What Would You Like To See For November’s Challenge?
Last year, after 2 years of sharing my best content on PE, I decide it was time to weed out self-help junkie-ism. I started Live a Better Life in 30 Days (30DLBL) in Sep ’10, to get us working on our growth together. 30DLBL was a phenomenal success, with over 1,200 official participants taking part, and many more taking part passively.
After Sep ’10 30DLBL, many of you wanted to do another round of 30DLBL. That led us to Dec 30DLBL, to round off the year of 2010. We had an amazing private run and an excellent close-off to the beautiful year of 2010.
In Jan ’11, I kicked off Live a Healthier Life in 21 Days (21DHL), since it was the start of a brand new year, when diet and fitness resolutions were fresh in our minds. It was a tremendous challenge – many of us transformed our diets and rolled out brand-new fitness regimes in the 3 weeks, and had the results to show for that – be it a thinner waistline, improved complexion or fitter body.
One of our participants, xina, was inspired to try out a high raw diet after seeing the raw meal pictures posted by other participants (Glenn, myself, among others) and permanently switched to said diet after experiencing the benefits during the 21 day challenge.
In Mar ’11, a good number of you in Million Dollar Challenge mentioned wanting to use blogging a platform to power your businesses. As such, I created the 4-week Blogging Intensive Bootcamp (BIB) – where participants were inducted on the in’s and out’s of blogging, and learned key strategies on how to jumpstart your way to blogging success. Many of you had your blogs dramatically transformed in the short few weeks. One of our participants, Christine, even had her blog nominated as one of the Top 10 Lifestyle Blogs in a regional blog awards organized by a media company in Singapore post-BIB!
In Aug ’11, following the amazing success of 30DLBL, I created Be a Better Me in 30 Days (30BBM), where we work on building our character – from weeding out negative traits to instilling positive attributes, so we become our ideal self. As benign as that sounds, those who followed through the challenge to a tee received huge breakthroughs, and evolved into a new us at the end of the 30 days.
And last month, you told me you’d like to see a meditation challenge, because you’re interested to cultivate this wonderful, character building habit. You spoke, and I listened. 21-Day Meditation Challenge kicked off to a roaring start on Oct 8, and is running now as we speak. It sure looks like the challenge has created an army of spiritual gurus, with each participant becoming more and more in-tune with him/herself with each passing day of meditation!
Today, I’d like to hear from you. It’s just 10 days away from November now, and I’m open to having a November challenge if there are enough people interested! So, here goes:
Is there anyone interested in a November challenge? If so, what would you like to see / work on during the November challenge? Share with me/us – I’m all ears!!
It doesn’t have to be complicated – it can be something simple like cultivating a habit (meditation, exercising, waking up early, sleeping X hours, etc), or it can be working on a common goal (losing weight, building muscle, eating healthily, improving your relationship with your mom/dad/sister/brother/friends/etc, improving your performance at work, and so on).
For November’s challenge (if we’re proceeding with it), I don’t foresee it being anywhere intense like 30DLBL, complete with different daily tasks and all, as that’s the largest scale challenge there can ever be at PE (and subsequently, a challenge reserved as a mid-year / year-end review). Rather, I see the November challenge (and ongoing challenges) to be synchronous with our daily life/goals, to be integrated into our day-to-day actions. Think 21DMC where we cultivate 1 common habit for 21 days, not 30DLBL where we have 1 different, intense task every day.
With that said, please post your suggestions away! All feedback and suggestions are very much welcome. And who knows – it might well be the theme for our next challenge! Even if that doesn’t happen, I may reserve it for challenges next time. Look forward to hearing from you! 
Update Oct 21 ’11: All of you are giving some really amazing suggestions – please keep them coming!! Please try to give as much details as possible – or even specific examples if you already have a clear idea in mind of what you’d like to see. The more you share, the easier it is for me to understand your needs.
Just to clarify that the challenge ideas should be related to personal development in one way or another, for them to be considered. For example, a challenge on *writing* / improving writing skills specifically would probably not be too relevant to PE, but a challenge on cultivating writing *as a habit* would definitely fit. Same for a course on blogging, or drawing, or dancing, and so on.
Update Oct 24 ’11: Thank you so much for your wonderful responses! I’ve processed your feedback and narrowed down to 3 big ideas for the upcoming November challenge. Cast your vote here: November Challenge [Poll]
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Hi!! I am really interested in a new challenge!!! I am thinking of something like a running challenge!!
I would really love to take up running as a habit but I have never run before in my life so I would love to have a challenge like that.
Even if it is not straight away running it could be at the beginning just walking but we all have to until the end of the challenge to be able to run:)
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Hey Andria! A running/exercise challenge sounds like a great idea. I could do with some exercising myself now – haven’t had the opportunity to do real exercise with all my travels. I’ll shortlist this as one of the ideas to consider for November.
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I would like to see another fitness oriented challenge where you focus on getting us off our butts and active for at least a little bit everyday now that winter is coming and threatening to hole us up in our homes.
Also in the spirit of thanksgiving, maybe a gratefulness challenge where you challenge yourself to find some things in your day/life that you are grateful for and have days where you are challenged to “pay it forward” and give back to others in return.
Developing your professional worth challenge also maybe?
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I’m loving the meditation challenge! I’m feeling gung-ho for another one, and would be on board for anything that would help me cultivate a new habit. I have a number of things on my list that I want to start doing.
-writing every day
-watching what I eat
-exercising daily
-working on a new business idea
But, I’d be willing to try just about anything.
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I am all for some sort of fitness challenge too. Michelle’s comment is pretty much how I feel. Especially since it’s drawing closer to the silly season. A writing challenge would be good too, but it would clash with the big NaNoWriMo challenge that happens every November for writers. It is a good challenge just too intense IMO.
Can’t wait to try whatever you come up with
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I would love some kind of challenge to be more social. I tend to have a problem stepping out of my comfort zone and meeting more people. I think its important to have a support system of meaningful relationships and I really lack that.
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Nice suggestion Lola, I like that
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Hi Celestine I love your blog I am suggesting 30 days to leave your past behind and move forward with your life. I always feel that I can’t or haven’t made any progress because of the choices and decisions and subsequent consequences that have happened In my life. I’m having have a hard time moving forward and making any progress In my life now because I have so many regrets that have negatively Impacted my present and In some cases my future maybe this Is a challenge you can help me and others with!!
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I would like to be challenged to define my career and “ideal” job with the result being an action plan to move to a job/career/means of earning income that challenges and excites me. I have some half-baked ideas but I need the strategy and commitment to follow through to a successful outcom.
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Hey Charles! A challenge that’s career-oriented would be quite exciting, and would be sure to instill some very powerful changes in the participants. It’d be a much more rigorous challenge than say, cultivating 1 lifestyle habit though, so I’ll probably keep it in mind as an upcoming challenge in a few months’ time than for the November challenge.
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Hi Celes and all,
I would love you to guide those of us that cannot afford or don’t have the time to go to a retreat to do the 21 day water fasting challenge. Through you I managed 9 days but would love to do the whole 21 days and have your guidance and support from other members doing the challenge. What do you say?
Or I think a fitness challenge would be ace as well, maybe for the whole of November exercising each day with the goal in mind to get fitter and lose some weight and we can support eachother and give one another that extra motivation and by the end hopefully we would have formed it into a habit?
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Hey Imogen! I’m glad that you have such a keen interest in fasting – it seems that quite a number of readers have tried or experimented with fasting after seeing my fasting experiment and are seeing the positive effects for themselves!
As much as I endorse fasting as one of the highest form of healing though, a fasting challenge is something I will definitely not conduct at PE as it’s an area I do not have expertise in as an instructor/adviser. I have personal experience with fasting and I have no issues doing it myself, but running it as a challenge involves a much larger group of people and that’d also put me/PE indirectly responsible for the safety of everyone who participates in the fast due to the challenge – which is something I cannot afford, as everyone’s bodies and mental/physical/emotional states are different. I’m not capable of advising on any possible complications or symptoms that arise during each person’s fast since I’m not a medical expert or a fasting expert.
Hopefully that clarifies the situation for anyone who might be interested in a fasting challenge. Please feel free to throw any other challenge suggestions my way!
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Dear Celes,
I like the idea that we all pick ONE PROJECT/TASK that we want to work on:
-exercising everyday
-writing/journaling everyday
-meditating everyday
-daily positive self affirmations
-letting go of limiting beliefs
-practicing something that you want to do
-researching a new career
-learning a new skill
-cooking everday
OR
-dropping a bad habit for 30 days?
We don’t all have to work on the same things, but we should all report everyday, create an action plan together, take one action step each day and be accountable to each other.
Looking forward to it!
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Love this idea, AH888! Worth considering for November or a future challenge. Let me pen this down for future reference.
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I thought of another one – waking up early challenge!
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this resonates with me. just this morning, going to work, i was telling myself that i again was not able to get up early, as i slept late again last night (just surfing, though enjoying it actually). i said i’ll try again but start this monday.
when i was doing my masteral studies, i can get up at 4 and start writing, reading (wriding as my friend calls it)…and still feel refreshed. having worked in jakarta for six months, clockin in work from 7pm to 5 am, sleeping way past 8am, my body clock went out of whack, and i have not gotten back the early morning rhythm. so yes, i like this challenge….just hope i can stick to it!
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This is a great idea. I have no shortage of bad habits to give up or good things to put into my life. Biggest challenge would be in choosing something!
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Hi! I would like to suggest a “Write your micro-business plan” challenge.
1. Research a micro business to start.
2. Decide on the business to start.
3. Map out a plan for success.
I have an art business already. But thought I’d like to start an off-shoot micro business from it.
Thanks for your hard work in all you do!!
Warm regards,
Karen Fields
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Hi Celes!
I would absolutely love some kind of writing challenge. I know you don’t want to do anything large scale with daily tasks but if you could just throw out a theme every day, giving us something to write about, I think it could really work out well! The themes don’t even have to be complicated, anything as simple writing about favourite memories, defining a specific goal, something we learnt today, having a self reflection and etc.
I’m looking forward to the challenge in November!
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Hey Corey! Thanks a lot for your suggestion! I should probably have mentioned earlier that the challenges should be linked to personal development in one way or another – A challenge on *writing* / improving writing skills specifically would probably not be too relevant to PE, but a challenge on cultivating writing *as a habit* would definitely fit. Would the latter be something you might be interested in?
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Hi Corey & Celes,
I think a writing challenge would a great way of improving our self esteem, mastering daily tasks like organisation, building a culture of self development or another theme. We would set aside a time (X minutes daily) to prepare, do and reflect on every day and then report back to the group through the challenge forum.
Following a guided writing on a suitable topic would be immensely enriching because we would have the dynamic of a group which would be able to explore a topic from many different angles, cultures and perspectives. The number of words could be put in a frame of x, y or z depending on the tasks. To be successful we would need ground rules of opening, body and conclusion. I think this would be inspiring, influential on all of us and bring an unparalleled growth in a short period of time.
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Hey Bob! I’ve in mind a journaling challenge, where everyone would journal on a topic / question that I pose every day / every other day – a question that’s linked to self-improvement. (I’m thinking to use the 101 questions list as a starting point). This way, it’s in direct relevance to growth and gives everyone the opportunity to do some writing as well.
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Wow, the journaling challenge sounds fun!!!!!!!!
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I would like to see if there is a way to transcend more into a desirelessness but the paradox of it is that even this is a desire..desiring to be desireless…so what to do, how to do it not???
To finally reach that point of freedom, the reaching of no-mind, no-self and then be absorbed into this no-thingness where we can be in a state of that innate oneness…the oneness of who we truly are (not)
hope this doesn\t sound too much of a weird thing kind of a challenge. To sum it up free from duality that is constantly created by the mind. The consciousness that we are in this world and part of this world of form. Maybe others have any ideas on this.
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Hi Celeste -
Thank-you for your blog, and all the inspiring good you do.
How about 30 Days to finding the perfect person, place, and calling of your life!
Or 30 days to being more productive, disciplined, organized, and proactive.
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Hi Celes! I agree with what ah888 said. We all want to deal with different things in our life and I think it would be a great idea to have a month to deal with what we think we feel we must deal with at the moment. Personally, I wouldn’t want to be part of a water fasting or losing weight challenge as what I need is JUST the opposite. Of what I read there are various opinions and suggestions which sound great too but I’d prefer some variety to read on all our different experience and personal journeys. In my case I’d like to establish habits to:
Be more social
Be myself
Write each day
Deal with my past and move on
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Hi Celes,
I am also looking to a fitness challenge or developing a good habit or kicking a bad one. or Maybe just working on one small project identified during DLBL.
Just wanted to say thank you again for that 30DLBL back in Sept10. Following that challenge really helped a lot. I still have this 5 year goal and i’m currently working on for the 1 year goal for 2011 aligned with that big 5 year goal.
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