by Helena Escalante | Goals, Growth, Habits, Mindset, Opportunity, Planning, Time, Tools
Estimated reading time: 4 minutes, 18 seconds.
TODAY’S IDEA: 6 Techniques for Installing Good Habits
— From The Compound Effect: Jumpstart Your Income, Your Life, Your Success by Darren Hardy
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.
by Helena Escalante | Accountability, Creativity, Goals, Growth, Habits, Mindset, Planning, Time, Tools
Estimated reading time: 1 minute, 48 seconds.
TODAY’S IDEA: Run a vice check
— From The Compound Effect: Jumpstart Your Income, Your Life, Your Success by Darren Hardy
Yesterday we learned from Darren Hardy, entrepreneur and author of The Compound Effect, about 5 strategies for eliminating bad habits. Today we will learn another strategy to make sure that we are always in control of our behavior.
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.
by Helena Escalante | Accountability, Goals, Growth, Habits, Mindset, Tools
Estimated reading time: 4 minutes, 19 seconds.
TODAY’S IDEA: 5 Strategies for eliminating bad habits
— From The Compound Effect: Jumpstart Your Income, Your Life, Your Success by Darren Hardy
“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.
by Helena Escalante | Goals, Growth, Habits, Leadership, Mindset, Opportunity, Tools
Estimated reading time: 3 minutes, 25 seconds.
TODAY’S IDEA: Getting lucky
— From The Compound Effect: Jumpstart Your Income, Your Life, Your Success by Darren Hardy
Are you lucky? According to Darren Hardy, author of The Compound Effect, “everyone has the opportunity to be ‘lucky,’ because beyond having the basics of health and sustenance, luck simply comes down to a series of choices.” He continues, “The difference between becoming fabulously rich, happy and healthy, or broke, depressed and unhealthy, is the choices you make throughout life. Nothing else will make a difference.”
Hardy was the publisher of SUCCESS magazine for many years, and he recalls a time when he asked Richard Branson, the founder of Virgin Group, if he thought luck had been a part of his success. Branson answered, “Yes, of course, we are all lucky. If you live in a free society, you are lucky. Luck surrounds us every day; we are constantly having lucky things happen to us, whether you recognize it or not. I have not been any more lucky or unlucky that anyone else. The difference is when luck came my way, I took advantage of it.”
We’ve all heard the maxim that says: luck is when preparation meets opportunity. Hardy agrees, yet he believes preparation and opportunity are not enough, thus he adds two more components to the luck formula:
LUCK = Preparation + Attitude + Opportunity + Action
Preparation (personal growth):
“By consistently improving and preparing yourself—your skills, knowledge, expertise, relationships, and resources— you have the wherewithal to take advantage of great opportunities when they arise (when luck ‘strikes’).” Movie producer Samuel Goldwyn said, “The harder I work the luckier I get.”
Attitude (belief/mindset):
“It’s simply a matter of seeing situations, conversations, and circumstances as fortuitous. You cannot see what you don’t look for, and you cannot look for what you don’t believe in.” Bernadette Jiwa, business and brand strategist, writes in her book Hunch, “every day is filled with opportunities, either seized or missed, ours for the taking if only we can learn to listen for them.” (Read post).
Opportunity (a good thing coming your way):
“Luck isn’t forced. It’s a natural occurrence, and it often shows up seemingly of its own accord.” And, even though opportunity is a good thing coming your way, sometimes it comes in disguise and shows up, as Albert Einstein said, in the middle of difficulty.
Action (doing something about it):
“This is where you come in. However this luck was delivered to you… it’s now your job to act on it. […] So no more whining about the cards you were dealt, the great defeats you suffered, or any other circumstances. Countless people have more disadvantages and greater obstacles than you, and yet they’re wealthier and more fulfilled. Luck is an equal-opportunity distributor. Lady luck shines on all, but rather than having your umbrella overhead, you’ve got to have your face to the sky. When it comes down to it, it’s all you. There’s no other way around it.”
“You seldom, if ever, get lucky sitting down.” Zig Ziglar
ACTION
TODAY: Take a moment today to think of all the opportunities that you have in front of you: the wild ones, the sensible ones, the big ones, the small ones. The idea is not to spread yourself too thin and act on them all, but to start seeing opportunity all around you. You’ll soon realize how lucky you are and how you can increase your luck by acting on an opportunity should you decide to do so. Is there one that fits right in with your goals? Go for it! If not, no worries, keep this quote from Richard Branson in mind, “Opportunities are like buses – there’s always another one coming!”
FUTURE: Make a point of constantly learning and growing yourself (I know a blog called EntreGurus that can help you… 😉 ), seeing opportunity wherever you go, and being ready to act when luck presents itself. Make sure that the opportunities you act on are taking you further in the direction of your goals. Remember, if it’s not an absolutely ‘Hell, yeah!’ then say no. That’s how you maximize your luck.
Best of luck! 🍀
Please share this post with a lucky friend or colleague via email, Facebook or Twitter!
by Helena Escalante | Goals, Growth, Habits, Mindset, Tools
Estimated reading time: 3 minutes, 6 seconds.
TODAY’S IDEA: Creatures of habit
— From The Compound Effect: Jumpstart Your Income, Your Life, Your Success by Darren Hardy
In The Compound Effect, Darren Hardy tells a tale of a wise teacher who was walking through the forest with a young student. They both stopped and the teacher instructed the student to pull up a sapling, which the student did easily with his fingers. Then the teacher pointed to a taller sapling, about knee-high to the student, and instructed the boy again to pull it up. He yanked it up and out came the taller sapling with its roots. The teacher then pointed to a third tree, yet this one was as tall as the student. With much effort the boy pulled it up. The youngster had to throw himself mightily into the task and do it with all his body weight, as well as with sticks and stones to pry up and loosen the roots.
The teacher pointed next to a tall and majestic oak tree. The boy, seeing the oak and assessing the tremendous struggle he had just gone through to pull up the previous (and much smaller) tree, replied, “I am sorry, but I can’t.” To which the teacher said, “My son, you have just demonstrated the power that habits will have over your life! The older they are, the bigger they get, the deeper the roots grow, and the harder they are to uproot. Some get so big, with roots so deep, you might hesitate to even try.”
“We are what we repeatedly do.” – Aristotle
We are all creatures of habit, and I love this story because it paints a great picture of the power and strength of our habits. Hardy writes, “Psychological studies reveal that 95 percent of everything we feel, think, do, and achieve is a result of a learned habit.” The key here is learned, because we weren’t born with habits… “Since you learned every habit you have, you can also unlearn the ones that aren’t serving you well.”
Easier said that done indeed, but it can be done. We might need a crane, many chainsaws and a full crew to chop down a big proverbial tree (as in this video of a real tree), but “with enough practice and repetition, any behavior, good or bad, becomes automatic over time.” Might as well make it a good behavior if it’s going to get that deeply rooted!
Hardy embodies good habits himself and, as the former publisher of SUCCESS magazine, has met and worked with many great achievers, CEOs, and superstars. He says that the one thing they all share is a routine with good habits. “That’s not to say they don’t have bad habits; they do. But not many. A daily routine built on good habits is the difference that separates the most successful amongst us from everyone else. And doesn’t that make sense? […] Successful people aren’t necessarily more intelligent or more talented than anyone else. But their habits take them in the direction of becoming more informed, more knowledgeable, more competent, better skilled and better prepared.”
Happy habit formation!
ACTION
TODAY: Take a look at your habits and decide if there is one that you need to build or uproot. Determine what is the smallest action that you can take in that direction and do that today.
FUTURE: As you establish a completely new habit or change an old one, make sure you keep track of your actions in that direction. Keeping track will help you determine whether you are on the right path or further changes are necessary. Also, you may want to get an accountability buddy to help you out.
Know someone who could use a daily routine with good habits? How about sharing this post with that person? Send it to him or her via email, Facebook or Twitter, thanks!
