Your mindset will influence your results. The challenge you face is taking control of your mindset to harness your mental focus to your success. Can you think back to a time when everything felt difficult? You couldn’t get out of bed, and just sensed you had a bad day unfolding ahead of you?
Likewise, can you think of days you woke up feeling full of energy, ready to tackle anything life could throw at you, whether it was easy or challenging?
Those days probably looked very different by the end. Sure, on a bad day you still got to the end. You may have even completed what you needed to, thanks will-power.
Can you imagine navigating a bad day with the same energy and thoughts that you experience on your good days? When you think empowering thoughts it makes even the most challenging days easier to navigate. Isn’t this what everyone wants?
You can achieve this, too, and to help you get started, we have 30 days of challenges to help you set your growth mindset. These challenges you help focus on resetting your mindset to get the results that you want.
Before you start your challenge, though, commit to doing a few things daily. Your daily habits from here on out should include writing in a journal. You can write whatever you want, but you should aim to write at least one sentence about what you’re grateful for.
Start keeping a list of important tasks you have to tackle – never any more than six. Take a short break to meditate for at least five minutes. Physically activity should be a priority – outside of exercise, you should make time to move your body as much as possible.
You should have an idea of what goals you have in life, too. You can write as many as you want, and they can be both short and long-term.
Day One – Say Thank You
Today, your challenge is to sit down and write yourself a thank you note. You can do so on a standard pad, you can use colorful paper or fancy pens. Use whatever makes you happy. At the top of the paper, write your name. Now it’s time to write absolutely everything that you’re grateful for about yourself. What do you really appreciate?
Write it as though you’re writing to someone else. I love your sense of humor, I appreciate your hard work, etc.
You can mail it to yourself, email it to yourself or even leave it under your pillow. The point is to sit down and read it tomorrow. You can save it until the end of the challenge if you prefer or, for a time when you need a boost.
Day Two – Script Your Day
This is a job for the morning (or the night before), but your challenge is to write a script. It doesn’t need to be any more than a paragraph, but it could be bullet points, too. You’re scripting the outcome you desire for your day.
Write it as though the day has already happened. So, what’s on the agenda for today? Perhaps you are meeting a new client for coffee. You could write about how successful the meeting was.
You could write about how delicious your vanilla latte was and how you and the client immediately clicked. That the meeting was so successful that she signed a contract to work with you immediately. Do this for the day ahead.
Day Three – Mindful Moments
Throughout your day, you should have timers set on your phone. These are random reminders to encourage you to be mindful. As soon as you get the reminder, take a mindful moment and notice your thoughts. This is your opportunity to truly take notice of your mindset. Are you being positive? Or, have your thoughts drifted to negativity? Finish your mindful moment by thanking someone (it could be you or someone around you, just find a reason to thank them).
Day Four – A Day of Gratitude
Today is your day of gratitude. At some point today, take a time out. Slip away to a quiet place and light a candle. Now, start by saying I love… and fill in the blank with as many things you can think of that you love about your life.
Day Five – Just Do It
What have you been putting off? Today is the day to do it, whether it’s an apology, a phone call or a project. Choose something that you can accomplish in full today.
Day Six – Try Something New
Someone with a fixed mindset believes they can’t grow their skills, abilities or traits. They’re also likely to falsely believe they like what they like in terms of food. Your tastes are always changing.
There are plenty of foods you will enjoy as an adult that you despised as a child. Vegetables, anyone? Today, your challenge is to try a new food. It might be a completely new cuisine, it might be a specific type of food that you would like to try, but find terrifying.
Today is the day to do it, whether you try it at home, pick up at the store or go to a restaurant. Put yourself out there, experiment!
Day Seven – A New Sound
There are plenty of free streaming services to turn to for this, but your challenge for today is to listen to a random playlist that features music you wouldn’t normally listen to. If you’re into rap, go for country. If you prefer classical, try bubblegum pop. Into the classic rock? Listen to EDM.
Sometimes the best thing you can do to create a growth mindset is to force yourself out of your comfort zone. Music is a divisive subject. When people like a certain type of music or certain artists, they easily poo-poo other popular artists.
They look down on people that listen to other styles of music. Let’s be honest, we can all be really snobby when it comes to music. Start working on opening your mind to other options – an eclectic taste in music is a great way to stretch your mindset.
Day Eight – I’m Feeling Fine
That’s your challenge today – to feel great. If you don’t feel great, what would it take to upgrade you to feeling better? Imagine you don’t feel so hot when you wake up. You can enjoy a cup of coffee to provide yourself with a boost.
Now, how do you feel? What would it take to make you feel even better? If you want to feel great, you will need to go out of your way to make yourself feel as great as you can today.
Day Nine – Prosperity Purchase
This isn’t about buying yourself an expensive gift. It isn’t about buying the cheapest gift. Rather, this is about buying something that you really want (or need). For example, your earbuds just broke. So, get yourself a new set. You can opt for the cheapest option, but you’ll likely run into a similar problem in no time. Why buy cheap when you can invest in yourself by purchasing quality?
If you can’t afford to make the purchase you’d really like right now, that’s okay. You can add it to your cart and save it for another day. The purpose of this exercise is to think about what you truly want, rather than to decide what you’re willing to settle for. That’s the difference between a fixed mindset and a growth one.
Day Ten – Growth, One Step at a Time
Today, your challenge is to tackle a specific area and de-clutter it. It could be your glove box, it might be the junk drawer in the kitchen or the surface of your desk at work. Just focus on tackling that mountain today.
While you tackle this task, think about how you feel, what you’re thinking, and notice how much better you feel by the end.
You’re 10 days in now – have you seen any progress in your mindset? How are you doing?
Day Eleven – Fix Something
This challenge really highlights the difference between a fixed mindset and a growth mindset. Sometimes things break down, but that doesn’t mean you throw them away.
There are plenty of items in your life that you repair. You don’t dump your car when you get a flat tire – you change the tire. When you experience a burst pipe, you don’t move out of your house. You call a plumber and have the pipe repaired or replaced. Everything can be fixed. Everything can be upgraded and improved upon.
Right now, there will be something in your home, car or life that needs to be repaired. It probably annoys you endlessly. For example, the handle of a kitchen drawer is a little loose and it annoys you on a daily basis. Today is the day to take care of it. Grab a screwdriver and fix it. If it’s something a little more serious, then call in a professional to deal with it. Whatever it is, deal with it today. Everything can be made new again, everything can be made better, including you.
Day Twelve – As It ‘App-ens
If you visit your app store and type in growth mindset you will find several options. Today, your job is to download an app to help you improve your mindset. From today, you should check in with your app as often as it recommends.
Day Thirteen – A New Author
Do you prefer mystery thrillers? Do you only read the classics? Are your bookshelves adorned with auto-biographies? Today is your opportunity to branch out. You can ask a friend for a book recommendation or just try your luck with a well-known author.
Of course, you may want to pick up a book on mindsets. Regardless of what you choose, your challenge for today is to buy a book you normally wouldn’t and get started on reading it. Just make sure you finish reading.
Day Fourteen – Change It Up
Do you always tie your hair back? Are you a classic red lip kind of person? Today is your opportunity to branch out. Just because people are used to seeing you a certain way doesn’t mean you can’t change things up. Wear flats instead of heels or vice versa. Change your hair parting.
Try a new outfit. You’re used to looking in the mirror and seeing yourself a certain way. Why? You can change how you see yourself by literally changing the way you present yourself to the world.
Day Fifteen – Act
Today, you are to act as though you have achieved your goals. If your goal is to secure a new job, act as though that job is yours. If your goal is to lose weight and be thinner, walk and act as though you have already done so. Use your imagination and act it out.
Day Sixteen – Compliment Freely
You are likely familiar with the term go-getter, but what about go-giver? This is someone who is generous with their resources and/or time. Today, you are going to be a go-giver and it won’t cost you a single penny.
Rather, you are going to go out of your way to praise people at every opportunity. Your challenge is to compliment at least three people today. It isn’t about complimenting others and bragging about it. You don’t need to share that information with anyone.
Day Seventeen – Open Sesame
Someone with a fixed mindset is resistant to help. They don’t believe they can improve themselves, but they don’t want to turn to others for help either. Today, you’re going to ask for a favor, assistance or downright help.
It might be that you need someone to do you a little favor, you might have to ask a couple of friends to help you move. It might be assistance on a project or simply a recommendation for a good plumber.
It feels good to get support and it lets others know that you’re willing to do the same.
Day Eighteen – The Dream Team
Yesterday, your challenge was to ask for help. Today, you’re going to take that a little bit further. Today, your challenge is to think about what your dream team looks like. These are the people who surround you, who uplift you, who will be there ready to pick you up when you fall down.
Think about who would be on your dream team, what they would do for you, and what that would look like.
Use your imagination to take this a step further. You can think beyond the people in your life. You can imagine the future you want. Perhaps you would like to imagine yourself living with someone who cleans your home, a personal assistant who deals with your schedule, a partner who backs you up no matter what or, a butler to run your home.
The purpose of this exercise is to use your imagination. Someone with a fixed mindset struggles to imagine their life being better than it is because they don’t believe they are capable of growth. You’re capable of growth.
Day Nineteen – Five More Minutes
For those of you who already exercise regularly, add an extra five minutes to your routine.
For those of you who don’t exercise regularly, today is the day you start. You can start with a five minute HIIT session. Even five minutes of HIIT is enough to get your heart rate up and your blood pumping. It might not seem like much, but it’s a start. Once you start, you’ll feel confident enough to continue exercising. You will feel better immediately and it’s just another example of how you can grow as a human being.
Day Twenty – Conquer Fear
There is something exhilarating about conquering your fears. The majority of our fears are small, but they feel big. We’re not talking about jumping out of a plane or bungee jumping from a bridge.
No, we’re talking about saying no to something you don’t have the time or energy to deal with. We’re talking about making a phone call that you’ve been avoiding.
We’re talking about reaching out to apologize to someone you wronged. We’re talking about healing strained relationships you would like to repair.
You are capable of taking the first step. You are courageous enough to do this.
Day Twenty-One – Three Goals
You set goals before this challenge started, what are your three largest goals? These could be short or long-term. For each of these goals, write a statement to answer one question. That question is how will achieving this goal change my life?
Day Twenty-Two – Data Dump
You probably have more than a handful of great ideas daily. The problem is they tend to occur from nowhere and you forget all about that. Provide yourself with inner-peace and enhance your mindset by doing data dumps.
Today, when you feel ideas pulsing through your brain, grab a journal and write everything out. If you can’t just grab your journal, you can use the notepad in your phone or open a file on your computer. Just let it all out.
Once you’ve dumped the data from your mind you can review it and make notes if necessary. You can cross unimportant things off, prioritize your tasks, delegate what’s possible, and consider some of your great ideas. Look at what you’re capable of when you allow yourself to possess a measure of self-belief.
Day Twenty-Three – It’s A Date
It’s important that you cultivate a positive relationship with yourself and your finances. Today, it’s time for a money date. Sit down and look at your investments, income, bills, debs, savings, and goals. If you have no money goals to speak of, then now is the time to set them.
Do this like a real date, enjoy a glass of whiskey, wine or a non-alcoholic treat while you do it. Put some mood music on in the background and get comfortable.
Say thank you (to yourself) as you pay each bill. You should be grateful for the word you do that allows you to pay for the roof over your head, make your car payments, and heat and cool your home.
It sucks to sit down and pay bills, but you should be thankful that you can pay them. That’s a change in mindset and it’s growth.
Day Twenty-Four – Appointments
Do you make appointments when you need to? When was the last time you visited the doctor or saw your dentist? These appointments are important to your overall health and happiness.
When you stay on top of them it’s evidence that you believe that you deserve health and happiness. You deserve to take care of you so, make the important appointments and follow through with attending them.
Day Twenty-Five – Deep Relaxation
Today is a day of deep relaxation. Before you embarked on this 30-day challenge, we encouraged you to make time for daily meditation. Hopefully you have been doing this consistently.
Today, though, it’s time to go deeper. Carve out 15 minutes for meditation today, enjoy deep breathing, take a bubble bath, go float in the pool or, grab a deep tissue massage. Seek out things that will provide you with peace and relaxation.
Day Twenty-Six – Socialize
If you’re an active social media user, today is your opportunity to socialize more. Find five new people to follow or engage with. They should be people who encourage growth and talk about positivity as a mindset. Not only will they provide you with food for thought, but when you engage with them, their mindset is going to rub off on you.
It’s possible to create lists to make it easier to read the content that you want. So, organize these people and everyone like them into a growth mindset list that you can easily read when you log-on to social media. You can shut out the stressful news and other information by using lists to streamline your feed.
Day Twenty-Seven – Create
You might not consider yourself a creative person, but you are. Today is the day to show that. It might be a painting, perhaps it’s a poem, song, short story or even curating a photo album. It truly doesn’t matter how you create, what matters is that you do create. You should pay close attention to how you feel as you do so.
Twenty-Eight – It’s Easy
There are likely a lot of things that come easy to you. There are likely certain things that you find challenging. Today, sit down and make a list of the things you find easy. We have a tendency to focus on what we find difficult, and often overlook the incredible things we are capable of.
Think about what feels natural to you or easy, whether it’s a skill, ability or otherwise. Set a timer for ten minutes and write out as many as you can think of. Now that you have a healthy list to review, use it.
Reframe difficult tasks. What if filing my taxes was as easy as playing Fur Elise? Or even what if playing Fur Elise was easy as filing my taxes?
Twenty-Nine – Non-Attachment
When we imagine what we want, we often set our intentions and have difficulty letting go. We discussed your largest three goals on Day 21. You want to hold onto them tightly, right? You love the idea of those goals, you love the idea of achieving them. That’s okay.
Sometimes, though, it’s just as important to let them go. That doesn’t mean let go of the idea that you’re going to achieve them. Rather, it’s about believing that you’ve got this. You don’t need to hold onto them so tightly because you’re confident in your ability to get it done.
Day Thirty – Review Your Goals
Now, back to those goals you set.
How did you feel at the start when you sat down and wrote out your goals?
How do you feel about them now?
What progress have you made in your bid to achieve those goals?
Do you want them more? Do you want them less?
Take yourself five years into the future and act as though you’re reviewing the year you’re in right now.
Describe the year as though it’s already happened. Visualize it this way to a) take some pressure off your shoulders, b) to make it feel more real, and c) to understand that you are capable of achieving anything if you have a growth mindset.
Final Thoughts
Congratulations, you have reached the end of your 30-Day Growth Mindset challenge. To achieve this, you used your body, mind, and spirit. A growth mindset is aligned with your ideas and plans for the journey you plan to walk to success.
Consistent daily practice helps create an empowered mindset and that’s what you need to achieve what you want. You can continue living with a fixed mindset, but it’s going to leave you stuck where you are. Aren’t you better than that? You don’t have to be where you are if it isn’t where you want to be.
With a growth mindset you can be anywhere you can imagine.
So, where do you imagine yourself?
What are you going to do to make sure you get there? You’ve already built a strong foundation by undertaking this 30-Day challenge to set your growth mindset.
