7 Day Challenge

7 days can change your life.

By set­ting small­er goals, you can see progress, as well as make changes and course cor­rec­tions to have the great­est impact on your life. In sev­en days, you will be well on your way to mak­ing your new goal a habit. The 7 Day Chal­lenge encour­ages you to keep mov­ing the goal­post for­ward. Some­times, longer goals might be dif­fi­cult to main­tain for­ward momen­tum. Com­pared to a year, one week is a cake­walk. What I love the most about my 7 Day Chal­lenge is that I can pick a new goal every sev­en days. Or, I can take a break to reflect and regroup before start­ing a new 7 Day Challenge.

*At the bot­tom of this post is a link to some free pup­py images you can use to par­tic­i­pate in this draw­ing challenge!

My first 7 Day Challenge

It was not my inten­tion to start set­ting these small 7 day goals. I was one of those New Year’s Rev­o­lu­tion peo­ple. After a week or two, my res­o­lu­tion would be for­got­ten until the fol­low­ing year. I knew, how­ev­er, that I had been pro­cras­ti­nat­ing about updat­ing my web­site and pub­lish­ing my nov­el and had not giv­en myself a dead­line. I set (and met) a goal to pub­lish the nov­el over the Christ­mas hol­i­days. After­wards, I won­dered why I had wait­ed so long. I reflect­ed on how I had let myself get in my own way. Then, I decid­ed to set a new goal.

My web­site had­n’t been touched in about year. It was time to change that. Using the momen­tum from pub­lish­ing my book, I start­ed opti­miz­ing and mod­ern­iz­ing the web­site. Over sev­er­al days, I had a prod­uct, that while not per­fect, was much nicer than it had been. I was hap­py enough with it to turn my atten­tion to writ­ing blog posts. That’s when it happened!

I whole­heart­ed­ly believe inten­tion opens door. When you set your mind to a course of action, and most impor­tant­ly, take the first step, doors open. I can­not tell you how many times this has proven true for me, from jobs to my trip to China.

Overachievers Anonymous

Once I set my mind on post­ing reg­u­lar­ly, one of the Face­book groups start­ed a 7 Day Writ­ing Chal­lenge. I joined right away. That was my sign. I was on my path, but it was­n’t enough. I was so excit­ed to start, I could­n’t wait until the chal­lenge offi­cial­ly start­ed. I began writ­ing like crazy, count­ing the days. It was no longer this over­whelm­ing idea that was too big to start.

I start­ed think­ing about what was next. If I could fit reg­u­lar blog­ging into my sched­ule and still have time left. (Here’s where I should add that I am nev­er idle. I spend lots of time per­fect­ing great lessons and ana­lyz­ing data to death. I have to stay busy. So, it is real­ly a real­lo­ca­tion of time. Which is some­thing you may need to do if you feel like there just isn’t enough time in the day.) Part of my time would be spent prac­tic­ing art. Art is my pas­sion, but I have put it on the back-burner.

My 2nd Simultaneous 7 Day Challenge

I am also a mem­ber of a pen­cil draw­ing Face­book group. Many of the mem­bers draw ani­mals, par­tic­u­lar­ly peo­ple’s pets. I want­ed to chal­lenge myself to draw a pic­ture using this sub­ject mat­ter. Some­one I worked with was glad to be my first vol­un­teer. I com­plet­ed my first pet draw­ing overnight. The next morn­ing, I wrote a blog post about it. There was a tremen­dous amount of pos­i­tive feed­back about the work and requests from oth­ers to draw their dogs.

Here is my first drawing:

That night, I forced myself to try again. Was this a one-off? Not feel­ing very inspired, I drew anoth­er co-work­er’s dog. I could feel my artist mus­cle­’s warm­ing up. Intu­ition was tak­ing over. Find­ing the flow (that sense of being out­side your­self when extreme­ly focused on a mean­ing­ful task), I felt con­nect­ed to the uni­verse. It was like run­ning into an old friend unexpectedly.

The next morn­ing, I decid­ed to turn my draw­ing into a new chal­lenge. The 7 Day Chal­lenge for Artists was born right then.

The 7 Day Challenge for Artists

With two days already under my belt, I would cre­ate my own 7 Day Chal­lenge. It would be called “7 Dogs in 7 Days.” My very short-term goal was to draw a dog a day, accom­pa­nied by a new blog post. I could not start the next pic­ture until the blog post was writ­ten. Each post would focus on new insights, new draw­ing strate­gies, or wher­ev­er the jour­ney led me. At the end of the 7 days, I will spend a day (or two) in reflec­tion and prepa­ra­tion for the next challenge.

My expec­ta­tion is that I will get to know myself bet­ter. I will devel­op grit as I push through 7 days of extreme focus on a spe­cif­ic goal. Whether I get bet­ter or worse (which may hap­pen), my resilience will grow.

As an added ben­e­fit, I have shared my plan with oth­ers and encour­aged them to start on their own 7 Day Chal­lenge. We have a group that will encour­age one anoth­er to improve (to move the bar) at our cho­sen tasks. Hon­est­ly, the task is less rel­e­vant than the act of set­ting goals and achiev­ing them. It’s won­der­ful that each per­son can have a dif­fer­ent goal and still work togeth­er. After all, it’s just for 7 days.

Here is my sec­ond drawing:

Join the 7 Day Challenge. It’s Free!

The best part of the chal­lenge is you can start today. Whether you are at the begin­ning or end of your chal­lenge, we can encour­age each oth­er to con­tin­ue mov­ing for­ward. If you are inter­est­ed in fol­low­ing along, or bet­ter yet, join­ing the 7 Day Chal­lenge, send me an email. Tell me what you goal you are set­ting for your first chal­lenge. We can help keep each oth­er accountable!

Or, if you have advice on what my next draw­ing chal­lenge should be, I would love to hear from you. I have spent much of my time draw­ing and paint­ing land­scapes. I have also done some fig­ure draw­ing, but I am open to almost anything!

Here is the link I promised you!

Please share your cre­ations. I’d love to see them.

As always, fair winds and fol­low­ing seas!

-Elyza