In the last two posts (here and here), success guru Darren Hardy has taught us how to eliminate bad habits that can lead us in the wrong direction if left unchanged. Now is the time to create and instill new, good habits that will lead us to the success we desire.
“Eliminating a bad habit means removing something from your routine. Installing a new, more productive habit requires an entirely different skill set. You’re planting the tree, watering it, fertilizing it, and making sure it’s properly rooted. Doing so takes effort, time and practice.”
Hardy points out that, “you can change a habit in a second or you can still be trying to break it after ten long years… The key is staying aware.” If you want to ingrain a good habit, pay attention to it, and positively reinforce yourself at least once a day over a minimum of three weeks, and you’ll be more likely to succeed.
Here are the author’s six techniques for installing good habits:
1. Set yourself up to succeed. “Any habit has to work inside your life and lifestyle. If you join a gym that’s thirty miles away you won’t go. If you’re a night owl but the gym closes at 6 p.m., it won’t work for you.” Hardy talks about his addiction to email and how he can lose hours of focus every day if he doesn’t control it. Thus, he set up the habit of checking email three times a day. Period. No more falling into a time vortex.
2. Think addition, not subtraction. The “add-in principle” works wonders: instead of focusing on what you are sacrificing to get rid of your habit, focus on what you are adding to your life. For instance, if you’re trying to eat healthy, don’t focus on not being able to eat french fries (e.g. I can’t eat french fries). Instead, think of what you can have (e.g. I’m having a yummy salad with fresh fruit for dessert). When you think of what you can “add-in” to your life, the results are stronger and powerful.
3. Go for a PDA: Public Display of Accountability. “Want to cement that new habit? Get Big Brother to watch you. It’s never been easier with all the social media available… Tell your family. Tell your friends. Tell Facebook and Twitter. Get the word out there…” Once you tell the world what you are going to do, it’s much easier to stick to it, as you’ll be held accountable by those who know you. Also, there are online apps like Stickk.com where you are held accountable for your goals in your own terms.
4. Find a success buddy. “To up your chances of success, get a success buddy, someone who’ll keep you accountable as you cement your new habit while you return the favor.” Hardy shares his experience of having a Peak-Performance Partner: “Every Friday at 11 a.m. sharp, we have a thirty-minute call during which we trade our wins, losses, fixes, ah-has, and solicit the needed feedback and hold each other accountable.”
5. Competition and camaraderie. “There’s nothing like a friendly contest to whet your competitive spirit and immerse yourself in a new habit with a bang. […] What kind of friendly competition can you organize with your friends, colleagues or teammates? How can you inject fun rivalry and a competitive spirit into your new habits?”
6. Celebrate! “There should be a time to celebrate, to enjoy some of the fruits of your victories along the way. You can’t go through this thing sacrificing yourself with no benefit. You’ve got to find little rewards to give yourself every month, every week, every day—even something small to acknowledge that you’ve held yourself to a new behavior. Maybe time to yourself to take a walk, relax in the bath, or read something just for fun. For bigger milestones, book a massage or have dinner at your favorite restaurant. And promise yourself a nice big pot of gold when you reach the end of the rainbow.”
The last piece of advice that Hardy shares is that we need to be patient with ourselves because change is hard. “Creating new habits… will take time. Be patient with yourself. If you fall off the wagon, brush yourself off (not beat yourself up!), and get back on. No problem. We all stumble. Just go again and try another strategy; reinforce your commitment and consistency. When you press on, you will receive huge payoffs.”
“We are what we repeatedly do. Excellence, then, is not an act, but a habit.” – Will Durant
ACTION
TODAY: Figure out what is the best way or ways to keep yourself accountable. Do you need to tell the world via social media? Work with an accountability buddy? Set milestones and determine how you’ll celebrate when you reach them.
FUTURE: Give yourself the gift of installing a new habit that you’ve wanted to have for a long time. Read this post about 100% commitment and commit to doing it this time. No matter what. You know you want it!
Know someone who wants to create a new habit? Please share this post! Email, Facebook or Twitter.
Hardy emphasizes that he is not suggesting you cut out every “bad” thing in your life. Almost everything is good in moderation, yet sometimes habits take the reigns of our existence.
To avoid that, precisely, is that Hardy suggests running a vice check to ensure you are in control at all times. The author explains:
I believe in testing my vices. Every so often, I go on a “vice fast.” I pick one vice, and check in to make sure I’m still the alpha dog in our relationship. My vices are coffee, ice cream, wine, and movies. I already told you about my ice cream obsession. When it comes to wine, I want to be sure I’m enjoying a glass and celebrating the day, not drowning a bad mood.
About every three months, I pick one vice and abstain for thirty days… I love proving to myself that I am still in charge. Try this yourself. Pick a vice—something you do in moderation, but you know doesn’t contribute to your highest good—and take yourself on a thirty-day wagon run. If you find it seriously difficult to abstain for those thirty days, you may have found a habit worth cutting out of your life.
There you have it. I suggest that next to the list of bad habits you started yesterday, you include a list of vices to check. And then start checking them every so often to ensure you are always in control.
ACTION
TODAY: Add a list of vices to check next to your list of habits to change. Pick a date to get started and note it on your calendar.
FUTURE: Set a 30-day period on your calendar to do your first vice check. Test it out once and see if you’d like to do it again, just as Hardy does, about four times a year.
Know someone who would like this idea? Please share this post! Email, Facebook or Twitter.
“Habits and behaviors never lie,” says Darren Hardy, entrepreneur and author of The Compound Effect. “If there’s a discrepancy between what you say and what you do, I’m going to believe what you do every time.”
Based on what we do, Hardy suggests making a list of bad or not-so-good habits that we want to eliminate. Take a good look at your actions, they speak much louder than your words. Hardy says,
If you tell me you want to be healthy, but you’ve got Doritos dust on your fingers, I’m believing the Doritos. If you say self-improvement is a priority, but you spend more time with your Xbox than at the library, I’m believing the Xbox. If you say you’re a dedicated professional, but you show up late and unprepared, your behavior rats you out every time. You say your family is your top priority, but if they don’t appear on your busy calendar, they aren’t, really.
Habits take us by the reigns unless we consciously make an effort to change them. Let’s look at five strategies to “uproot those sabotaging bad habits and plant new, positive, and healthy ones in their place.”
“Your habits are learned; therefore, they can be unlearned.”
Hardy shares some game-changing strategies, yet the overall key, he says, “is to make your why-power so strong that it overwhelms your urges for instant gratification.”
1. Identify your triggers. After you finished your list, look at the habits you want to change, and identify “The Big 4s” that trigger those habits: (1) who, (2) what, (3) where, and (4) when.
2. Clean house. “Get to scrubbin’,” says Hardy. “And I mean this literally and figuratively. Get rid of whatever enables your bad habits.” Depending on what your goal is, get rid of all the things that trigger even the slightest thought of it. For instance, he says, “If you want to eat more healthfully, clean your cupboards of all [that’s non-healthy], stop buying the junk food—and stop buying into the argument that it’s ‘not fair’ to deny the other people in your family junk food just because you don’t want it in your life… everyone in your family is better off without it.”
3. Swap it. “Look again at your list of bad habits. How can you alter them so that they’re not as harmful? Can you replace them with healthier habits or drop-kick them altogether? As in, for good.” For instance, Hardy says that he loves something sweet after eating, yet if there’s ice cream, it’ll turn into a 1200-calorie binge fest. Instead, he simply eats two Hershey’s kisses that only add 50 calories to his diet. What can you replace progressively or swap out completely?
4. Ease in. “For some of your long-standing and deep-rooted habits, it may be more effective to take small steps to ease into unwinding them. You may have spent decades repeating, cementing, and fortifying those habits, so it can be wise to give yourself some time to unravel them, one step at a time.” Hardy tells of a time when he and his wife decided to cut caffeine out of their diet. Instead of going cold turkey, he recalls, “We first went to 50/50—50 percent decaffeinated and 50 percent regular for a week. Then 100 percent decaf for another week. Then Earl Grey decaf tea for a week, followed by decaf green tea. It took us a month to get there, but we didn’t suffer even a moment of caffeine withdrawal—no headaches, no sleepiness, no brain fog, no nothing.”
5. Or jump in. “Not everyone is wired the same way. Some researchers have found that it can be paradoxically easier for people to make lifestyle changes if they change a great many bad habits at once.” Hardy tells stories of people who have come out of surgery and have changed their lifestyle and dietary habits completely. Or people who have gone cold turkey.
On these two last points, Hardy likens it to wading into a body of cold water or jumping in. Each one of us is different and we know what will work best for us. To determine this, he suggests asking yourself, “Where can I start slow and hold myself accountable?” and “Where do I need to take that bigger leap? Where have I been avoiding pain or discomfort, when I know deep down that I’ll adapt in no time if I just go for it?”
ACTION
TODAY: Make a list of the habits that you’d like to change and identify your “Big 4” triggers. Think of whether there is a way to swap it or if you prefer to eliminate it altogether.
FUTURE: Clean house and determine if you’ll ease in or jump in. Then do it. Make sure you have a strong enough WHY to help move you forward. Give yourself at least three months to ensure that the old habit is gone and that the new one is getting ingrained.
Know someone who’s trying to kick a habit? Please share this post! Email, Facebook or Twitter.
While those guidelines were great to keep in mind, the question that came up revolved around specific actions that we could take to improve our teachability. Fortunately, Maxwell foresaw this question and, in today’s post—from the same book, Success 101—he offers the following three actions to ensure we’re always growing and always cultivating and maintaining an attitude of teachability.
1. Observe how you react to mistakes. “Do you admit your mistakes? Do you apologize when appropriate? Or are you defensive? Observe yourself. And ask a trusted friend’s opinion. If you react badly—or you make no mistakes at all—you need to work on your teachability.”
2. Try something new. “Go out of your way today to do something different that will stretch you mentally, emotionally, or physically. Challenges change us for the better. If you really want to start growing, make new challenges part of your daily activities.”
3. Learn in your area of strength. “Read six to twelve books a year on leadership or your field of specialization,” says Maxwell. “Continuing to learn in an area where you are already an expert prevents you from becoming jaded and unteachable.” Besides those books in your area of specialty, I know of a blog that can help you keep learning and growing daily… 😉
Finally, I’ll leave you with a story and a thought that Maxwell tells about Tuff Hedeman, a professional bull riding cowboy at rodeos. “After winning his third world championship, [he] didn’t have a big celebration. He moved on to Denver to start the new season—and the whole process over again. His comment: ‘The bull won’t care what I did last week.’ Whether you are an untested rookie or a successful veteran, if you want to be a champion tomorrow, be teachable today.”
“The most important thing about education is appetite.” — Winston Churchill
ACTION
TODAY: I challenge you to try something new as explained above. Today go out of your way to do something that will stretch you.
FUTURE: Create the habit of challenging yourself daily. Whether it’s 5 more minutes on the treadmill at a slightly faster pace, or recalling the names of 10 of the Saturn moons, or giving a genuine and caring compliment to a colleague whom you don’t like that much (Eek… I tried this one and it’s so hard!), do whatever stretches you where you need it most on that day or that period of time.
Know someone who is always growing? Please share this post with that person: email, Facebook or Twitter. Thanks!
The one equalizer for all of us is time: we all have 24 hours in a day, no matter what. And what we decide to do with that chunk of time on a daily basis is our decision. In The 100 Absolutely Unbreakable Laws of Business Success, business guru Brian Tracy says, “there is never enough time to do everything, but there is always enough time to do the most important things.” Thus, the Law of Forced Efficiency:
“The more things you have to do in a limited period of time, the more you will be forced to work on your most important tasks.”
Tracy goes on to explain, “The more you take on, the more likely it is that you will be forced to act with maximum efficiency. You will have to think, analyze, and evaluate your tasks and activities more carefully. You will be forced to spend your limited mental and physical energy on just those tasks that are the most vital to your success.”
There are three corollaries to this law according to Tracy:
1. There will never be enough time to do everything that you have to do. “The busier and more successful you become, the more valid this corollary will be for you.” The popular saying “if you want something done, ask a busy person” is true: busy people only take on just those things that they know they can finish within the time they have.
2. Only by stretching yourself can you discover how much you are truly capable of. “You can discover how much you can do only by trying to do too much. You can find out how far you can go only by going too far. You learn your true capacity only by stretching yourself to your limits. For you to be truly happy, you must know that you are working at the outer edge of your potential. You need to feel fully challenged by your work. You need to do what you love, love what you do, and put your whole heart into your work.”
3. You perform at your highest potential only when you are focusing on the most valuable use of your time. “This is the key to personal and business success. It is the central issue in personal efficiency and time management. You must always be asking yourself, What is the most valuable use of my time right now?”
Tracy suggests creating the habit and discipline to work exclusively on the ONE task that is the answer to this question, at any given time. Keep yourself focused and determine what is the most valuable use of your time again, and again, and again throughout the day, every day.
Note: both actions come directly from Tracy’s book.
TODAY: “Remember that you can only do one thing at a time. Stop and think before you begin. Be sure that the task you do is the highest value use of your time. Remind yourself that anything else you do while your most important task remains undone is a relative waste of time.”
FUTURE: “Be clear about the most valuable work that you do for your organization. Whatever it is, resolve to concentrate on doing that specific task before anything else.” Develop the habit of asking yourself over and over, What is the most valuable use of my time right now? If need be, you can set a periodic reminder on your calendar to pop up and remind you of asking that question several times throughout the day. Other questions you can ask, according to Tracy, are, “Why are you on the payroll? What specific, tangible, measurable results are expected of you? And of all the different results you are capable of achieving, which are the most important to your career at this moment?” Your answers will determine where to focus your energy.
Know someone who could benefit by asking the questions from The Law of Forced Efficiency? Please share this post via email, Facebook or Twitter, thanks!
In yesterday’s post, we read about Dave Kerpen’s incredible story of determination. I received many great emails about this, and while most of you were in awe and somewhat encouraged by the story, there was still a little shadow of a doubt lingering as to whether such persistence would be perceived as rude.
I don’t think so. As long as you do it in a charming and polite way, always emphasizing that you are looking to add value to the person and his/her business, I think you will be fine. Just as Kerpen was.
Want further proof? Let’s take a look at what one of my favorite entrepreneurs says about persistence.
Derek Sivers is an entrepreneurial guru that I greatly admire and respect. You can read the ideas that I’ve highlighted from his book, Anything You Want: 40 Lessons for a New Kind of Entrepreneur, in these posts: 1, 2, 3, 4 and 5 (don’t miss post #5 for a good laugh from a very creative approach to customer service).
Since Sivers is a genius who has the gift of brevity and conciseness, here’s his entire piece, verbatim, on why persistence is polite:
As teenagers, we learned the hard way that if you contact someone and they don’t reply, they’re just not into you. If you keep trying, you must be a total loser.
But in the business world, it’s the opposite. If you don’t keep trying, you’re a loser!
If someone doesn’t get back to you, it probably wasn’t intentional. Everyone is busy, and their situation has nothing to do with you.
Imagine two different scenarios:
1. Someone doesn’t reply, so you get upset and decide they’re evil and clearly meant to insult you. You resent them for life, and speak poorly of them forever.
2. Someone doesn’t reply, so you assume they must be swamped in work. You wait a week, and contact them again. If still no reply, you feel sympathy that they must be really overwhelmed. You wait a week, and try again. If still no reply, you try to reach them a different way.
Now, which one was rude, and which one was polite?
There you have it. It’s simply a mind shift.
Need more? Here’s Sivers in a quick video interview (3:36 min) talking about a story of persistence and politeness. (Note: at the 1:58 min mark approx. there is one phrase—lasting 2 seconds—with strong language.)
Give yourself the gift of being persistent beyond what you ever imagine you could be. You never know what wonderful opportunities will present themselves based on your polite and charming persistence. Try out polite persistence as an experiment. Think of something that you really want but has been very hard to achieve. Once you know what this is, then determine the frequency of your persistence. Will it be daily, weekly, monthly? A combination?
If you’re still not comfortable with this, take a look at this example from Ari Meisel, in his book Less Doing More Living. He tells the following story of how he automated persistence and finally got the info he wanted. See if there’s something that you can do along these lines.
In a building where I teach, Verizon FiOS [Internet] service was supposed to be available. For three years, the Verizon website said it was available, but it wasn’t. There’s an email address that you can write to check on when FiOS will be available at a location, so I wrote to them and set up a [daily, automatic email] until they replied. Finally, after sixty-four days, someone wrote back. “Please stop your annoying reminder service. We don’t know when service will be available in your building.” I responded, “Why didn’t you tell me that sixty-three days ago?”
As you can see, all sorts of experiments can be set up to start training your persistence “muscle” if you think it needs strengthening. I’ll close this post with a great quote and with an invitation to continue to send me emails to let me know your thoughts about this or any other post.
“Nothing in this world can take the place of persistence. Talent will not: nothing is more common than unsuccessful men with talent. Genius will not; unrewarded genius is almost a proverb. Education will not: the world is full of educated derelicts. Persistence and determination alone are omnipotent.” – Calvin Coolidge
Have a story of persistence you’d like to share? Send it my way and I’ll make a compilation and publish them in a future post!
ACTION
TODAY: Figure out what your experiment in persistence will be about. Then think about what you have that no one else does. What is your equivalent of Dave Kerpen’s Radio Disney that you can leverage to your advantage over everybody else? Use this when being persistent as it will differentiate you and open many doors.
FUTURE: Try out your experiment. Set your schedule for persistence and stick to it. Remember that this is something that you really want, no matter how small or insignificant (like Meisel, he really wanted to know about the internet service in his building). Then get to work. Only by trying out persistence in little steps will you strengthen and grow it to where you will feel more comfortable shooting for bigger goals each time.
Know someone who could benefit from seeing persistence from a different angle, such as the polite one? Please share this post with them! Email, Facebook or Twitter.
TODAY’S IDEA: 6 Techniques for Installing Good Habits
