The New Year often brings with it a hit of new-found motivation to improve our lives. However, in our article about sticking to your resolutions we mentioned that 80% of resolutions fail within a month and a half. A year is just way too long to commit to a change… but what about 1 month?
1 Month Challenges Help You Re-frame Failure
This year, I’ll be ditching making New Year’s resolutions, and instead doing twelve 1 month challenges. These challenges will serve as mini experiments of change, rather than a large, unwieldy year-long challenge that may ultimately be impossible. Some of your challenges may be a breeze, and you may keep up the habit after the month is through, but some may be difficult, and you’ll completely fail to keep up your new habit. Complete failure is OK, because at least you learned something about yourself, and can dust yourself off for a new challenge the next month.
If you “fail” to complete your challenge one day, that doesn’t mean you failed your experiment. Let’s say that you’re going gluten-free for a month, but you cave and eat some pizza and a cake one day. You simply failed on 1 out of 30 some days of the month. If you’re successful 28 out of 31 days… maybe you can chalk up the experiment as a success. However, if you were doing a year-long resolution, eating gluten one day could completely destroy your motivation and cause you to give up on your resolution. You may be more likely to stick with your new habit using the monthly challenge method because you know that you only have to complete one short little month and don’t have to stick with it the whole year.
How to Get Started With Your Challenges
- Brainstorm what areas of your life you’d like to improve and actionable daily habits that can be done to improve them.
- Choose 1 challenge per month and make it achievable.
- Get a calendar dedicated to these challenges and mark off with checkmarks when you complete your daily goal, and use an X when you fail that day. You can pick up a free Scenes of America calendar at most A and H Insurance locations the first several months of each year.
- If you fail to complete a challenge one day, make a note of why you weren’t able to. Sometimes there are very valid reasons why you weren’t up to the task that day.
- At the end of the month, make a tally of how many days you were successful. If you’re enjoying your challenge, and it’s become an ingrained habit, keep it up, or you may drop it mostly or entirely if you wish.
- Whether you succeeded or failed in the previous month, you get a fresh start for your next monthly challenge.
My 12 Challenges
Daily fresh vegetable juice drink – According to the CDC, 90% of Americans don’t eat enough fruits and vegetables. So I’d like to be part of the 1 in 10 who’s reaping the health benefits. Fresh juice seems to be an easy way to ingest enough veggies, though perhaps not as easy to make. I’ve invested in an easy-to-clean juicer and a weekly delivery of fresh produce. If I can’t be motivated to do some juicing, there’s a local juice shop I can pick up some bottles.
Practice learning Spanish – I’ve been dabbling with Spanish for a while, but consistency is key when learning a language. If I don’t practice for a few months, I find I lose a lot of words and how to conjugate verbs.
Practice guitar skills – I’ve been playing guitar for over a decade, but I have never liked working on my skills, so someone who was 100% dedicated could probably be better than me in less than a year. I’ll be working on scales, guitar theory, finger picking, coordination exercises, learning complicated covers, etc.
50 push-ups / 50 pull-ups per day – I’m not working up to doing 50 in a row of either push-ups or pull-ups, just 50 total of each per day. My goal is to spread these throughout the day in 5 sets of 10 reps. This is a challenge I can definitely see myself failing at.
5+ minutes of meditation – I always feel better after meditating, but I’m rarely motivated to carve out a few minutes to sit down and do nothing for a bit. Sometimes that I’ll consider squeezing in a meditation are after waking up, at lunchtime, after work, or before bed.
No video games – I enjoy playing video games, but after playing for a couple hours I never feel like my time was well spent. Video games can be very addictive, so I’ll get to see just how addicted I am to them.
No online videos – I don’t watch that much TV (or streaming platform content) but I’d say I watch more YouTube videos than I should. Sometimes it’s mindless surfing of their suggestions, and other times I catch up on news or my favorite weekly content. There’s a lot of great content on YouTube for learning, but most of what I watch I could honestly do without.
5+ minutes of yoga/stretching – I have several old sports injuries I’m hoping this will help with.
Cold showers – Taking cold showers have many purported benefits, such as improved mental clarity and better circulation. After getting out of a cold shower, I always laugh and feel exhilarated like I took a shot of espresso. For an hour or so afterwards I feel super awake and clear-minded. Some ways to make the challenge easier: You can alternate between hot and cold water several times before fighting through a couple of minutes of cold water. You can hold a mouthful of hot water and try to focus on its temperature in instead of the frigid water beating down the rest of your body. Have a space heater running in the bathroom, so you’re greeted by soothing warmth after accomplishing the shower.
Gluten-free diet – For years I’ve heard people rave about how great they feel after going gluten-free, so I’ll try to stick with it for a month.
Dairy free diet – I’ve dabbled with going strictly vegan in the past but going without cheese has been the hardest part.
Polish Adobe Creative Suite skills – There’s an endless amount of skills that can be learned or improved upon in Adobe’s Creative Suite. I’m going to focus on better learning Photoshop, Illustrator, Lightroom, Dreamweaver, InDesign, and Premiere Pro.
Those were my challenges. What are some challenges you’re considering? Let us know on our Facebook post.
Wishes for 2021
To go along with this post we’ve included some wishes for 2021 from A and H employees:
To only be uplifting, inspiring and positive through the New Year! – Angela Baily of Elko
For 2021 I made a promise to myself, to make my health a priority and I have taken the steps to start on a new journey. I hope to be Medicare certified in 2021, to be able to help the growing population of people turning 65. I want to finally make some household improvements that have been put on hold do to reasons beyond my control. I want to spread the word, that KINDNESS matters! It’s doesn’t cost money, it isn’t difficult, it could be contagious and at any given moment, it may mean everything to someone! :) – Nanette Chalupa of Reno
I hope to be able to safely travel around the US and maybe even internationally in 2021. – Emily Pearce of Reno
As much as it’s possible, I hope the people of our country can find more common ground with each other, rather than constant fighting and division. Also, I hope to see live music, comedy, and theater come back strong. – Luke Westberg of Reno
I wish for HEALTH, Wealth, Happiness and Joy for everyone. May 2021 Be the best year so far! – Michelle Schreier of Fernley
COVID-19 please go away! – Kelley Kimble of Apache Junction
