300-Day Challenge
300 Days
My personal challenge to become more resilient in life and business.
Summer 2017 I got stuck in limbo: A couple of bags to my name, my address at a friend’s house, having completed most of my client contracts, my office in a backpack ...no tangible commitment other than a phone plan in Canada while I was living in Switzerland.
It felt like I was floating.. and not in a good way. I craved freedom, and what I got was a cage made of indecision.
I toyed with the idea of quitting my business altogether and getting a ‘real job’. I had been in business almost two years. I had squeezed the last drop out of my referrals, I needed to broaden my horizon and ‘get out there’ - which sounded daunting. Especially since I didn’t really like the traffic I was getting; the quick & dirty projects for cheap that populate the interwebs.
A few days before my ticket back to Vancouver would have expired, I realized that I'd regret it if I didn't at least try to make my biz work. I knew I hadn’t given it my all yet. I’d done a lot, but I hadn’t given it everything I had. So I committed to one more year with my business.
A couple of weeks later, the 300 Day Challenge was born.
I needed a boost, something to propel me forward, and the 10 or 30 day challenges that were populating my newsfeed seemed so flimsy and easily forgotten. I wanted something with substance, something sustainable, something that would have a real impact.
At first, the challenge was about making my business profitable. But it’s so much more now. I could NEVER have predicted how it would change my whole life. Which is why I thought I’d finally share it with you - on day #150 of 300. I’m still iterating it, experimenting, exploring with different bits, but the core has stayed the same.
My challenge is a set of daily habits broken up into 4 ‘themes’: Body, Mind, Work, and -my favourite- GRIT.
Habit List
BODY
Roll out my mat (anything goes)
30 mins of physical activity
Eat clean (dietary needs + no sugar/additives)
MIND
Meditation (can be as short as 3 mins)
Intention (word & mantra for the day)
Manifestation (still feeling like I’m ‘faking’ it.)
Read smart (at least one sentence that is not pure entertainment)
Make music (mine is piano)
FUN!
Gratitude journal
WORK
Money making activities (marketing, biz building)
Connect with someone new
Follow up with someone old
Money minutes (min 5 minutes with my finances)
GRIT (i.e. boundaries)
Be visible
Ask anyways
Say no
Do an unwanted task
Squirm (be embarrassed for a minute or more)
Win journal (and weekly review of fav win of each day)
I track them in a Moleskine Pro notebook and the app Habit List.
I could tell you a million things that have come from doing these habits every day.
...They gave me trust in myself to stick things through, to do it anyways.
...Committing to something big means I stop having to make decisions - and that clears up so much headspace.
...I don’t get bogged down by fear when it comes to my finances, which lets me make powerful decisions.
..My body feels strong and ready for anything.
...I realized that resilience is the antidote to discomfort; it is the pathway to the thing that we really want.
...Having to squirm every day takes the significance out of the little hiccups.
...Being visible makes me experiment more and quit perfecting every word - and it gives me confidence.
...Being with discomfort every day means I can stay there longer and not try and fix things right away.. and that leads to infinite creativity that I never had access to before.
GRIT is what really surprised me. Especially as a woman, people pleasing is such an easy go to - this challenge has made my boundaries crystal clear, and if I need to assert them, I have learned to be with discomfort.
But most of all, my 300 Days showed me that commitment is freedom. Not the other way around.
**Edit summer 2021: This ‘Challenge’ has long since changed into a ‘Practice’. I’m in my 5th cycle of 300 days now, some habits have changed, some stayed the same. I track everything in Notion now.
