be daunting to try and write something different every day for 30 days. Sometimes I wonder, what do I even have to write about that is different from any other time I journal. This is where prompts can come in handy AND there are prompt programs perfect for 30 day challenges, some of which focus on certain topics or meditations so that you are able to sort through something particular for your 30-days. Some 30-day journaling challenges I’ve found include this “30 Day Journal Challenge For Healing and Transformation”, and this “30 Days of Gratitude” journaling program.
Go on walks
Walking is easy to incorporate into daily life for a 30 day challenge, but it’s also easy to love what it does for you. Going on 30-minute, brisk walks regularly is a great way to include more activity in your lifestyle and keep your body healthy with a bit of cardio. It is also lovely to have the opportunity to get outside for a chunk of your day and really enjoy the nature around you. I feel that doing this can help me clear my head and breathe deeply, even throughout the rest of my day. You can even curate your walks to make them as enjoyable as possible for you– perhaps scheduling them around sunset so you can enjoy the views, or bringing a pup along for the journey, or even listening to some of your favorite songs while striding along. If you’d like to include even more of a challenge to this 30-day challenge idea, you can increase your speed and/or distance every day or week of the challenge, depending on your goals and motivation. Using an app like Strava can help you track your route, speed and distance. These stats can help you push yourself to do better than you did yesterday and continue improving throughout the challenge.
Read daily
Reading is great and is so magical in terms of your cognitive health and even your mental wellbeing. Picking up a book every day helps you get into the good habit of becoming a reader, and it is a great way to start knocking books off that to-read list that’s only been growing for ages. If you’re aiming to zoom through books more quickly, consider listening to the audiobook versions on Audible while completing other tasks, or you can take it easy by flipping through a book before bed every night. To make the challenge a little more challenging, you can opt to have a goal number of books that you want to have read by the end of the month-long challenge.
Social media detox
As exciting as it is, social media can be incredibly draining and detrimental to your mental wellbeing. Taking a break from social media and focusing on other elements of your life can be healing and a month-long challenge might be the way to go for the social media reset you really need. If you’re anything like me, free time is often spent scrolling through social media, which isn’t necessarily the habit I want to be developing. Therefore, taking a 30-day break might be enough time to detox that habit and build habits that promote being in the moment, self confidence, and other things social media can tend to break down.
At-Home workouts
Going to the gym for 30 days can seem like a big commitment, but doing workouts at home may seem a little less scary. Committing to about 30 minutes to an hour or working out per day is a great 30-day challenge to embark on because you will probably start seeing results toward the end of the challenge. Working out daily is not only great for your body, it can help promote a clear, focused mind in other areas of your life. For home workouts, I follow along with Chloe Ting workouts, and her calendars and challenges already available on her website are great options for completing your 30 days of workouts. Some of her 30 day programs I loved include her “2021 Summer Shred Challenge” and the “2021 Hourglass Challenge.” Her current program is called “2021 MOVEmber” and is also a great month-long workout program.
Cooking challenge
One of my greatest vices is how often I eat out. It is not only detrimental to my wallet, it’s also not great for my body. While cooking all the time can be difficult, because life often takes away a lot of our time, it can be worth the effort in the long run. Using a 30-day cooking challenge as an opportunity to eat better and up the ante with your cooking skills is a great way to spend 30 days and beyond! Who knows, maybe you’ll discover your new favorite recipe. If more structure would help you out with this challenge, I’d recommend creating/ following a meal plan calendar and considering using meal prepping to save you some time throughout your busy weeks. Soon, you’ll be forgetting about eating out.
Online cleanse
Different from a digital detox of taking a month-long social media break, an online cleanse challenge would focus on taking elements of your online life and cleaning them up throughout the month. This could include cleaning up your Instagram page one day, sifting through your photo album another, sorting through your emails, organizing your digital notes, organizing your playlists, and the list goes on. Having everything all neat in your digital life can make you feel way less stressed in the long run, and keep you organized and efficient throughout the challenge.
Cleaning Challenge
Similar to how cleaning up your digital presence can reduce stress, cleaning your physical space can do the same and even more! No one wants a messy space, so setting small, achievable goals per day is an awesome way to get what needs to be done around your house done. On the other side of this challenge, you’ll be coming out with an insanely clean space, and hopefully, a clear mind on top of that. Here is a month-long cleaning challenge checklist to follow. This challenge is also a great way to kickstart a routine of cleaning, incorporating more elements into your routine, less frequently after that first, initial clean.
Water
We all know how good drinking water is for us, yet many of us still struggle to get enough, myself included. Making a challenge of getting your daily hydration just might be what you need to boost your health and stay hydrated. If it is challenging for you to drink more water, perhaps start the month off slow, steadily increasing your intake until you start drinking enough water every day. Products like these time tracking water bottles like this one are great ways to help you track your intake throughout the day and motivate you to keep going.
Video diary
Keeping a video diary is a great way to help you remain present throughout your day and also seek out the beauty in every day. To create a daily video diary, get your camera rolling in moments throughout your day you’d want to record. For example, every moment you feel alive, every beautiful thing you see, everything that really catches your attention, or even everything interesting you do throughout your day. Snipping these clips together and watching them back can help encapsulate your day into a video, but it also helps you recognize the beauty and power of having all these moments that make up your day and make up your life. Perhaps recording your day would also lead you down more interesting paths– even if it’s for the sake of your video diary, you reap the benefits of your explorations and adventures. A TikToker whose video diaries I am absolutely obsessed with is The Francis Files. These videos show me how powerful it can be to romanticize your life and record those beautiful moments. You can find a greater appreciation for what you have after looking at all of it together.
No spend
Budgeting is a big goal for many, and it can be hard to remain consistent with keeping track of your money. One 30-day challenge idea would be to embark on a no-spend journey to help you save money. No-spend days are just how they sound, they are days when you challenge yourself not to spend money. Little transactions add up immensely and removing more and more of those little buys can help us gain more control over our finances. While you don’t necessarily have to spend NO money throughout the 30 days, you can outline designated spend days and stick to it when the calendar says it is a no spend day.
Relationship strengthening
Whether you want to focus on your relationship with your significant other or perhaps just a friend or multiple friends, focusing on relationship strengthening is a great way to use a 30-day challenge. If you are in a relationship, you know that it takes a lot of work and understanding to keep things strong. Being intentional with improving your relationship with your partner can be beneficial when it comes down to it, allowing you two to grow together and establish a better understanding of each other. A 30 day relationship strengthening calendar can be found here. With things to do that will be sure to make memories to ideas of how to spice things up in the bedroom, this calendar will help you come out the other end a stronger couple. If you’re focused on strengthening your platonic relationships, your 30-days will be focusing on building and maintaining those relationships. You might find that at the end of this challenge, you have done more exciting things and got closer to those you wanted to.
Creative Pursuit
Got a hobby? Got a hobby you want to be better at? A 30-day challenge dedicated specifically to that hobby is perfect for you. If you really want to see improvement, you have to employ your knowledge that practice makes better and work at whatever it is you want to do for 30 days consecutively. Maybe you’re a painter – or you want to be – take time to sit down and work on paintings every day for your month-long challenge. Maybe you like to roller skate, do that every day for 30 days and see where it takes you. Love baking, bake something and share it with neighbors and friends every day for 30 days and you will see improvement. Also, doing something you love doing or something that allows you to be creative every day for a month will likely improve your mood as well!
Something New
One of my favorite challenges I’ve seen people complete is the challenge to do something new every day. Even if you are just committing to the 30 days, by the end of your challenge, you will have had 30 new experiences under your belt! This challenge is meant to help you curb fears and anxieties and just go for it with the things you want to do. You might find yourself becoming a little more daring or even finding excitement where there once was fear. Embarking on a challenge like this pushes yourself and can even help shape what kind of a person you are after completing it.
Which of these 30 day challenges will you try out? What are your personal goals and how could a challenge help you reach them? Let us know in the comments!