15 of My Favorite 30-day Challenges

My top strength is Competition. I love pushing myself to try new things, build new habits and improve my life.

30-day challenges speak to my soul! They’re a great way to try something new for a month. At the end of the challenge, if you like it, you can keep going on your own! If you don’t, you can move on to something else. The Sagittarius in me LOVES that there’s an end date.

Here’s a list of my 15 favorite 30-day challenges:

1. 30-day Stress Relief Journal Prompts 
Why I love it: Who isn’t stressed out these days!? We’re stressed about our job, our family, our money, our homes, our community, our world… We need to find space to free our minds from the constant barrage of negativity and stress. Journaling is one of the most effective tools to allow our minds to focus elsewhere. Questions like “I am lovable because…” force us to connect deeply with ourselves.

2. 30-day Be More Positive Challenge
Why I love it: The world is full of negativity these days. We see it on the news, on social media, from our friends and family. We need a break. That’s exactly what this challenge gives us. Many of the daily challenges are things we can do to spread positivity to others, which in turn, brings us happiness. The last day of the challenge is particularly good: “see how many of these positive thinking challenges you can complete in one day!” #overachiever

3. 30 Days of Self Improvement
Why I love it: First of all, the blog title. Second, it’s a list of simple things we can do each day to work on ourselves. Plus, there are two whole days when the prompt is to DO NOTHING. No permission necessary. Challenge accepted. We can only improve the world once we improve ourselves.

4. 30-day Mental Cleanse Challenge
Why I love it: The creators broke down the 30 days into 4 themed weeks, focusing on self-care, exercise, cleanse and positivity. This is great for those of us who need some variety in our challenges. The cleanse week of the challenge helps you clean up your social media (unfollow people who don’t inspire you) and your electronic space (sort your desktop into folders). Clutter creates more clutter – on our desktops and in our minds.

5. 30-day Minimalism Challenge
Why I love it: Did I mention that I just moved for the 5th time in 8 years? We downsized from a 4-bedroom house to a 2-bedroom apartment. I have never been more ready to give minimalism a try! But this challenge isn’t just about purging your closet or throwing out old receipts. Some of the prompts include simple pleasures like taking a walk, going without your phone or skipping makeup for a day. Minimalism is more than creating a simple space; it’s about creating simplicity in your lifestyle.

6. 30-day Social Media Detox
Why I love it: We could all use a good detox from the negativity on social media. But unlike my experience with a cold-turkey social media detox, this challenge helps you take baby steps. For example: no logging in to Facebook until noon, limit social media to 15 minutes, etc. Social media is one of our biggest distractions. It steals precious time away from our work and family. Limiting our use can lead to greater productivity and better relationships.

7. 30-day Relationship Recharge
Why I love it: Speaking of relationships, when was the last time you worked on yours? If you’re anything like me, your relationship is one of the biggest things you take for granted. This challenge offers small prompts that make a big difference in improving your relationship. No relationship is perfect; they all take work. This challenge helps you and your partner create deeper connection and understanding of one another. I especially like Day 18: asking your partner what you can do for them today. So simple, but so important!

8. 30-day Kindness Challenge
Why I love it: Imagine a world where everyone was kind to each other. A world where someone leaves flowers on your windshield, or pays for your meal, or lets you merge in front of them for-crying-out-loud! This challenge helps YOU be that person and encourages that pay-it-forward mentality. When you do something nice for someone, they’ll remember it and do something nice for someone else, and so on until the world is a beautifully kinder place.

9. 30 Days of Walking Challenge
Why I love it: If you know me, you know I hate exercising. I know it’s good for you, I know it improves mental health, but I can’t seem to motivate myself to change into my gym clothes and head down to the gym. One reason is because I never made it a daily habit to exercise. This challenge helps make exercise a habit with something most people can do easily: walking. It starts off slow with 20 minutes per day and increases to 60 minutes on some days. Walking is one of the best exercises we can do. It’s shown to improve cardiovascular fitness, metabolism, anxiety and depression. Plus, it’s low impact, and you don’t need to change your clothes if you don’t want to – but maybe change your shoes.

10. 30-day Book Challenge
Why I love it: I’ve always loved reading and am constantly reading more than one book at a time (and probably listening to an audiobook, too). This challenge is for my fellow bookworms who love to share their love of books with others. Rather than a read-one-book-every-day challenge, this challenge helps us reflect on books we thought we would hate but ended up loving, our favorite characters from books, our favorite quotes and a book that changed your opinion on something. You can use the daily prompts in this challenge as journal prompts, or as daily social media posts (unless you’re doing the social media detox).  

11. 30-day Challenge: Morning Routine
Why I love it: While this challenge doesn’t have a specific prompt for each day, it does suggest various activities to incorporate into your morning routine. This is the “choose your own adventure” challenge! Whether you want to wake up 30 minutes earlier each day, or avoid technology for the morning, exercise or eat breakfast every day, having a morning routine is a powerful way to bring more energy, productivity and mindfulness into the rest of your day. Ready to start your own morning routine? Download this free workbook to help you get started!

12. 30-day Cleaning Challenge
Why I love it: Having a root canal sounded more appealing than cleaning my 4-bedroom house. It was so hard to keep up with all the fur from my two Birman cats! Plus, there were way too many rooms for just two people. This challenge helps you break down a month’s work of cleaning into daily tasks that you can do in an hour or less. It also breaks down the month into the rooms of your house (bedroom, kitchen, bathroom). When you focus on one space at a time, you can put more effort into making it sparkle, rather than doing a half-ass job throughout your entire home. (Or am I the only one that does that?)

13. 30-day Money Challenge
Why I love it: Want to save $500 in 30 days? This challenge teaches you how! There’s a grid with daily savings amounts ($1 on day 1, $2 on day 2, etc.) and a place for you to write down your action plan on how you will save the money. There are also suggestions on ways to make extra money each month. I’ve done this challenge from time to time over the years, and I have to say, saving money is a lot easier when you have a goal up front and a plan for sticking to it.

14. 30-day Productivity Challenge
Why I love it: I am a P in the Myers-Briggs Type Indicator, so I find it hard to focus most days. It takes time for me to warm up to my day, but once I start writing or creating, I can get lost for hours. This challenge helps you with things like decluttering your workspace, setting goals for the day, automating tasks and removing distractions. A must for Type B’s like me. Plus, you can download a free printable with daily prompts and action planning tools.

15. 30-Day Life Purpose Challenge
Why I love it: Because this one’s mine 😉 But all joking aside, we all struggle with wondering why we’re here on this Earth, what difference we’re meant to make, and how we can bring more meaning into our lives. This challenge uses the Ikigai, an ancient Japanese philosophy, to guide you to find your purpose over 30 days of journal exercises. You’ll discover what you love to do, what you’re good at doing, what you can be paid for, and what the world needs. In the end, you’ll put it all together to define your Ikigai, or your reason for being (aka your life purpose!). When you sign up for this free challenge, you’ll also get a workbook with a printable calendar and prompts to guide you on this important journey.