75 soft personal challenge/reset 2025

[MessyNDepressy]

I’m not sure if anyone else has heard of 75 soft/medium/hard online where you set yourself goals to complete over the next 75 days. Many are related to weight loss/healthy eating/fitness etc but I’ve decided to do this starting next week and make it more personal to me. I’ve struggled with poor mental health this year and as much as I’m in a better place now, I still haven’t got a good routine/habits in place. My goals probably come really naturally to most people but they don’t currently for me. I thought if other people were interested then we could check in everyday and try and hold each other accountable and keep each other on track as much as possible. My goals:

• up at 7:30am every day
• asleep by 11pm
• drink one cup of water per day (fake Stanley type cup)
• Eat three meals per day
• No phone in bed at night
• Read one chapter of a book a day
• Shower and moisturize everyday
• brush teeth and do skincare am and pm
• Be on time for work/DS school everyday
• Two walks per day

I haven’t fully decided whether to start on the 1st of January or the 6th when the holidays are over. I’m tempted to go for the 1st and not make anymore excuses!

Sorry I think you're setting yourself up to fail with those specific goals. When it's jan 18th and windy and rainy outside you won't be going for two walks a day and will be feeling bad for breaking your resolutions. Can you not make them more vague - ie instead of bed 1-pm- up 7.30am you could have 'aim for 8 hours of rest a day'

Also, gently, if one of your goals is to brush teeth AM and PM then I think your other goals are too ambitious. Sorry, I just don't think it's sustainable to read one chapter of a book every night, you'll stress yourself out more trying to stick to the rules. I couldn't face a chapter of a book every day after a stressful day at work.

Bed 11pm not 1pm - typo

Agree they are too ambitious. How about “move your body” rather than 2 walks / day? I have a list of daily habits I check off every day and almost never do all of them (but I don’t expect to). It helps but I know that I can’t do all of them every day. Good luck x

Goals should not be vague and flaky. It's too easy to find workarounds in your own head which eventually lead to broken resolutions.

For the walk one though, can you set like a minimum that means you've ticked the box and kept the habit streak when external forces are against you? So even if the weather is appalling, get your coat on twice a day and walk around the block/to the end of the road and back. Psychologically this reinforces the 'good habit' aspect of what you're trying to achieve, even if in terms of fitness or whatever it does very little.

You think it's sustainable to set bedtimes for the year ahead?

Why wouldn't it be? It's only 75 days anyway.

Good for you wanting to make changes OP. Best of luck!

@Sparklfairy because life happens? I couldn't commit myself to 11pm bedtime and 7.30am wake up for 75 days! I might be ill, might have an event, etc I just don't think it's realistic and it's setting op up for failure. We are humans, not robots. I'm all for making healthy changes but my point is that I would feel disheartened if I wasn't able to stick to them. Might be better to have more realistic expectations.

It's a great idea. I think it's very ambitious. Having been there myself, I would start off a bit more gently. How about up by 7.30, shower and teeth brushed and in bed by 11 pm to start with. Once you've got that established, then build up the other things.

Having a set bed time is great as it will help you get proper rest which is so important for your MH and all the other things you want to do.

I managed by establishing out of and into bed routines. So up at 7.30 - look at associated things to add in, washing, skin care and dressing. In bed for 11 pm - what needs to happen for that? Bed time routine is about an hour and a half for me - tidy kitchen, turn off lights, go upstairs, help cared for to bed, bathroom, check next day's events and sort clothes, undress and PJs, sleep hygiene prep, into bed, bit of reading, light off.

You're doing really well, just be careful not to do to much in one go. I found establishing one habit, then adding in one more at a time was much more achievable. It gave me a real sense of accomplishment and confidence to keep moving forwards.

Do you have commitment issues or something? It's a really strange approach. When you start a new job, you 'commit' to going to work 9-5, Mon-Fri for the foreseeable. Yes, there might be traffic, you might get ill, or you might be run over by a bus, but the commitment is there. That means that you take the obstacles as they come and adjust your approach to do your best to maintain that commitment, rather than just not take the job because 'omg I can't possibly commit to that because of random shit that may or may not happen'.

That's all this challenge is asking you to do. Because if you don't set a commitment to get up at 7.30 every single day, chances are you won't do it any day. The whole point is to challenge yourself to push yourself out of that state of inertia and achieve getting up early even if you don't always feel like it. If you genuinely 'can't' because you really did get hit by a bus and are in a coma, then that's not a failure, but the successes are the days when it's cold and dark outside or you feel depressed and miserable and you get up anyway.

75 is a lot. That’s more than one new goal a week. There is a thread some where of 25 goals for 2025. That’s more achievable.

@MessyNDepressy I did 75 hard a few years ago and would be up for it. The only one that I really disliked was the daily photo so I did weekly instead. I also changed the two 45 minute workouts (one outside) to two workouts, so could be Pilates and a walk or dance and weights etc. I don’t always want to read a self help or educational book so any book is better than nothing imo! See also any amount of water rather than a gallon!

My tweaked version is

• Two workouts.
• Adhering to a diet. Mine will be OMAD.
• Reading 10 pages of any book.
• Drinking more water.
• weekly progress photos.

Do this if you like, but do it in spring. Mid-winter is a crap time to make changes.

I disagree that winter is crap time, it's the perfect time because there's often nothing better to do. Also in Jan other people have the same healthy living goals/ veganury/ dry Jan etc.

I like the 75 hard/ soft challenge, there's lots of groups on FB that do it.

@Berga for some people mid winter is a crap time to make changes but for others it’s the perfect time.

I think it’s in 75 days rather than 75 goals?

Oh. I misunderstood, so you choose a number of goals and only do them 75 days? Then what happens? Do you stop them?

The idea is that the 'muscle memory' of a habit has now formed and you now do this beneficial thing automatically I think, part of your routine without it being a mental effort. Or alternatively you didn't reap whatever benefit you expected and then drop it I suppose.

That’s interesting but I thought the research says depending in the person, how many habbits you’re trying to change and how difficult the habbit is all impact on how ling it takes to develop a habbit which can be anything from 2 weeks to nearly a year.

I think the main point of the challenge like many similar ones is to 'form a habit of forming good habits'? So if one doesn't 'stick' after 75 days you can then reassess as to whether to keep going, drop it, or swap it for something less complex, and you've now shown that you can stick at something for 75 days and can form whatever new habits you want to try out.

No, vague goals are pointless because you won’t do them. Goals should be SMART - specific, measurable, achievable, relevant and time-specific. For example many people want to get fit but ‘go to the gym regularly’ is a terrible goal - much better is something like ‘go to the gym at 6pm for an hour on Mondays and Thursdays’ because it takes away the need to continuously make decisions.

OP, I think your list sounds good but do you have a list of walks in mind already? You probably don’t want to do the same route round the block 14x a week so good to come up with a few options (including different lengths) in advance. I’m trying to do something similar where we go out for a longer walk at least once a month so yesterday I made a list of routes I want to try, and I’m going to schedule them on the calendar for each month (we can then pick the weekend with the best weather).

That makes sense. Thank you.

Thanks for all the responses. I get what people are saying regarding it potentially being too ambitious. If I do feel like I’m struggling I will pick the most important three. I do all of these things at the moment - I love reading, I have a dog and walk multiple times a day regardless of weather etc. These aren’t things that are completely new to me, they are things I enjoy and make me happy but unfortunately if I have a “lazy” day I end up spiraling and before I know it, I haven’t done any of them in a week and I’m miserable/depressed. My biggest challenge for my anxiety is mornings so I think getting a good night’s sleep and getting up at a reasonable time will help. If I’m really unwell etc then I won’t put pressure on myself and I know I have one or two social events coming up where I won’t manage the bed time but that’s only one or two days whereas at the moment those one or two days turns into depression.

I did this last year. I managed 45 days and then various family stuff got in the way. However the results were phenomenal and I saw a difference in the photos by day 5. The daily photo is the key because they don't lie, so even if you feel nothing is happening you can see it. I'm starting again tomorrow & this time hopefully will make the 75 days 🤞🏻 🤞🏻