How To Create Your Own Wellness Challenge

The holiday season will be here soon. If you are like me you need a little extra motivation to stay on top of your wellness habits. That is why I love challenges and programs so much. Here we get to explore just how to create your own wellness challenge that suits you best!

A wellness challenge gives you the consistency you need with a little extra excitement (especially if you are competitive). I decided to start making my own. Now you may be thinking that that sounds a little daunting. I’m here to show you that creating your own wellness challenge is not difficult at all.

Why Create Your Own Wellness Challenge

The problem I find with most wellness challenges is that it feels incomplete in some way to me. Whether it doesn’t focus enough on one thing, or too much on another, or seems too advanced, there is always something I end up adjusting.

I’m going to take you through my process today. If you follow it, by the end of this article you’ll have made your own wellness challenge. If you are still not convinced, here are some benefits to creating your own wellness challenge.

• You are in complete control: If something isn’t working out, just change it. You can do this without getting lost or feeling defeated because you make all the decisions here.
• You can tailor it to your fitness level: Most challenges have a baseline of being too easy or too challenging. By creating your own you don’t have to guess what modifications you need and you’ll be challenged to your level. 
• Higher chances of completing it: Since you put a lot of effort into planning this wellness challenge you are more likely to stick it out. You don’t want all that planning and work to be for nothing.
• It’s fun: This could just be my perspective, but I think creating challenges is fun. You can have it centered around a theme, your favorite form of exercise, and plan fun rewards. Your wellness challenge can be as simple or as creative as you want it to be.

Have I convinced you yet? If so, let’s get planning.

What You Need To Create Your Own Wellness Challenge

You honestly don’t need much to create your wellness challenge. The main thing is just having a place to brainstorm ideas (like a notebook or your Notes app) and a way to organize your challenge (are you writing it all down, creating graphics and trackers, etc?).

I like using Canva to organize the challenges I create. If I make multiple designs I can create a folder to house them all in the same spot. Google Drive is another great tool if you like using Google Docs and the Sheets applications. Everything else you sort of grab along the way once you have a direction for your challenge.

How To Create Your Own Wellness Challenge

Now that you’ve got what you need it’s time to get started on creating your very own wellness challenge. Take each section step by step to follow along with my process if you are ready. If not, read through it and save this post for when you start creating your challenge. Are you ready? Here we go.

1) Gather Inspiration

The first step in this journey is to gather inspiration. This is especially important if you’ve never done a wellness challenge before. Some great places to look for inspiration are apps like Pinterest, YouTube, and TikTok. The web will also have sites of bloggers, influencers, trainers, etc. creating their own challenges. While doing the research phase here are some questions you want to ask yourself.

• What challenges do I feel drawn to?
• What formats do I like (a bingo board, points system, daily tasks, etc.)?
• How much planning do I want to take on?
• Are there certain aspects of the challenges I’m seeing that I want to add to the challenge I create?

2) Brain Dump

Next up we are going to be doing a brain dump. Get a piece of paper or open your Notes app and think about all you learned during the research phase. Your brain dump doesn’t even have to make sense. It’s simply a way to start formulating ideas.

You can write down the types of challenges you like, possible themes, areas of focus you want to add, anything that comes to your mind. Once you’ve finished, review what you wrote and pay attention to the ideas that get you the most excited.

3) Get Clear On Your Goals

Now you need to set your brain dump aside and spend some time focusing on your WHY. Getting clear on why you want to not just participate in a wellness challenge, but create your own, and the goals you want to focus on.

By doing this it will help you figure out how to format your challenge. By the end of this step you should have a good idea of how you want to move forward with your challenge and what it will focus on. 

4) Start Formatting The Challenge

It’s time to get deep into the planning process. In this step you are deciding the format of your challenge. Do you want to gamify it, or focus more on tasks? How long will the challenge be? What areas will it focus on? Get clear on the details and get to work. Here are some examples to get you thinking about the format.

• A bingo style 30 day challenge about self care
• A calendar challenge with a specific wellness activity you complete each day
• A 90 day fitness challenge where the exercises get more difficult/has more reps over time
• A points based challenge based on certain daily, weekly, and monthly tasks

5) Name The Wellness Challenge You Are Creating

Let’s take a creative based break on all the details and figure out what to call this challenge of yours. Holiday Challenge is fine, but I think you can get more creative than that.

If you are having a hard time deciding you can always turn to Google, Pinterest, or Chat GPT for inspiration. A trick that I use to come up with a title is to do a mini brain dump.

I use two to three categories and come up with as many words as I can that relate to each topic. Then I spend time testing out different combinations to see if I can come up with something fun.

6) Set The Rules

Now it’s time for the not so fun things. Every challenge needs rules or parameters to keep you focused and set you up for success. These rules don’t need to be strict or numerous. You can literally have one rule or multiple, whatever you think is best.

Some examples of rules/parameters can be the length of the challenge, how many workouts you have to complete, what habits you focus on, etc.. Consider the format of your challenge and the rules will practically write themselves.

7) Decide The Reward(s)

While you can do a wellness challenge just for the fun of it, it’s a lot more enjoyable, and motivating, if you get rewarded. Think about what your reward for completing your challenge will be.

A key reminder is to not let it be something that is counter-productive to what you were working hard for. For example, your reward for completing a wellness challenge focused on weight loss wouldn’t be going to a big restaurant full of temptation. A better reward could be a new outfit or a spa day.

8) Set The Date While Creating Your Own Wellness Challenge

You’ve planned just about everything. The only step left in the planning process is to decide when the challenge begins and ends. Think about when you’d have the most success with your wellness challenge.

If it’s a month-long challenge and you travel a lot visiting family in December, I would plan for it to be set in November instead. Don’t make it harder on yourself if you can help it.

9) Review & Revise

The planning process is complete! You’ve done a lot of work for this wellness challenge and should be feeling excited right about now. Before you lock it all in, do a review of the plan you have created. See if anything needs to be tweaked or changed. Once you are satisfied, it’s time for the final touches.

10) Create Media/Trackers

This next step isn’t mandatory, but it can definitely be helpful. If you are doing something like a bingo or calendar challenge it may be helpful to create your bingo board or calendar and print it out. Being able to physically see your challenge will keep you motivated.

Similarly, if your challenge is based on habits, a habit tracker would be good to create too. There may be templates available for you to download or buy if you don’t want to create your own resources. The choice is up to you.

11) Decide If This Is A Solo Challenge Or If You’ll Share It

Will you be doing this challenge solo or with others? It could be fun and a great form of accountability if you do it with others, but alone is a great option too. If you do decide to share it with others make sure you give them plenty of notice so they can decide if they want to do it and get prepared.

12) Get Prepared

Speaking of getting prepared, that is your next step. Make sure you have everything you need to start your wellness challenge off strong. Get good sleep the night before so that you can wake up ready to conquer this challenge. 

13) Challenge Time

All the hard work you put in planning your wellness challenge has paid off. It’s time to get started and see it through. Even if you are doing it by yourself, make sure to tell your support team about it. They’ll not only cheer you on, but may also keep you accountable. 

14) Reflect On How It Went

Your challenge has come and gone. Now it’s time to reflect. No matter how you did, it’s important to take time to think of everything that happened during your challenge. What were the wins and the losses, what did you learn about yourself, what did you enjoy, what would you change?

These are the questions you want to ask yourself. If you did the challenge with others I would ask them to give you some feedback as well. Then decide if creating another challenge is in your future, or if this was a one time thing.

Final Thoughts On Creating Your Own Wellness Challenge

How fun was that? I hope you enjoyed this process and love the wellness challenge you created. I’d love to know what your challenge consists of. Describe it down below, or, if you share it on social media, feel free to tag/send it to me. 

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