10 Day Challenge to Win Will Power and Self-Discipline

Life skills like self-discipline, will power and delay gratification are fundamental but hard skills to develop.

The following 30 days challenge will boost your skills and allow you to develop them a little bit more everyday during 1 month. The idea after you finish this challenge is that you keep practicing your skills to turn them into habits.

1. If it takes less than 5 min. Do it immediately.

Examples: cleaning a tiny spill, throwing the garbage, writing a quick thank you email. Whatever you have been delaying and it can be done quickly. (less than 5 min).

2. No snooze button. Wake up with your alarm the first time. Repeat for the whole month. Practice the 5 second rule by Mel Robins, get a smart alarm that requires you to make a math calculation or solve a puzzle in order to stop it, or if you are wild, keep a glass of water in your night stand and throw a little bit in your face when the alarm sounds.

3. Plan your day and follow through. Start planning between 1 or 3 important activities that you should and would do that will get you closer to your goals. And most importantly, follow through. Be committed and keep your word with yourself.

4. Stop doing something you really like and enjoy but it is not necessarily healthy or useful for your life. Use it as a reward when you do something right. The idea is that you don't have to quit to all the little but guilty pleasures, you just need to moderate them enough so they don't take control of your life.

Examples: Watching tv, social media, sugar, etc.

I personally have a guilty pleasure to watch prank videos on yourtube. If I don't moderate myself I could spend hours watching Qpark videos or the daily dropout on youtube.

I watch a video as a reward when I succesfully did what I was supposed to.

5. Get a social media/ screen time diet: Start limiting your social media time to 15-20 minutes per day or less. The less the better, limit your screen time to what you feel comfortable with, as long as is used either with a good purpose or with moderation.

A good tip for this is to get a screen time app to track your screen time, and use the downtime feature that comes with it. This feature allows you to block the apps that you choose in a time frame of your election. 

If this doesn't work, consider disabling/uninstalling them from your mobile and install them again when you want to use them. It really works.

6. Start the habit of pushing yourself the "extra" mile.

Try to get one more push up, 5 more minutes of reading or studying, success is the result of tiny progress made consistently.

7. Connect with yourself. Practice silence. It will help you to get clarity and to focus a lot better during your day.

It will also help you to connect and identify your emotions, it allows you to develop self-management.

8. Become uncomfortable. Expose yourself to situations that would normally make you uncomfortable, it will help you to build "shame-resilience" and confidence.

There is a challenge called 100 days rejection therapy by Jia Jiang .

Jiang exposed himself to rejections during  100 days in order to develop more resilience to rejection.

The result was a book, a blog and an amazing strategy.

There is another challenge called 75 HARD by Andy Frisella. It is meant to help people to gain grit. 

9. Think in your goals in terms of habits. What habits do you need to acquire in order to get where you want to be.

10. Start a journal, so you can be aware of your progress.

Success does not happen overnight, it is more a slow change and progression. Sometimes in the day to day life you can barely notice a difference, because the changes are small. If you start a journal, this will allow you to recognize and celebrate your progress, so you can be even more committed when seeing your results.