Your 30 Day Personal Development Challenge

Is there anything you really wanted to change about your life. Any old habit you wanted to break or any new habit you want to develop? Think of how much richer your life could be if you developed new more fulfilling habits. Maybe you want to quit smoking, learn a new language, meditate everyday, exercise everyday or you have other such personal development goals that you never quite got around to attempting, let alone achieving. If this is the case then why not take up the thirty day challenge!

What is the thirty day challenge? Basically it is an extremely simple, yet effective way of changing habits in your life. You see, very often the hardest part about forming a new habit is actually starting and lasting for more than a few days. Breaking a habit or forming a new one can be particularly tricky to do as it seems changing something for the rest of your life is so daunting that often you will not start or give-up soon due to the enourmity of the task. However with the thirty day challenge all you have to do is stick with it for thirty days, then you can go back to doing whatever it is you want, no questions asked!

This type of psychology gives you the critical feeling that it is of course not forever and that you can indeed achieve a worthwhile objective, such as not smoking for thirty days. After the thirty days you may of course choose to start smoking again or you may choose to continue with your new behavior which after thirty days has also had time to form as a new habit for you. Mentally it is just so much easier to deal with, you can tick days off a calendar or countdown the days until your target date, either way it is so much more motivating.

After the thirty days you will have time to assess whether or not your new habit serves you. If it does then you will find it much much easier to make it a more permanent behavior. You will have had time to benefit from the new habit, break the old habit and bed in the new habit. From this position you will easily be able to tell if it is something you want to continue with or not. You may also like to extend the challenge to 60 or 90 days to keep the psychological effect of it not being a permanent change and to give you a new target and challenge.

Of course it is not all easy going, the first few days will of course require effort on your part especially in terms of commitment and discipline but if you are selecting a goal that is going to improve your life then surely it will be worth it and you can even start counting your days down to freedom.

Here are some great ideas for 30 day challenges that could really benefit you in both the short and long term:

Read everyday for an hour, meditate everyday, commit to an exercise regime, cut out fast foods, eat your 5 portions of fruit and vegetables each day, call a different old friend each day, contact a family member, give-up TV completely, study a new language, quit smoking, become vegetarian, stop drinking alcohol, take time to relax more, stop watching soap operas, do Yoga, stop wasting time in on-line forums or online games, meet a new person each day. The list of possibilities is only limited to your imagination and what you deem beneficial for your life. Even if you don't want to make a permanent change go ahead and improve yourself in the short term, you will gain from the experience of personal development whatever the outcome.

Whilst for some activities doing them everyday may not always be the ideal way, for example running for new people can be stressful on the muscles and joints, sticking to it everyday makes it a lot easier to stick to as you don't have the excuse of just taking a 'rest' day. So I urge you now to make a chart with 30 days on it, write down what you are going to do to improve you life and start now!