Thinking of ways to develop the habit of regular blogging, I decided to challenge myself to post every day for thirty days. The thirty day challenge is not an original idea. It is reported to be a method of ingraining a new habit by committing to perform a new action or activity for a thirty day period. The theory is that if you do it for thirty days, it will become an ingrained behaviour.
December is perhaps not the best month to start as it has the most external demands for social and family engagements. But better now than never. If I put it off, it would likely become one of many things in life that if not grasped, pass by and are lost forever. I have no expectations as to the outcome of this exercise other than to improve my writing skills and give some substance to the thoughts and ideas floating about in my mind.
I've started a list of topics I'd like to cover. Some readers may recall a series of posts I started on the seven characteristics of successful people that stalled on number three. I'm going to finish those. The rest are subjects of interest including the creative process, music and personal development.
Habits, good or bad, generally require a trigger to initiate and some form of reward either immediate or deferred to reinforce. My plan is to start my day with a hot cup of tea, write in my personal journal (a previous thirty day challenge and a future blog topic) and then craft and post the day's blog. I know there will be days when the world conspires to prevent this process so I'm going to jump ahead and have a few blogs queued up for posting. My reward will be my beer advent calendar (details in tomorrow's post).
If you're reading this, I'd challenge you to take on a thirty day challenge of your own, something that will improve your life and/or that of those around you. It could be anything from getting out for a daily walk, drinking more water or committing to compliment one person every day - the possibilities are endless. Make your intention known publicly directly to family and friends, on social media or if you're really brave, in the comments section below. I hope you'll join me on this trek.
One day down, twenty-nine to go!