One aspect of success is your habits. Habits are incredibly powerful tools for personal growth and success, yet most of walk around completely unaware of the habits we do daily (Good and Bad). Who you are and how you behave comes from (conscious or unconscious) habits - Whether it is wealth accumulation, relationship happiness, career or business, rest and relaxation, all of these are driven by your habits or learned ways of being and doing.
Life Coach
Habits can drive your success or it can deter it. I work closely with my clients looking at their habits, what is working, what is not. Changing negative behaviour patterns, consciously implementing positive habits has brought major mind, body and emotional success to them with some of them attaining extraordinary results for themselves.
The good news is if they are not working for you, you can change them so long as you have the aforementioned desire, determination, discipline and action to see it though.
What is a Positive Habit?
A positive habit is simply a habit or behaviour that produces positive benefits, results, actions, outcomes, feelings and emotions you want in your life. Habits, by there nature are very powerful, due to the fact there are automatic. Imagine what is possible for you in terms of health, happiness and achievements if you took time each day to focus, visualise and take action thereafter!
Acquired and Involuntary
A habit is defined as an acquired behaviour pattern regularly followed until it has become almost involuntary. The key words here are acquired and almost involuntary.
Goal Setting
Acquired in this case is awareness around the habit (of new or learned behaviour) you want to have and then consistent daily practice of it until it becomes involuntary. Think of learning to drive for instance. At first you were very aware of what you needed to do. 5 years later, most of us drive on autopilot!
Implementation Steps to Run with -
They say it takes 21 days to form a habit. For me I takes a bit more (I can be very rigid in my ways! J). Everyone is different though. One of my clients managed to master the ability to meditate in 10 days. Her desire was so strong, that mind and emotions change instantly.
Positive Habits
So now that we know what positive habits are, let's take action and start a habit that will help you have a feeling of success and achievement.
Positive Habit Suggestion - Make it a habit to Plan Your Week!
I often hear my clients say that they are unorganised (or all over the place!) and that their focus can be quite scatter. To help them overcome this feeling, I get each and every one of my clients to plan their week ahead.
Did you know that the most successful people all share the common positive habit of planning their activities? Success Masters like John Assaraf, Brian Tracey, Eban Pagan all talk to the importance of planning. The also spend time visualising their goals / tasks each and every day.
Here are some simple steps to help you start planning your week / success a positive habit:
• Every Sunday take 15 minutes and do a To-Do List, include everything you want to achieve that week from health, exercise, visualisation / meditation, family things, work tasks, social engagements through to house chores and administration. Also, look at your life plan and see what action you need to take for that.
• Then take those tasks/to-do’s and map them out in your week. I use Outlook Calender for this. That way I get a reminder when I’m near my computer and a list appearing of what is next and what needs to be rescheduled if I didn’t finish something.
• Print it out anyhow
• Start your day by looking at what you are going to achieve for that day – this prepares you for the day of successful outcomes
• At the end of the day, tick-off all successfully completed tasks and acknowledge all that you achieved regardless of how big or small it is
• If you do this daily, by the end of the week, all these tasks add up and you will visually see how much you actually do each and every week. Allow that sense of achievement to drive you for the week ahead. By accumulating this, you are laying the foundation or habit for more and more success and ultimately your GOALS!
Life Coach