People who are successful in all aspects of their lives understand that life is a learning experience. It never stops. We should never stop learning how to improve our relationships, our spirituality, our physical and mental well being, our career or business, and our financial well being. It’s a process and there’s always another level in each of these areas to reach for, no matter how good you are right now. When you are constantly striving to improve, you are consistently building character. When your mindset is to keep growing and learning, life becomes an exciting journey and ultimately leads to a fulfilling and prosperous life.
As you learn, you need to constantly refine your habits. All of our actions and habits create consequences. Every decision or action we take either has negative consequences or positive rewards. Before you start any new habits, make sure you understand the consequences. So now that we understand that habits can be productive or unproductive, how do we go about the process to permanently change our habits. There is a simple little process that I learned years ago that will help you identify, change, and produce productive habits.
1. Identify your bad habits – Think about the future consequences of your bad habits. It may take years for the consequences to show up. For example, in my insurance business and my marketing company, I show people what actions to take to be financially successful. One of those actions is to simply make contact with people and share the an opportunity. Procrastination is one of the worst habits out there today and if I don’t take this simple little action each day, I’ll never reach my goals and fulfill my dreams. One day at a time, it might not seem so bad but the cumulative effect can be disastrous. This is true with all our bad habits so consider the long-term implications.
2. Define your new successful habit – Many times this is just the opposite of your bad habit. In our example, this might be to set a goal of sharing the opportunity at least once each day. To motivate yourself, think about all the benefits and rewards for adopting this new successful habit. You’ve heard me say, create a vivid picture of what this new habit will do for you in the future, For me, financial independence and freedom is enough to drive and motivate me. To picture having my house, cars, and motorcycles all paid for and no debt is a pretty strong motivator. The more vivid your picture and the benefits, the more likely you are to take action.
3. Create an action plan – This is where the rubber meets the road. Without action, nothing happens. In my example, one of the best things I can do is to be accountable to someone to keep me on track. The action step is to find an accountability partner. That’s true for whatever successful habit we are trying to accomplish. Whether its to quit smoking or lose weight, we all need accountability partners. I think it’s easier to quit on ourselves if we don’t have anyone to hold us accountable so find yourself a good accountability partner in whatever it is your trying to accomplish.
You heard it said “that if we keep doing the things we’ve always done, we’ll get the same results we’ve always got.” We have to have a desire to change our bad habits for successful habits to get successful results.
Have an incredible day and make a difference in your life and someone else’s today.
Sam
