Click Here to Read the Podcast Transcript
Today brings the first episode of the new ‘Two-Minute Tuesday’ podcast. A once-per-week episode that it scheduled to be around 2 minutes in length. (it’s probably going to be around 3-4 minutes, but ‘the 3-4 minute Tuesday’ Podcast didn’t have as much of a ring to it 🙂 )
This week’s episode is about setting up a 30-day challenge. Which will help you move out of your Comfort Zone more easily.
By setting yourself a specific task, or action to perform every day for 30 days, becoming slightly uncomfortable becomes easier.
When you become okay with being a bit uncomfotable, your ability to expand your comfort zone increases. With a bigger comfort zone, comes wider abilities and a greater belief in what you’re capable of. A single step into the unknown every day brings with it huge benefits.
Resources:
There’s a great TED talk on YouTube by Matt Cutts that gives a great intorduction to 30-day Challenges. You can FIND IT HERE.
If you’re not sure what sort of challenge to try, click over to the Develop Good Habits website. There you can read THIS POST. It’s a roundup of 129 different 30-day challenges you can try. Yes…. 129!!
If you have any questions, or comments, please leave them in the comments section below.
Podcast music: Is ‘Sweet Life’ by Twisterium.
Music Link: https://www.twisterium.com
Hello and welcome to episode 25 of the Everyday Confidence Podcast from theSkillfulmind.com. I’m your host, Steve George and today’s episode is about Setting a 30-day Challenge:
Hello and welcome to the first ever episode of what I’m calling, Two Minute Tuesday. The longer episodes will still be coming out every Thursday, but this Tuesday episode is for times when you’ve only got a couple of minutes to spare, or you just want something quick to give you a new idea, or maybe a different perspective. Now because they’re only around two minutes, I’ll make sure there’s more information on each episode, over on the podcast page for that episode. And then that way, you’ve always got a place to find more information, once you’ve got a bit more time.
Okay, so with that short introduction out off the way, todays tip, as I said in the intro, is Starting a 30 day challenge. I’ve said 30 day because that’s the norm for these sort of things, but for you it could just as easily be a 90 day challenge, or even just a seven day challenge to get you started if something like this is completely new to you.
So what is a 30 day challenge. Well, the easiest explanation is it’s a simple, habit building project, that helps you to start confidently moving out of your comfort zone on a regular basis. And the more often you can do that, the easier it becomes, so the more confident you become at moving further outside of it afterwards.
The first stage is to decide on something relatively small, that you’d like to either be more confident doing, or that you’d like to be able to do, but haven’t quite got the drive, or the confidence to do yet.
It can be anything you like, as long as you need to step slightly outside of your comfort zone to get there.
Once you’ve decided what it is you want to do, think of one thing, you could do every day, that’ll move you closer to your goal.
So, if for example you want to become more confident in speaking to strangers, because you’re looking for a partner. You could make your challenge that you’ll speak to one person you don’t know, every day. That could be on one day, having a conversation with someone who speaks to you first. Maybe when you’re in a shop, or while you’re getting your daily exercise in the park. And on the next day, it could be simply saying hello to someone who walks past you in the street. But whatever the circumstances, each day you speak to a stranger.
Then mark off every successful day on a calendar until you reach your target number of days. But if, for whatever reason you miss a day, you have to start again.
And this does two things. Firstly, by completing the task everyday it becomes a habit and habits are easy to continue doing. And by marking each successful day on a calendar, you get to see how far you’ve come, which helps keep you moving forward.
Once you’ve reached your target date. Either switch it up and make it a bit more challenging, so you could say “when I go to park everyday, I’ll speak to a stranger”. So you’re making it a bit more specific, so it’s a bit more challenging . Or you could add something else to it, to move you further along in the following 30 days. So maybe as well as speaking to at one person each day, your next challenge would be to join a dating site and message at least one person each day.
But, don’t make the challenge too difficult initially. It’s better to make it relatively easy, and complete it, rather than make it so challenging, that you give up after a couple of days. You can always increase the difficulty once you know where you comfort level is.
So to sum up. Choose a subject to concentrate on. Decide on a task you can do every day to get you closer to it. Measure your progress by writing your successes down on a calendar. Then once you’ve completed that challenge, rinse and repeat with the next one.
That’s it. show notes and further information will be on on the podcast page, which is theskillfulmind.com/podcast/25. If you’ve enjoyed this episode, please share it with your friends. Thanks very much for listening and until next time, bye for now.
