If you’ve been looking for self-improvement challenges to help you level up, this blog post is for you! These self-improvement challenges are broad ideas for you to try, that you can customize for yourself. As for how long to stick with them, that’s up to you as well. Some common timeframes for these types of challenges include 30, 60, and 90 days. However, if you’re on a roll, you can go as long as you want!
1- Pick a handful of healthy habits, and aim to do them daily for x-number of days.
As for the number of habits, you can aim for 3-5 (though you can ultimately do however many works for you). As for the habits themselves, I’d recommend choosing those that are sustainable and will help you get closer to who/where you want to be. They don’t all have to fall under the umbrella of traditional self-improvement (i.e. fitness, finances, career progression, etc.). They can also be for the simple purpose of making you feel better, happier, and/or healthier.
The limit doesn’t exist to how many possibilities you can choose from. Drinking a certain amount of water, walking a certain number of steps, reading a certain number of pages in a book, doing your skincare routine, listening to feel-good music, socializing, the list goes on. Ultimately, if they serve you well, they’re great habits to form and maintain. Challenge yourself to stick to them, and be sure to track how consistent you are, as well as what results you see!
2- Identify unhealthy habits you’ve formed, and aim to cut back on them for x-number of days.
As per the photo above, you can identify both what you want to do more AND less of! Maybe you find that you doom scroll, overthink, or people-please too much, and your wellbeing is suffering as a result. You can challenge yourself to wean off said habit(s), little by little. In the process, give yourself grace. This challenge should come from a place of self-love/compassion; simply wanting the best for yourself.
The more time you’re able to go without engaging in a habit you’ve been wanting to break, the easier it’ll become to stop doing it altogether (or at least significantly cutting down). A good trick for this is, whenever you find yourself wanting to do this thing, choose to do one of the habits from #1 instead. Soon enough, it’ll become your default response whenever you feel that temptation, and hopefully that temptation will slowly fade away!
3- Do a daily journaling exercise.
There are several ways that this can look—my post 4 Types of Journals to Keep + Tips and Benefits of Each delves into the various options. To name a couple of examples, you may just choose to brain dump for 10 minutes or answer prompts (whether written by yourself or someone else). If you go the route of writing your own prompts, you might want to write them all in advance, so that when it comes time to answer them, it almost feels like they were written for you (rather than by you). Plus, the prompt that you answer on a given day will have been assigned to that day long beforehand, meaning that it wasn’t chosen for that day with any bias.
Regardless, journaling has such a wide range of possibilities that you can get creative here. The goal is to express yourself and learn more about yourself in the process. It’s a recipe for greater self-awareness, mental clarity, stress relief, and all-around self-improvement!
4- Test out a new morning or evening routine consistently.
If you could use direction on how to create an effective routine for yourself, head to How to Craft Your Perfect Morning and Evening Routines. When you feel like you’ve come up with something that works well for you, go for it! Aim to stick with it regularly to see the biggest impact. Similarly to #1, fill your routine with steps that will help you self-improve in some way or another. Again, this can simply mean things that make you happier or healthier (both physically and mentally).
Of course, as per that post, you can tweak your routine as much as needed to find what works for you. You can also have slightly different routines from one day to the next depending on your schedule and needs. Also, if you find that your routine isn’t working for you, you can always adjust accordingly. The goal is just to bring some structure into your days and see how it helps you, especially when that structure is filled with positive habits!
5- Do something outside of your comfort zone everyday for x-number of days.
Of all these self-improvement challenges, this one might feel the most daunting, but that’s okay—it should be a good kind of daunting! Some days’ tasks can be more significant than others. Maybe one day it’s trying a new food, while the next it’s striking up conversation with someone you’re attracted to! Pay attention to how stepping outside your comfort zone makes you feel. Does it make you feel more confident? Braver? Readier to take more risks? Less afraid of failure? Closer to who you want to be?
Reflecting on these outcomes is a great way to ensure that the challenge is working and make any adjustments as needed. If you don’t see these results, it may just be a matter of giving it more attempts. Confidence builds by continuously acting outside your comfort zone, not just once, twice, or even three times. Keep challenging yourself, and implement any lessons you learn from failures!
The bottom line…
And there we have it, your self-improvement challenges! You can tackle one at a time, start with one and pile on more, or go all-in with multiple. Since there could be overlap among them, it may not be too much to do more than one at once. For instance, your habits from #1 can be integrated into your routine from #4. Journaling or taking risks can also be included in your habits or routine. The habits you eliminate as per #2 can be swapped with the habits you implement from #1. Remember, self-improvement challenges don’t need to feel like work. They can be fun, eye-opening, and empowering!