Twenty 30-day Challenges To Improve Your Life

Are you feeling stuck in a rut? Like there’s a big difference between where you are and where you want to be? I know the feeling. Here’s the good news: you can start improving your life this month with these 30 day challenge ideas!

Think of something you want to change about your life, and experiment with working on it for the next 30 days. Whether it pertains to your health, wealth, or happiness, you can set yourself on a more successful path in the next 30 days.

Why do a 30 day challenge?

Thirty days is the perfect amount of time to do a personal challenge. It’s long enough to make something part of your routine. And short enough that it’s not overwhelming.

Big goals and dreams are made up of tons of tiny choices. If you make good choices every day, your life will just get better overall. And the next 30 days will pass whether you like it or not, so you might as well use it productively!

The beauty of the 30 day challenge lies in the fact that you can do almost anything for 30 days.

How to Do a 30 Day Challenge:

Make sure to choose a challenge that isn’t overly strict or impractical. Small changes are just more sustainable. A 180 degree, drastic change simply isn’t realistic for most of us.

If you try something too drastic, you’ll just be living for that 31st day so you can go back to your old habits. Choose something you can be excited about!

Here are 20 personal challenge examples to get you started. You can select one, or adopt a new one every month this year. It’s completely up to you.

30 Day Health Challenge Ideas:

1. Take Daily Walks

Make a goal to take a walk every day. It doesn’t have to be a long walk, though sprinkling in a few longs walks throughout the month could certainly be beneficial.

You could do go for a walk when you wake up, on your lunch break, or in the evening. It’s up to you whether you focus on distance, time, or amount of steps.

Try not to make excuses (like the weather) about why you can’t walk. You might need to adjust your location or route, but get creative! Make a commitment to yourself that you’ll do it every day for 30 days.

2. Eat More Veggies or Fewer Sweets

Because overhauling your diet in one month just isn’t realistic or sustainable, try switching up the part of your diet that bothers you the most.

Whether it’s eating more of healthy food, or less of something else, one small change can make a bigger impact that you’d think.

3. Get More Sleep

Most of us get less than the ideal amount of sleep. And it’s usually our fault. We can blame a variety of other factors, but more than likely we’re staying up later than we should because we’re just goofing off.

Be honest with yourself, and look at what you’re really doing at night when you could be sleeping. We tend to procrastinate going to bed in favor of watching television or internet scrolling.

Aim for a bedtime 30 minutes to an hour earlier than you have been. You’ll find that you function better during the day, and waking up isn’t quite as awful.

Check out this list of 30 day challenge ideas! Change your life in 30 days by using these personal challenge examples to create new habits!

4. Do a Fitness Challenge

A 30 day fitness challenge is great way to jump start a healthier lifestyle. It could be a certain number minutes of daily physical activity, or a challenge designed to improve a specific area of the body.

Here are some examples of fitness challenges I’ve seen:

• Butt lifting
• Squats
• Jumping rope
• Planks
• Ab sculpting
• Arm toning
• Push-ups
• HIIT challenge
• Running

5. Drink More Water

We all know we should drink water for our health, to increase brain power, lessen body aches and headaches, and improve digestion. But knowing we should do something, and actually doing it, are two very different things.

One of the many benefits of doing these 30 day challenges is that it reminds you to have a daily goal. I love this water bottle with time markers on it. At any given point in the day, you can see how much water you should have drank.

5. Start a Side Business

Thirty days is the perfect amount of time to get your side hustle off the ground. Many of them even take very little to no financial investment!

Here are 101 side business ideas to get you started. There’s no doubt that you have some skill or talent that other people are willing to pay for. We tend to underestimate these abilities in ourselves, since they usually come easily.

Use your knowledge and start making a side income from it. Becoming a virtual assistant is a great side hustle to start. They’re in high demand, and almost everyone possesses a skill that would be hireable.

6. Cut Back On Spending

There is certainly some area where we can all cut back on spending. You could do an overall spending freeze, where you don’t buy anything that you don’t absolutely need.

Or you could do a challenge where you don’t buy any clothes, or fancy coffees, or crafting supplies. Pick one thing that you think most of your unnecessary spending is on, and cut back on that.

You might be surprised how much money you could save after only one month of doing this. Put that money toward debt repayment, add it to your emergency fund, or save it for something special.

Ready to really overhaul your finances? Check out The Total Money Makeover. It just might change your life!

7. Create and Stick to a Budget

Budgeting doesn’t need to be complicated! You don’t need fancy software or an accounting degree to make a simple household budget.

Here’s the easiest way to do it:

1. Calculate your monthly income (your take home pay)
2. List your fixed expenses (your regular monthly bills)
3. Total those expenses, and subtract them from your monthly income
4. Decide what you do with what’s left (assign some money to savings, and as much as you can to debt repayment)
5. The amount that remains is for food and entertainment

Now that you’ve made a budget, the challenge lies in sticking to it. That means knowing how much you’ve spent as the month goes on, and getting creative or cutting back if you are about to exceed your budget.

8. Learn How To Spend Less On Groceries

When you create your budget, you may realize that the biggest drain on your income is food. Yep, something so easily consumed and forgotten is often one our biggest expenses.

If your food bill is out of control, and you have to idea how to create a grocery budget, check out the Grocery Shopping Makeover Challenge. You’ll learn how to slash your grocery budget in just 5 days!

You can easily and immediately implement what you learn in that free ecourse, and realize massive grocery savings in the next 30 days.

9. Do a Savings Challenge

I’ve seen quite a few savings challenges on Pinterest. If you save $1 the first day of the month, $2 the second day, $3 the third and so on, you’ll have almost $500 by the end of the month!

Or you could start using cash instead of your debit card, and save your coins, or your $5 bills. It’s totally up to you how you want to customize your 30 day savings challenge.

For extra inspiration, have a plan for how you’ll use the money you save. That will help keep you motivated throughout the challenge.

10. Less Screen Time

The amount of time that we all spend looking at screens is kind of out of control. Between looking at your phone 50 times a day, watching Netflix, and scrolling on your iPad, it really adds up to many hours.

In addition to the permanent neck and eye strain we don’t even realize we’re having, our intense focus on screens means less time experiencing real-life events and a negative impact on our relationships.

For the next 30 days, experiment with cutting back on electronics usage. You could watch less TV, do a social media detox, or just commit to spending less time on your phone.

The app Moment will tell you how much screen time you log on your cell phone each day, along with how many times you unlock it. It might be double what you think it is.

11. Create a Morning Routine

Mornings can really be one of the worst parts of the day. If you’re always running late and feeling disorganized, it’s time to create a morning routine, and do a 30 day challenge where you implement it.

An amazing resource for helping you figure out the best way to plan your morning is the Make Over Your Mornings course. It’s super affordable and helps you design a morning routine that’s best for your life.

The Miracle Morning is another excellent source of morning inspiration. When you learn how to wake up with a plan (and something to look forward to), getting out of bed each morning won’t feel like such a drag.

12. Self Care Challenge

Taking care of yourself is one of the best 30 day challenges you can try. A self care challenge can mean different things to different people, but the idea is to take time for yourself.

You could do one personal care activity each day, such as dry brushing, a mini home pedicure, taking a bath, or doing a home facial. You could also go to a yoga class, get a new coloring book, take a weekend nap, or start a new skin care regimen.

How you design your self care challenge is up to you. Just make sure it’s filled with things you don’t usually make time for!

13. Quit a Bad Habit

Do you have a bad habit that you’ve been meaning to quit? A 30 day challenge is the perfect place to start. From biting your nails, smoking, interrupting people, gossiping, or being messy, we all have habits we’d like to change.

Whether you use the 30 days to quit cold turkey, or you slowly lessen your usage, a month should be enough time to implement positive change.

14. Keep a Journal

Consider starting and writing in a journal for the next 30 days. It could be as simple as what you did that day as sort of a memory keeper. Or use it as a prayer or gratitude journal.

Journaling can also be an excellent way to process your thoughts, discover what you really want, or work through feelings. It’s actually great for your mental health!

A popular journal to get going is this: @@@

15. Random Acts of Kindness

A 30 day kindness challenge is so fun! Do one unexpected and kind thing each day. It can be for people who know or for complete strangers.

Send someone flowers, pay for the person behind you at the coffee shop, leave an unusually big tip, or volunteer your money or time at a homeless or pet shelter.

If you don’t want to spend money (which is totally fine), you could give compliments, praise people who least expect it, or drop off a cooked dinner or baked goods to a busy mom or housebound individual.

The possibilities are endless!

16. Try a Reading Challenge

If it’s been a hot minute since you read a book, a 30-day reading challenge might be right up your alley. Pick a couple books you’ve heard good things about, and just get started.

You could make a daily goal to read a certain amount of pages or chapters, or for a specific number of minutes. Read for entertainment, relaxation, or to get inspired or learn something new.

18. Take a Picture Every Day

If you aren’t in the habit of frequent picture taking, then taking one significant photo each day can be an awesome personal challenge to try.

There’s usually one significant, funny, or memorable moment to each day. Some days you may have to look harder than others, and therein lies the challenge.

By staying in the mindset of a 30 day photo challenge, you’ll have more awareness of something that makes each day special.

Whether it’s an event, a tasty meal, an accomplishment of any size, or something funny or even crappy, having photos of 30 days of your life might be an excellent keepsake.

19. Give Meal Planning a Try

Meal planning is one of the most productive challenges to try. Just knowing what you will be eating each night brings about such peace of mind.

If dinner time is hectic at your house, or you find yourself getting takeout all the time, try doing some meal planning for the next month.

You’ll no doubt save money and time at the very least.

20. Keep Your House Tidier

You could do a 30 day decluttering challenge, where you pick one item a day to donate. Or just commit to picking up after yourself better. You will feel more at peace in your home if it’s cleaner, and by keeping it tidier, you won’t have to spend hours at a time cleaning it.

I hope these 30 day challenge ideas gave you some inspiration for ways to improve your life this year. The next 30 days is going to go by anyway, so you might as well use it well!