21 Day Habit Challenge

A habit is a regular tendency or practice, and one that is usually hard to give up.

We all have them — good and bad. Studies have shown that 40% of our behaviors are the habits that we have developed throughout our lives. Breaking habits and building new ones alike can be extremely hard to accomplish without some guidance. 

Recently I went back to listen to a podcast “21 Days of Happiness Challenge” from Help Me Be Me by Sarah May (listen to it here) about taking care of yourself and challenging yourself for 21 days.

Those 21 days consist of 5 habits that are done every day, they are as follow:

1. Physical exercise – any kind, even if it’s just taking the stairs rather than the elevator
2. Meditation – any kind, any length
3. Journal about 3 new things you’re grateful for
4. Journal 1 positive experience that day
5. Perform conscious acts of kindness, at least 1 act…
6. (optional, but an important one) When you see yourself in the mirror, say i love you and mean it

Seeing that January is over and the New Year excitement has worn down, I’m sure you are either plugging away at your resolutions…or you’ve fallen off the resolution wagon.

If you have fallen off the wagon, or not, the 21 Day Habit Challenge is a great place to start and get back on track to achieving your goals!

This challenge is meant to help build positive habits. Those habits can be the same ones from Sarah May’s 21 Days of Happiness Challenge, OR you can challenge yourself to other habits.

Habit building or breaking is definitely easier said than done, so we’re going to break it down over the next 21 days. 

1. Start small…Example: meditate/breathing before bed — start with 1-2 minutes of meditation/breathing each night.
2. Increase in small increments…back to meditation — increase the time by 1-2 minutes every couple of nights.
3. Break it into segments…working up to 10 minutes of meditation? Break the 10 minutes into two 5 minute segments.
4. You might slip…miss one day? Kick the all-or-nothing mentality and get right back on track. Understand how & why you lost control and improve.
5. Be patient…work at a pace that you can maintain. If that means only doing 1-2 minutes of meditation for 2 weeks before increasing, great! You’re still creating a habit.