30 Day Challenges: 42 Ways To Test Yourself This Year (And The Next!)
Challenge yourself and your lifestyle with these ten 30-day challenges that will change your life in ways you never thought possible! The purpose of 30-day challenges is centered around self-improvement, on any part of yourself you feel needs work. You can build better habits, break bad ones, take on a new hobby or interest, work on a skill, or learn something new. Challenging yourself builds self-trust, self-confidence, knowledge, and—as Dad would say—character.
We, as humans, are wired to be goal-oriented; we become more focused, productive, and positive in all aspects of life when working toward a goal, however specific or niche that goal may be. Nothing can compare with the feeling of satisfaction that comes at the end of the thirty days when you have accomplished what you set out to do!
Try These Thirty Day Challenges
More than likely, you will be pumped to try out another thirty day option that challenges another part of yourself, such as doing a fitness challenge the first month and a mental challenge the second.
Work on yourself, change your lifestyle and mentality, and have fun doing it! Which part of yourself are you thinking to challenge?
Daily yoga practice
Yoga is renowned for its physical, mental, and spiritual benefits and rejuvenation, known to decrease anxiety, increase flexibility, build whole body and core strength, soothe and relax. The breathing exercises and precious moments of silence and meditation leave you feeling calm, positive, and aware. It can be a great way to begin your morning, setting the tone for the day of calm and positive energy and gratitude, or a good way to wind down your evening.
Find a good time to consistently put aside each day for a yoga practice. After a certain number of days, you realize for yourself that you look forward to that awesome stretching and deep breathing.
Daily journal entry
Journaling daily could be a fun challenge for many reasons. It gives you a few minutes to self-reflect, think quietly by yourself in the midst of a busy life, and organize your thoughts and feelings. The entry doesn’t have to be long—whatever feels relieving to you! Doing it daily for thirty days will most likely ingrain the habit of writing in you, by adopting this creative outlet and commitment to self-reflection. An adaptation to the challenge is to start a thirty day gratitude journal, in which you write down three things a day that you are grateful for.
Delete social media
A social media cleanse for 30 days is like a breath of fresh air. It frees up so much wasted time, improves your mood and energy levels, and decreases self-comparison, to name just a few things. Social media can be overwhelming, negative, and manipulated, and although it has become an easy habit for many to scroll and scroll and scroll at any time of the day, a thirty day break from it may be just what you need.
The best way to do it is to take the plunge, delete the apps from your phone, and welcome the thirty days of not knowing and not caring what is going on in social media. How much of what you see when scrolling is actually worth seeing, you know?
Read 30 minutes daily
Taking time to read every day provides great mental stimulation, boosts creativity, and keeps you learning and growing. Find the time of day that suits your schedule so that you won’t miss a day and can get in a good rhythm; that could be sitting outside with a book during your lunch break, in the morning over a steaming cup of coffee, or reading before bed. Falling asleep to a book instead of a show is more natural and more conducive to better sleep.
Find the variation that works for you: A chapter of a book a day, an audiobook on your commute or run instead of music, or a certain number of pages on your Kindle. Make it your own!
Be outside and active in some capacity
Make a point of being outside and enjoying the outdoors on the daily for at least thirty minutes for a month. We often forget to prioritize this; think about how much time we spend indoors! On your busy days, take a walk, read in the sunshine, or take your workout into the backyard. On weekends or free days, make a point of going to your favorite state parks or exploring new ones, rally your friends for a pick-up volleyball game, barbecue at the lake, or star-gaze. There are so many ways to enjoy nature, so take a month to appreciate as many as you can!
One random act of kindness
Make a point to actively contribute one act of kindness to improve someone’s day, whether a stranger’s or loved one’s. It could be paying the bill of the car behind you in a drive-through, going to see your grandparents, buying a homeless person a meal, picking flowers for your roommate, or cooking a meal for a loved one. Be creative! The act of giving and sharing acts of love with others will have the double effect of bringing joy into your life, as well as others.
Go vegan/vegetarian
Try out a different way of eating for a month! It is fun to try out and could have a great positive effort on your eating habits. You could take on this challenge if you are curious about the vegan or vegetarian lifestyle and to see if it could be a good fit for you, whether for health or ethical motivation. It can have long-term health benefits, and may introduce new ways to create healthier habits and a healthier mindset when it comes to foods. It challenges you in the kitchen and makes you think about where your food comes from and how you eat affects more than just you: the environment, animals, agriculture, and more!
Learn to cook/don’t eat out all month
If you have found yourself ordering out a little too often lately and realize you haven’t found pride or joy in your home-cooked meals in some time, maybe consider taking thirty days to work on your cooking skills and knowledge. Cooking can be such a creative, fulfilling and confidence-building activity. There are so many fun, delicious, and wholesome meals to make in your own kitchen, and a ton of resources and recipes online to draw from. If you require inspiration, we have a whole section dedicated to healthy recipes! Start out by deleting UberEats and DoorDash off your phone and pack your Pinterest with delicious recipes that will inspire you to make them yourself!
Try a new type of fitness
Take on a new fitness activity! Maybe you’ve kept your eye on a specific class or gym for awhile but have been putting it off. It could be incorporating swimming in the gym’s pool into your workout routine, trying out a spinning class, hot yoga, boxing, biking, mountain biking, or running. Whether cardio or weightlifting—try something out of your comfort zone or maybe revisit an old love that you haven’t prioritized in years. You don’t even have to sign up for a class or a gym; there are many types of fitness to try out at home or in the outdoors! Picking up a new type of movement is exhilarating and validating, works out different muscle groups, breaks you out of your comfort zone and/or a workout rut, and may introduce a new love for fitness into your life!
Give up TV
Imagine a whole month without TV or Netflix or Hulu! It is may be intimidating at first, but a whole world of time opens up for more rewarding activities when not taken up by screen and couch time. You will feel more energetic and productive if you dedicate the same amount of time to other people, hobbies, and more: go see friends, get out of the house, be outside, pick up the instrument or hobby you let fall to the wayside a while ago. After an entire month of this, you will have gained so many hours to put towards other things that you probably won’t want to go back to how you lived before!
It is important to take on sustainable, small goals that will stick instead of overwhelming yourself with huge or too-many challenges. Good luck to everyone who decides to take on any of these 30 day challenges!
Have A Creative Hour Every Day
Bring out the artist in you and celebrate the beauty of the world by leaning into your preferred form of artwork for 30 or 60 minutes for 30 days! We often neglect our creative inclinations and focus more on “productive” uses of time. Maybe your watercolor has been sitting sadly in the back of a drawer, maybe the gifted sketchpad is still far-too-empty, maybe your short story that’s going to shoot you to fame has had you stumped with “writer’s block” for months. Dedicating a determined time slot to practice and celebrate your artistic side is an amazing form of self-care and fun!
Savings Challenge
This challenge by Part Time Money will rev your savings mindset into high gear and is an amazing lofty goal for the month. If you are struggling to prioritize financial wellness and dedicate time and energy towards budgeting, this challenge will have you up and running and covering all the bases.
Yoga Camp with Adriene
Yoga with Adriene has gained popularity over the years (more than 12-million subscribers) as an extremely accessible resource for those seeking online yoga flows. Adriene is well-respected as a gentle, fun teacher who puts together great yoga flows while also sharing knowledge about technique, breathwork, and meditation. She has several 30-day challenges, and if you want an even more beginner-friendly challenge than the Yoga Camp, try this one.
Sunrise or Sunset Challenge
Days come and go without us stopping to intentionally witness the simple beauty of the Earth’s patterns. Choose whether watching the sunrise or sunset makes more sense for your schedule, and put aside those brief tech-free minutes as an opportunity to be present and grateful. Sunrise could give you a good reason to get up earlier and be a pleasant, natural part of your morning routine. If sunset works better for your lifestyle, stopping after a busy day to take a breath, look at the sky, and watch the earth transition to nighttime can give you a wonderful reset to finish up the day.
Swap Podcasts For Music
What if you replaced your music sessions with an educational podcast? Giving your brain a chance to learn, listen, and be stimulated with knowledge is a more productive use of time than having mindless music in your ears. Think: in the morning when you are making breakfast, putting on makeup, and getting ready for the day? In the car or on your commute? On walks? When meal prepping or making dinner? Pick out an area of interest that you are truly interested in knowing more about, such as finances, news, or nutrition, to name a few, and listen to one podcast a day!
Throw Out One Thing A Day
Admit it, there are things all around the house that you haven’t touched, worn, or maybe even seen for a good six months without having realized it. Every day, pick out one item that you haven’t used in the past six months to get rid of. It feels so good to declutter, and this 30 day challenge will get you 30 items closer to a more focused and minimalistic lifestyle where you are not weighed down by unnecessary belongings. You can even keep a donation box in the closet where you deposit each item, so as to pass these items onward to someone who may need them!
Make Someone Else’s Day Better
For this challenge, go out of your way to improve someone’s day, even if it’s just a little bit. You certainly don’t have to look far for this one; you can easily implement this throughout your daily interactions by simply just being more aware, present, and willing to have positive interactions, whether it’s spontaneous ones with strangers or planned ones with friends. That could be holding the door, complimenting the barista, cooking your partner’s favorite meal, calling a friend, saying I love you to a loved one. Why? Just because.
Break A Habit
You know the old saying: it takes 30 days to make or break a habit. Instead of adding a habit or lifestyle factor, as many monthly challenges encourage you to do, maybe you are overstressed as it is and what you actually need is to cut something out that no longer serves you. We all have habits that need to be dropped but dropping all at once is overwhelming. Pick just one that is negatively affecting your lifestyle, and practice living without it for 30 days until it fades into your past!
Have A Step Challenge
Walking is one of the simplest, best forms of movement for your physical and mental wellbeing. Increasing your step count and intentionally seeking opportunities to move your feet, ideally outside, is proven to benefit you in many regards. 10K steps is the typically recommended number, but if lower or higher makes most sense to your health and lifestyle, you know best!
Dress Up Daily
Remote workers, I am looking at you. Messy buns and sweatpants are the name of the game here, but convenience feels an awful lot like laziness sometimes. Neglecting to look your best and put some time into your physical appearance can trickle into a lowered self-esteem and confidence—and even work performance and productivity. You could try a new hairstyle, wear makeup, or put on a different outfit each day… But give up those pajamas during the work day!
Plank Challenge
Planks are an effective way of building core strength, as well as improving posture and balance. Adding a plank to the end of your workout, or incorporating it into a break from work, is a fun way to challenge your fitness and build strength over 30 days. There are a ton of plank challenge variations, like increasing planking time every day or doing different types of plank (forearm, side plank, hip dips, army crawls). Here is a great plank challenge!
Take the Stairs
“I take the stairs.” Eyeroll, okay, David Goggins. But choosing to take the stairs over the elevator or escalator for a full month is a practice that will challenge you in unexpected ways. Choosing the “harder” road ends up feeling like a power move and wakes up your brain as you ponder how people tend to gravitate towards the easiest, most convenient route, even at the detriment to their health. So be a proud huffer and puffer, and feel empowered that you’re not afraid of hard things, even on such a small scale. At the end of the month, who knows? You might just want to keep taking the stairs.
