Nearly everyone I’ve spoken to the past few months is struggling with the same question: What am I doing with my life?
But the mental spiral doesn’t stop there. Why do I feel so stuck? they wonder. I have a good job, so why aren’t I grateful? Why can’t I just be content like everybody else? What is wrong with me?
If these questions are pulling at you too, then: Congratulations. You are a normal, healthy human being who made it through a year and a half of a global pandemic. It’s only natural now for life’s big questions to come knocking at your door.
Once you come to peace with that, you can start asking yourself a more useful question: What steps can I take to actually find my next chapter?
The 30-Day Challenge will help you do just that.
For the past ten years, I’ve been studying the mindset of success. I’ve interviewed the world’s most successful leaders, from Bill Gates and Lady Gaga to Jane Goodall, Maya Angelou, Larry King, Jessica Alba, Steve Wozniak, and Quincy Jones, and have been turning their insights into simple tools people can use to grow and rediscover what makes them come alive.
The 30-Day Challenge has become particularly popular. The goal of the exercise is not to give you an exact map for your career. It’s natural to want a perfectly laid-out plan for your life, but that’s not realistic. What is realistic is a tool to help you cultivate clarity and dig up clues to point you in the right direction. Think of the 30-Day Challenge as honing your compass.
This is how it works.
The best way to think of the 30-Day Challenge is like daily cardio. Some days will feel fun, some will feel repetitive. Some days will be energizing, some will feel pointless. The key to its success is consistency. f you stop after a week because you feel “it’s not working,” that’s like quitting the gym after a week because you don’t look like a bodybuilder yet. The results come from repetition.
Many of us were raised in environments that applauded us for chasing to-do lists and achievements, and we were never shown how to hone our muscles of listening to our inner-voice and cultivating awareness of what makes us come alive. Just like biceps and triceps, these abilities can be strengthened with the right daily regimen.
I’ve tested the 30-Day Challenge on professionals from Nike, Mastercard, Disney, and Google, and with entrepreneurs in India, Nigeria, Australia, and Japan. I’ve witnessed transformations that span the spectrum. A legal supervisor in Baltimore had a life-changing epiphany that shot her off in a career as sculpture artist. A Google software developer found a renewed sense of energy and purpose, helping him determine he wanted to stay at the company but transition to another team. An entrepreneur from Amsterdam realized she craved more structure and is now a global director at a company with 50,000 employees. Some professionals have gotten so much out of the exercise that they’ve done it six or seven times.
The 30-Day Challenge is powerful if people do it on their own, but it’s even more impactful when people do it with two or three friends to hold themselves accountable.
If there’s something whispering within you wanting to try this, give it a shot. Everyone’s takeaways will be different, but what is guaranteed is that you will know yourself better a month from now that you do today — and your path will be clearer.
There’s no greater gift you can give yourself for this new year.
Originally published in Entrepreneur Magazine.
Alex Banayan has been featured in major media including Fortune, Businessweek, Bloomberg TV, Fox News and CBS News. An acclaimed keynote speaker, Banayan has presented the Third Door framework to Apple, Nike, IBM, Dell, MTV, Harvard and countless others.