How Does A 30 Day Challenge Work

The phrase ’30 day challenge’ can seem overwhelming, over exhausted, too frequently used, or just down right impossible. The phrase can turn stomachs, make people cringe, and create feelings of excitement, anxiety, hopelessness, or hopefulness.

30 day challenges come in all shapes and sizes and the opportunities for goal reaching and self-growth are truly endless. A 30 day challenge can be in the realm of diet, exercise, spirituality, meditation, or countless other interests and facets.

30 day challenges can also range in their depth to include more complex goal setting, such as running 10 miles a day and adhering to strict dietary guidelines, to a more simplistic challenge like waking up at a certain time every day, or reading 20 pages of a book daily.

It All Comes down to Your Attitude

As mentioned above, the idea of a 30 day challenge can come with intense feelings of ‘must do,’ ‘have to’s,’ and the obligation that you must cut out or deny something from your life. And that you must work to replace the ‘bad’ thing you are trying to stop with the ‘good’ thing you are attempting to practice more regularly.

The key to any challenge or positive result all comes down to one simple aspect of our selves, and that is – a good attitude. Having a positive mindset when setting goals and then instigating the fruition of these goals is the root of whether you will succeed or fall short.

30 day challenge

You Are in Charge of Your Success

The important feature to remember is that you are 100% in charge of your attitude and outlook on what is happening in your life at the moment.

If you set the goal to cut out all added sugars in your life for 30 days, but the entire time you are miserable and talking about how miserable you are – it is less likely you are going to reach your goal.

However, if you approach the situation with the determined mind set you made the challenge in, you are empowering yourself to succeed. We are our both our biggest fans and our biggest critics.

We are wholeheartedly capable of creating the attitude and outcome we desire to manifest.

It can be difficult to maintain, but as soon as you see yourself slipping out of this ‘attitude of gratitude,’ remind yourself what caused you to create your goal or 30 day challenge in the first place. Remind yourself of the intention and root of your desires and try to sway closer to that side of the attitude spectrum.

The Power of Repetition and Numbers

A question that might pop up when considering diving into a 30 day challenge or something similar might be ‘why 30 days?’ At least for me, it can seem almost impossible to do something different or challenging for 30 days straight.

How do you fit it in your already super busy schedule? What if you have kids and multiple jobs and an endless to-do list that seems to never get shorter? The power of a 30 day challenge is to create an ability to adapt and grow that produces long-lasting results.

This means that whatever your 30-day challenge happens to be, the underlying constant needs to be seeking long-lasting results. It does not matter if you do yoga for 30 days straight if you finish your challenge and throw away any takeaways you might have learned from the challenge.

It is all about the intention, as we talked about above, fused together with the strong desire to actually see tangible results. Whether you are working out for 30 days or using meditation techniques to gain more mental clarity, the power of repetition is proven to produce results.

In the world of athletes and working out, repetition is known as one of the most effective tools available for producing results you desire. By repeating the same tasks over and over again, we allow our bodies and minds to be trained or rather, retrained, to allow room for new information.

Repetition is beneficial for numerous reasons in regard to building strength and improving skill.

Repeating actions, thoughts, movements, and more you can improve motor skills, pinpoint focus and determination, set yourself for better trainings, track performance, increase relevant strength and build consistency.

Different Types of the 30 Day Challenge 

Since there are so many different types of 30 day challenges, we are going to choose 3 popular challenges from the major categories. These will include spirituality and meditation, movement and exercise, and diet and health.

1. Meditation & Spirituality 

It is not news that meditation is beneficial for a multitude of amazing reasons. Meditation allows for a certain training of the brain that can ease the nervous system, decrease feelings of anxiety and depression, as well as fortify our reactions to stressors in daily life.

Meditation is a tool that has been utilized for thousands of years and is not going away anytime soon. This extremely reliable and extraordinary practice helps to fortify mental capacity, ease suffering, and help bring clarity and peace to the mind, body, and soul.

30 day challenge

Meditation does not have to look any certain way. In fact, meditation can look like driving in your car and focusing on the breath for five minutes in traffic. Meditation can look like take a mindfulness walk through your neighborhood and discovering the simple beauty around you.

Meditation can also look like what most imagine in their minds it to look like. It can be sitting on a fancy meditation pillow, burning incense and listening to a guided meditation for 20 minutes. The important thing to remember is that your meditation practice can look like whatever you want it to look like.

A 30-day meditation challenge can be as simple as allowing yourself a few minutes each day to check in, return to the breath and sit in stillness. Meditation can be a truly scary task to pick up. It can seem weird, uncomfortable, and like it does not work sometimes.

Then there are those other times where you sit to meditate and the clarity or insights received brings extreme joy and peace. The resources on meditation are endless with the power of technology and all that is available online.

2. Diet & Health

30-day challenges geared to reach a certain diet or body weight goals can come in a variety of forms. They can have goals of eating towards the Whole 30 diet for 30 days, or they can be geared toward cutting out caffeine or to reduce added sugars in your diet.

There are literally thousands of 30 day food challenges available online today and it can be extremely hard to decide which one is best for you. A lot of 30 day challenges ask for the participant to cut out added sugars in everyday consumption.

30 day challenge

This can look like the elimination of soda, sugary drinks, processed foods, packaged sweets and snacks, and limiting intake of salts, breads, and other indulgences packed with sugar. Other 30 day challenges focus less on what you cannot eat and focus more on foods you can intake.

The idea behind most 30-day challenges is to not feel like you are restricted and cutting out all the fun from your life. You must take baby steps and integrate new goals gracefully in order to see success and manifest desired results.

30-day challenges are just that – a challenge. They require extreme planning, meal prep, thinking ahead, and then setting clear, concrete goals. Depending on which specific diet you are participating in, remember that you volunteered to do this and that you are the only one in your own way of success.

3. Movement & Exercise

The last category of a 30 day challenge we will discuss are those involving movement and exercise. Whether this is in the form of extreme weight training or in the form of meeting yourself on your yoga mat for 30 days, the important aspects are your intentions and determination.

30 day challenge

As with diet and health, there are literally thousands of 30 day workout challenges you can participate in. You can gear your 30 day workout challenge towards firming your backside, nailing a handstand, strengthening your abs, or whatever aspect of yourself you are looking to improve.

If you are participating in a 30 day yoga challenge, it is important meet your goals with the resources you need to succeed in your challenge. Make yourself available to go to your yoga studio or set up shop in your house to ensure that you will meet the challenge daily.

Things to Remember about Doing a 30 Day Challenge

We cannot state enough how crucial it is to set reachable goals, be easy on yourself, and hold yourself accountable. Set goals that are attainable by giving yourself ‘lighter’ challenge goals on certain days, especially if you had an exceptionally challenging one the day before.

If you find yourself hanging on by a weak thread to complete your challenge for the day, modify the challenge to accommodate where you are at that moment.

Honor your feelings, body, health and mind by tuning in and giving yourself what it needs to succeed.

Keywords:  30 day challenge

Leave a Comment

This site uses Akismet to reduce spam. Learn how your comment data is processed.