Change Your Life In 30 Days: How To Go On

This article is part of the series on How To Change Your Life In 30 Days.

After your 30 days are over, you eventually have to decide how to go on. Will you stick with your new habit, will you drop it, or do you feel that you need some more time to evaluate?

There are only these tree possibilities, and you have to chose one of it, period.

I assume that you made it through the whole 30 days, and if nothing major happens, you should stick to your plan no matter what. But please feel free to drop it if your circumstances change in a way that makes it impossible or unwise to continue, as if you are heading towards a catastrophe if you continue.

How to evaluate your results

Assuming that your goal was to improve a part of your life during the 30 days, the best way to decide how to go on is to compare your results throughout the past 30 days to those before. Maybe you want to rate different aspects of your life before you start, and throughout the trial period, to have some objective data available. Or you simply go with your instinct to decide whether to stick with it or go back to where you started.

Of course there are many other ways to evaluate your data. Some people prefer to keep some kind of journal or diary to keep track of their trial, while others go without record keeping at all.

How to decide

As a general rule of thumb: If you improved, then stick with it. If not, ge back and maybe try something else. If you can’t decide, try a little longer.

However, there might be circumstances where you decide against your results.

The year before last, I went vegan for 30 days. Although I was satisfied with the overall results and saw them as an improvement, I decided not to go on with it. So after he 30 days, I gladly went back to the vegetarian diet I was on before - although I kept some vegan foods that I got to know and liked.

So don’t feel ashamed if you don’t go with it. That’s exactly the point with trials: You are free to do whatever you want after 30 days.

Ideally, your decision should be fairly easy, but if it is not, then I strongly suggest that you go on and try a little longer. A common pattern is to go for another 30 days and reevaluate again afterwards. But go with it for as long as you feel you should: I have heard of trials that went on for years - and why not? Nobody says that you have to commit to anything for your whole life if you don’t feel comfortable with it.

If you have additional ideas on how to evaluate your results, have a hard time with it, or want to share your own story to inspire others, please use the comment form or send me a private message using my contact form.

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