We’ve talked before about the idea that building resilience is like building a muscle. You have to exercise it and go beyond your comfort zone to attain the kind of strength you want to achieve.

Undertaking a 30-day sprint to try out a new behavior can be a great way to build your resilience and overall improvement. Based on the software development technology known as scrum, you can use this same methodology and call yourself a techie for using it. Credit to my friend Larry Hokaj who introduced me to how “sprints” are changing how companies are trying out new ideas and getting them rapidly into play in their workplace.

The 30-day model is great because you see your progress rapidly and put a fixes time frame on the ideas you are working to achieve. You want to keep the project timeline short so you build a bit of urgency and commitment into your activity. This approach also allows you to then go ahead and add a new one next month.

Last year, I started going for a mile long walk first thing in the morning and kept it going all through the Pittsburgh winter and now into our summer. This month I’ve added the action of walking mindfully to my early mornings. I am seeing if I can make my walks a bit more of a moving meditation, helping to settle and quiet my mind for a few minutes before I get my day going.

In building your sprints, keep your objectives simple; feel free to change them around (called churning) and evaluate your success not in terms of perfection but in terms of progress.

© Richard Citrin, All rights reserved, 2015