What are Habits?
Habits are routines we perform every day that lead us to an outcome.
Habits can be considered “external”, as in physical actions we take daily. Brushing teeth is a good example. They can also be considered “internal” as our habits of thought.
When we look at our external habits, many are now automatic. Brushing your teeth every morning or showering every night doesn’t need any thought. These habits are part of our lives so concretely they simply are an unbreakable standard. We don’t think about, or question them, they get done without negotiation or difficulty. It’s completely automatic!
I like to think of our internal habits of thought as those that support our external habits of thought. Life truly is a creation from the inside out. When you consider that everything in your life is a habit; your internal habits support both the things you want, as well as those you don’t in your life.
The habits of showering and teeth brushing were once not unbreakable standards. We’ve all been through a childhood phase of protesting teeth brushing, hand washing and basic cleaning have we not? But persistence ensued in creating these standards. And now, for many they are a part of everyday life.
Your internal habits of thought not only support, but dictate your external habits. If your internal habits of thought aren’t congruent with & in support of your external habits, you are likely not to stick with the habit.
Starting an exercise program or a diet is a very classic example of a habit that people fall away from.
A powerful reason diet & exercise don’t turn into unbreakable standards for many is due to giving in to our old internal habits of thought.
Our ego mind will always want to take the path of least resistance. Building a new habit can be hard. When you get to that critical tipping point of the habit becoming unbreakable the ego mind pipes up.
As soon as internal thoughts no longer align with external habits, you’ve talked yourself away from your desired outcome.
Internally we all have what I like to call the ego mind. The ego mind likes to stay comfortable, in the familiar. Building a new habit (like exercising) may very well be what you need for your health, but your ego mind will do everything to keep you in bed, resting & lazy.
It’s identifying this pattern and continuing on anyway which will lead you to success. As mentioned earlier, that classic tipping point is where you need to step up & push through. A little bit of discomfort in that moment will eventually see you through to reach your goals.
The strategies to building habits for your inevitable success need to include aligning your internal and external habits.
As well as acknowledging that the ego mind is in fact not in your best interests. Create an environment for yourself where you can form the necessary repetitive behaviours with ease.
Strategies to building habits for your inevitable success.
1. Start small
When you decide on a goal you wish to achieve (ie growing your business), first create a list of all the actions that need to take place to do this.
It would include things like building your google presence, your social presence, making it easy for customers to get to you, buy from you and ensuring you have a good quality website that converts. Once you have identified all the tasks, prioritise them in order of importance. Consider this the domino effect. Which item will create the biggest impact towards your desired goal?
Let’s use the task of building your social media presence. Now that you have decided that this will be your domino habit, consider how you can implement being more active on social media as a daily habit?
2. Work on one habit at a time
The key to manifesting and achieving your goals is work on one habit a time. Start off small and commit to working on it until it becomes an unbreakable standard. Once you have mastered showing up on social media to the degree that it’s an effortless part of what you do, you are now ready to add in a new habit.
3. Track your progress
A good way of supporting yourself is to put in place strategies to build habits for your inevitable success. A powerful example is tracking your progress. Whether this be setting up a social schedule in a word doc, or marking it out on a calendar. Whatever commitment you have decided on, mark it of every day that you have achieved this.
If for whatever reason you have missed a day, don’t over think it but rather pick up the next day and carry on again.
4. Minimise Decision Making
A critical key strategy to building habits for your inevitable success is to take the guess work out of it. Keep it simple. Make it easy. In whatever way that looks like for you!
If going to the gym is your new habit, then make sure your bag is packed the night before. If you have to get up in the morning and fumble in the dark, finding your clothes, the likelihood of going diminishes.
The easier you can make it, the less guesswork there is the greater the chance of you attaining this goal.
5. Stack one habit on top of another
Now that you have mastered this one habit, you are one step closer to achieving your goal! The next step is to now add the next habit.
In the example of growing your business consider again how you can make it as easy as possible for yourself. Can you tag this new habit onto your existing habit of showing up on socials? If having a stronger google presence was your next tier after your domino goal, can you repurpose any of your social posts to your google listing (if you are bricks and mortar for example)? What about transcribing any longer form social videos and utilising it as a blog on your website?
Whatever you decide here, it’s important to make it as easy for yourself as possible!
In our work with high performers and executives, we’ve found that the best way to build new habits is: in the words of habit expert James Clear, “stack” them on top of existing habits.
Stacking this new habit on top of an existing habit is a much more effective strategy. For example, you can say: “After I walk through my front door and take off my jacket in the evening, I’m going to put my phone on Do Not Disturb mode.” This approach increases your likelihood of building the habit not only by tying it to an existing habit (taking off your coat as you walk in the door) but it also includes a specific action, which the research says is another important strategy for making habits stick. Instead, saying vaguely, “I’m going to try to look at my phone less,” it’s based on a tangible action, “switching my phone to Do Not Disturb.”
Don’t confuse your habit with your goal.
When you first set out with an intention of achieving a new goal, understand that habits are not your goal. Habits are a series of actions, performed in a regular, repetitive manner that will get you to achieve your goal.
The goal is the house of your dreams. The habits are the foundations, the roof, the windows, the walls, the doors, all the parts that go into building the house of your dreams.
See Distractions for what they are.
Earlier I wrote about how the ego mind is excellent at preventing you from reaching your goals. It will do everything in it’s power to keep you in your comfort zone. The key to contemplate here is that the ego mind is you! There is no other entity in your head. You are the thinker of your thoughts and it’s up to you to determine if you wish to listen to them or not!
When you understand that this is simply a part of life, you can then remember why you are doing this. Stay in your personal power. Focus on the outcome. And tell the distractions to simply bugger off!
This is yet another powerful strategy to building habits for your inevitable success. You have to be 100% committed. If you are only 99% committed to your goal, you give your internal power away and that then allows your internal habits of thought the space to run wild, against you.
Keep your attention on what you are gaining not what you’re giving up.
No matter how good you may start off, no matter how committed you may be, the second part to staying the course is ensuring you keep your attention on everything you are gaining and not on the inconvenience of the things you are loosing.
Whenever you feel that you may be veering off course, go back to the beginning. Why did you wish to achieve your goal? What did you think it was going to give you? What were the benefits for you? Consider the external tangible benefits (ie more money and clients) and the internal benefits (empowerment, internal satisfaction, happiness).
Now lets look at this faltering stage strategically;
1. Are you giving in to your ego mind?
2. Is your preference to simply stay in your comfort zone?
3. Are you uncomfortable in your discomfort and your not sure you want to continue?
4. Do you not yet see yourself getting closer to your goals?
If you answered yes to points one and two, then my recommendation is to go back to why you started this. Reinforce everything you are to gain, and recognise that your ego mind is simply a distraction.
If you answered yes to point three then congratulations! That’s seriously awesome! Get used to it and carry on! You’re almost there! Imagine going to the gym trying to build muscles and you not getting sore, guess what? You’re not doing it right! But the discomfort.. you’re on track!
Point 4, the clincher! This one is a doozy! Sit with yourself honestly and reflect whether the effort you have put in is genuinely what has been required to grow your business. Are you using the channel that is going to give you the best outcome? (Consider the domino method), Are you boring? Are you exciting? Is your message easy to understand? Do you need to learn more to be better? Growing a business is as simple as getting better at the skills needed to do the tasks that will grow the audience.
Rather than quitting and giving up, why don’t you step behind the belief that “your success is inevitable” and tweak the habit rather than giving it up.
Co creating with your habits as a strategy for your inevitable success.
When you can harness the metaphysical law of attraction to co create with you as well as your intuition you may just find that anything is possible for you!
The way I invite you to think about it is that your intuition is your own internal guiding system that is always working for you to help you achieve your desired outcome in the best way possible for you.
When you can harness your intuition, you will identify the difference between the guiding voice and the ego mind. You will be guided to tweak your habits for better success rather then encouraged to give them up.
Remember, everything is working out in your favour, for you all the time.
