The people who are crazy enough to think they can change the world are the ones who do.
Steve Jobs
Perhaps changing the world is not your desire but changing who and what you are might be. Change starts very simply with a plan that must be backed up by a habit. And did you know that we don’t choose our earliest habits? We actually follow the path cleared by our friends, family, our community, and even our school. Is that you? Have you ever really thought about it? Well if you are reaching for a goal, a dream, a change, you do have to think about what it is that drives you to your choices and, are your habits actually helping you or are they a road block to your success? Are you mindlessly following the pack or are you blazing your own trail with strong consistent habits?
A habit is a behavior that has been repeated so many times that it becomes automatic, no thinking involved really and those habits create and recreate who and what you are. So if you are not happy with who you are and what you are doing with your time then it’s time to CHANGE. The most effective way to change those unwanted habits is to focus all your attention not on what you want to achieve, but on who it is you want to become. This will be your BIG WHY.
Every HABIT you choose is creating the type of person you will become. And those habits are choices that can stalemate you or they can be used to change your beliefs about yourself. So ask yourself, ‘Am I becoming the person I want to become?’ ‘Who is it I really want to be?’
To become who you really want to be then, requires you to decide what type of person you want to be and then prove to yourself that you can be that person with your small daily wins, wins created through your small daily habits.
Most often people do not truly think about who it is they want to be when they set out to make a change in their lives. Yes, they write down their goals with the actions they believe will get them there but they do not understand that it is their beliefs that drive those actions, negative beliefs that when not changed will continue to sabotage their success. You cannot change your habits if you do not change those underlying beliefs that have created your present reality.
To change your present situation, you must change your belief in who you are and your ability to get what you want. The real reason you fail to stick to new habits is that your self-image fails you. Your habits tell your subconscious mind who you are. So if you exercise often then you are telling your subconscious mind you are committed to being healthy. If you make your bed every day, you are telling your subconscious mind you are an organized and tidy person. Or, if you eat a doughnut for breakfast and wash it down with a pot of coffee, you are telling you subconscious mind that your health is not all that important.
To change who you are is to change what you do. Habits and small daily wins help you to believe in yourself and what you can accomplish. Each habit won in the present allows you to achieve more of what you want in the future, to believe in what it is you are capable of.
A simple way to succeed with a new habit is to tell yourself, ‘When this situation arises, I will do this.’ You need to first figure out the basic details of how you will overcome your previous challenges.
A great success strategy is to write down the desired habit with a time and location for the habit. This brings clarity to your action..
When you state a specific when and where you will perform a new habit you are more likely to carry through with that habit. When you do not succeed it is most likely that you are not clear on who it is you want to be and where it is that you are headed.
Another strategy is habit stacking, taking a habit you already do each day and attaching it to a new habit you want to implement. Change does not happen in isolation. Each action you take becomes a hint that triggers your next action. It goes like this, ‘After I pour my morning cup of coffee, I will write in my journal.’ ‘After I walk the dog, I will do 15 minutes of stretching.’ This simple habit makes the behavior obvious and it is related to a consistent time and place. The key here is that our success is not tied to motivation or willpower, but to the obvious choice. The obvious choice is visible. When your habit is tied to a visual cue you are more likely to experience success, this small change in what you can see can lead you to a big change in what you will do. So if you want to drink more water, fill up a bunch of water bottles and leave them in places you will be throughout your day. So simple, yet so effective.
To sum it up:
Habits are about making your success easier to achieve through repetition, so create an environment where doing the right thing is as easy as possible. It takes practice more than actual planning. You need to first decide who it is that you want to be and what it is you want to accomplish and then create, build, stack your habits around that. Focus all your attention on the actions you need to take, actions that should only take a small amount of time but will have a lasting impact on your success, actions that give you an immediate feeling of success because that feeling will build, create and grow a mindset where you believe anything is possible, and it is. YES. IT. IS. POSSIBLE.
There is no absolute remedy for success, but when you make it obvious, easy and satisfying you will have a definite jump on achieving your goals. Small changes lead to remarkable results. You don’t need to move mountains to be successful, you simply need to build great habits.
We are what we repeatedly do. EXCELLENCE, then, is not an act, but a HABIT. Aristotle
So what small change will you implement today that will build better habits and bigger wins into your tomorrows?
Remember, consistent, small wins, lead to big results.
Cheers!
You’ve got this!
Always Believe, You Are Amazing!
Tammie