A month ago, I set myself a 30 day challenge. The driving force was to break some bad habits I’d got into, such as checking my web stats too frequently and not being as productive as I could be.
However, I didn’t just want to set myself a ’30 day no web stats challenge’ which would be a bit dull. So, I used it as an opportunity to write myself a list of 12 things I wanted to do or not do for 30 days. This is how I got on.
1. Only check website stats every Monday
This included google analytics, subscribers and Wim Hof Method affiliate sales. Since I have recently started to make a bit of money from my website after three years of blogging, I started checking my sales every day which was a bit excessive. I’m going to continue with this one though as repetitive checking eats into time and is not good for productivity.
2. Practise yoga and meditation for at least an hour every day
I admit to missing some days, but would make it up the following day by practising for longer — not that it’s about quantity! This is what I practised — yoga (usually Vinyasa Flow), followed by the Wim Hof Method power breath exercise and a meditation.
3. Keep a dream journal to prepare for lucid dreaming
I didn’t always remember my dreams, but I wrote down some of them — no luck with lucid dreaming again though. I’ve put in prep work for lucid dreaming before and in a way I need to spend more time on this one for it to work properly as lucid dreaming is one of the strangest but most amazing things I’ve ever experienced.
4. Keep a gratitude journal
I first heard of the gratitude journal from law of attraction advocates and love doing it. It’s way too easy to get pissed off with life — this just puts everything into perspective and makes you really appreciative of what you have.
5. Do one nice small thing for someone else every day
I offered cups of tea to my boyfriend and housemates, ran a meditation workshop for free and gave some genuine compliments, plus some more little things I now can’t remember. In all honesty though I felt like I probably could have done more. I should be making cups of tea anyway! I remember my karma yoga from the ashram I stayed at a few years ago and I admit, I didn’t work as hard.
6. Visualise (law of attraction)
I did a lot of this and as a daydreamer with a very vivid imagination, I found that it came quite naturally.
7. No moaning or complaining about anything (if it’s hard — write it down instead and throw the paper away)
I’ve been pretty lucky so far in life in regard to not getting sexist comments from men. However, it’s like the universe was testing me. I got two inappropriate comments from men — who didn’t realise they’d said anything wrong — twice within a few days! I admit that I did talk about it out loud which probably classes as bitching. I’m pleased to say that I didn’t do any mindless gossiping though.
8. Work on a piece of Mandala art
This was one of my favourite challenges and I highly recommend it. The whole process was really therapeutic. See above image for the mandalas I drew and coloured.
9. Play my wooden flute for 10 minutes a day
I found this site which was really good for free online music lessons: Online Academy for Irish Music. Prior to this I’d had my flute for about a year and hadn’t really made plans to learn it. I bought it on a whim because I thought the instrument sounded really beautiful. By the end of the 30 days, thanks to OAIM I did learn the song Tapping the well.
10. Practise non attachment every day
This one’s a bit more difficult to gauge. What I meant by this is to go more with life’s flow rather than resisting things or getting too caught up and annoyed when things don’t go to plan.
11. Practise standing on hands every day
I can now stand on my hands unsupported for longer than 10 seconds, but it’s still hit and miss.
12. Focus on one thing at once
I’m going to continue working on this one. Admittedly, I can sometimes get distracted. On the whole though, I feel like I’ve been a lot more focused over the last month.
If you want to do your own 30 day challenge read my list of 100 30 day challenge ideas or just make your own ones up.
