If you are to succeed at anything in life, then you will need to develop success habits.
The things you do each day will eventually become habit.
So it’s important that you do the things that will become your Success Habits every day!
But there’s a problem.
Good habits are hard to form but really easy to break.
Bad habits are easy to form and really hard to break!
Never Make Excuses
It’s critical to your success that you form good habits and that you NEVER make excuses to yourself.
Everyone tries to develop success habits from time to time. The best example I have from my own life relates to physical fitness.
A few years ago, I was told by my doctor that I needed to get more exercise and lose some weight.
I joined a gym, and went 3 or 4 times a week.
It was really hard, and I really didn’t want to go, but I forced myself to, and after a few weeks (maybe a couple of months), it became habit.
I actually started to look forward to going.
Then I went on vacation for 2 weeks, took no exercise at all, and ate a bit too much.
I came back feeling motivated to get back to the gym, but it was just too easy for me to make excuses.
- I’m a little jet lagged still.
- I’m too busy at work catching up
- I don’t feel too good today,
- I’ll have a fresh start next week…
- the list was endless, and of course, in truth, I didn’t get back into the habit at all.
It’s really easy to think ‘I won’t bother today’.
But in truth it makes is very much easier not to bother tomorrow either, and very soon that habit is broken!
So for me, 2 months to form a habit, 2 weeks to break it!
And I’m sure I don’t need to give examples of bad habits.
How to Break Bad Habits
We ALL know what our own bad habits are.
And we ALL know how hard they can be to break so here goes:
Make a list of your bad habits.
Be honest with yourself.
No-one else need ever see it!
Write down what you want to achieve (You don’t necessarily have to stop altogether!), when you want to achieve it, and how you’re going to achieve it.
Set yourself some measurable targets so you can check on your progress.
All of a sudden, this is looking like a SMART Goal!
A really powerful way to give yourself an extra incentive is to ‘go public’.
Post what you’re aiming to do to facebook (or other social media), so your friends know too, then provide a weekly update.
This way you have others that will support you (and never underestimate the motivational effect of avoiding public failure)
How to Develop Success Habits
Click the image above to learn more.
Do the same for the good habits you want to form.
I will measure it by maintaining a record of every time I get takeaway on my personal calendar.
Here are some worksheets that will help you.
You don’t have to use the same format – do whatever you find easiest, but it is important that you write down what you want to do, why, how, when.
Most importantly, if you are to succeed, you must write down how you will know you’re doing it!