Calendar with days crossed out
As we approached January this year, I was bitten by the 30 Day Challenge bug. 30 days is a great length of time to try something new. It’s long enough that you can really give something a go, without being too long a commitment. I decided I wanted to start a 30 Day Challenge in January. The question was, 30 Days of what? If you Google “30 Day Challenge” you will find links to all sorts of ideas, ranging from fitness, to business, to relationships, to nutrition and so on. My problem was that there are so many great ideas that I would love to try.

So, the first challenge I set for myself is to do 30 minutes of Tai Chi a day, for 30 days. I will be starting teaching Tai Chi classes in Sydney very soon, so this seemed like good preparation for it. I already do tai chi for severalĀ hours a week, but I haven’t done it daily for any significant length of time. I decided to start on January 1, which turned out to be a terrible idea. That didn’t happen, so I figured January 2 would be fine. That didn’t happen either šŸ™‚ The lesson here was clear – there are always going to be excuses! Although I love tai chi, the thought of committing for daily practice for 30 days is actually really intimidating. Nevertheless, I am proud to say that I finally started on January 3. Second lesson – it doesn’t matter when you start, just start! The temptation was to procrastinate until February, though there really wasn’t any legitimate reason to do that. 30 day Challenges don’t have to start or end at the beginning of a month. If you want to line up a few to do, there is no reason they can’t overlap a little. In fact, I decided to do 2 challenges in January. The first is my 30 Day Tai Chi Challenge, the second is the 30 Day Plank Challenge. The plank challenge takes so little time each day, it really is quite negligible to add in. Anyway, to keep track of things I am trying out the HabitBull app which lets me simply track my progress each day.
Matt Cutts has an excellent talk about the benefits of trying something new for 30 days.

So, why not start of 2015 with a 30 Day Challenge? Here are some suggestions:

  1. Meditate for 15-30 minutes each day
  2. Journal for 30 minutesĀ each day
  3. Take a 30 minute walkĀ each day
  4. Adapt the 30 Day Plank Challenge to work on a particular Yoga pose you have been struggling with
  5. Start each day with a healthy, sit down breakfast

What challenge are you going to attempt? Share your ideas and experiences below šŸ™‚