By Leo Babauta

One of the hardest things to do as we create a better life is to show up for yourself regularly.

But we can train that. And one of my favorite ways to do that is with a health & fitness challenge — where you commit to showing up for your body and yourself every day. And prove to yourself that you (and your health) matter.

In September, I’m launching a 6-week Health & Fitness Challenge for my Fearless Living Academy members … and I’d love for you to join us!

Here’s how the challenge works:

  1. Sign up for Fearless Living Academy and then join the challenge in our Circle space (our community forum).

  2. Commit yourself to something every day for 6 weeks. You choose: some fitness challenge (yoga every day, running and weightlifting alternately every day, eating 5 vegetables a day, etc.).

  3. You get a video each week from me, meant to help you practice showing up for your commitment.

  4. Hold yourself accountable each week, and share how it’s going with the challenge group.

  5. Learn, grow, get stronger, and build the muscle of showing up!

It’ll be fun!

What You’ll Walk Away With

Here’s what we’re aiming for you to get out of this:

  • You’ll learn about what it’s like to show up for your body, and learn what gets in the way (and how to handle that).

  • You’ll create a non-negotiable habit that you chose and tested over the course of 6 weeks.

  • You’ll start to recognize your patterns, and your own sabotage triggers (travel, stress, low motivation days), because you’ll have hit them during the challenge and practiced navigating them.

  • You’ll learn a repeatable framework for creating any kind of practice for yourself going forward.

This challenge, then, becomes proof-of-concept for how you build solid habits in general.

This isn’t a fitness challenge that focuses on streaks or perfection, nor one that is focused on a specific outcome (lose weight, etc.).

This is processed-focused, and it’s a practice of fearlessness — show up for yourself even when it’s challenging.

Six Weekly Themes

Our structure is to have a new theme for each of the 6 weeks:

  1. Commit & Start: Pick your daily action, and make it small and doable. Declare it publicly, and get started!

  2. Show Up with Curiosity: Start to explore the habit, and bring curiosity — see what you can discover and appreciate about the habit process.

  3. Find Your Resistance: Identify exactly when/why you want to skip it (mornings? travel? mood?) — get curious, not critical.

  4. Build Your System: Design your environment. Remove friction, set up new reminders, find workarounds for your obstacles.

  5. Push Through the Middle: The motivation dip often happens by week 5 … this week is about identity (“I’m someone who does this”) over motivation.

  6. Reflect: Reflect on the 6 weeks, decide what stays post-challenge, celebrate the proof of what you care about.

It’ll take 6 weeks to build this deeper self-trust that you’ll show up for yourself Not perfectly. And it won’t be easy. But you’ll practice curiosity, courage, and a willingness to learn in the midst of the challenge.

Are you ready to join us? Join Fearless Living Academy for the September Health & Fitness Challenge, and let’s start.