The Four Week Challenge

Have you ever said to yourself “I know I should make x change in my life, but I just don’t have the time.” Or maybe it’s that the timing “wasn’t right.” Or maybe it was because you didn’t “know what kind of commitment was going to be involved.”

Or, maybe, you were delaying what you inevitably knew you should be doing for any number of reasons from fear of failure to it legitimately being difficult, or, *gasp* because you were just too lazy.

The reality is that you made a decision to deny yourself something you truly want. (or think you want)

This is where the MensImprovement.com Four Week Challenge comes in.

What is The Four Week Challenge

The Four Week Challenge is a commitment to try something for just four weeks. During that time, whatever the challenge you set forth for yourself, be it to quit smoking, to use your planner daily, to spend an extra hour a day with your family, to stick to a certain diet or workout schedule, etc, you commit 100% to that effort and/or goal.

Why is The Four Week Challenge Needed?

Too often, we absorb and get wrapped up in the simple mind games we play with ourselves. Instead of focusing on the fruits of our labor or results of our goals, we end up focusing on the difficulty of the task at hand. This simple difference in perspective is almost always the reason why we do not do, or put of doing, something we wish to achieve.

The Four Week Challenge is geared to assist you in giving yourself another, more positive, less threatening perspective to focus on, thus making it easier to begin moving forward and gaining momentum toward your goals.

Why Four Weeks?

You may have heard that it takes 21 days to form a new habit. Have you heard that it takes 10-21 days? What about 28 days? Do you know where any of these numbers come from?

The number is actually 21 days and comes from research by Dr. Maxwell Maltz. First published in 1971 in his book Psycho Cybernetics, he saw a pattern in the amount of time it took before amputees would stop feeling phantom sensations in their amputated limbs. Since then, 21 days to habit formation has become standard language and is very often presented in conjunction with habit creation and cessation.

Without getting into the debate of the science of habit formation, four weeks ultimately is an amount of time that is more conducive to creating habits, is an amount of time that can be easily and flexibly introduced into a new schedule, and is enough of a commitment to, in the end, make an educated decision based on experience of how to continue toward your goal.

Best Utilizing Your Four Week Challenges

Ultimately, four weeks becomes enough to prevent someone from saying to you “Well, have you ever tried it?” Also, for your own gratification, there really is nothing more believable and understandable than your own experience.

At the end of the four weeks, you will know with certainty how you wish to move forward toward that goal. You may also decide that your desire has changed and no longer pursue that goal or lifestyle. Or perhaps you find that the benefits were orders of magnitude greater than you could have imagined and decide to pursue this change even further.

Either way, you will have gained true experience-based knowledge toward improving yourself.

MensImprovement.com 4 Week Challenges

The challenges on MensImprovement.com are here for you to decide how you wish to use them.

You may not have fully commited to one of the challenges on this site and wish to read the commentary and insight before deciding to pursue your own similar challenge. Perhaps these challenges are both timely and relevant in your life and you wish to commit to them alongside me and go through the experience together.

Either way, these Four Week Challenges are here for you to learn from. To take the principles and practices and decide how to best apply them to your life.

How they’re done here is only one way to implement these changes and your questions and feedback will only help you, me, and others reading this website to improve our lives. I encourage you to participate and share your experiences with myself and others so that we may all benefit from the level of knowledge that can only be gained through experience.

Four weeks. 28 days. It’s easy.

Right?

Posted on: June 11, 2007
Category: Uncategorized |

Comments

One Response to “The Four Week Challenge”

  1. Andy Beal on June 24th, 2007 7:44 pm

    Ben, I think you’ve found your calling. I don’t think I’ve ever read anything from you that seems as natural and flowing as this blog - and you’ve written some great stuff!

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