3 Tips to Leverage Our Habits
David Santineer
Creator of The BEAR Programme: Lead Tough Change without Getting Eaten Alive | Trusted to Reshape Results, in ways that are Personally Sustainable by You and those who matter to You
Our Habits will Make or Break Us
‘You’ll never change your life until you change something you do daily. The secret of your success is found in your daily routine’ - John C. Maxwell
How tough has lockdown been for you?
Maybe you have lost loved ones and are grieving? Maybe you have lost your job and are in financial trouble?
Perhaps your mental or physical health is suffering through loneliness, anxiety and stress?
How are you coping as a family, forced to be under the same roof for so many hours each day, over such a long time?
In the midst of all this, how have you kept your head, to keep making progress in your business, work and life?
In tough times, our habits can be our biggest assets or our biggest liabilities, bringing us down – and holding us there.
Here are 3 Tips to make our habits powerful assets:
1. HABIT STOCKTAKE
Try this exercise:
a) Consider and list the following habits:
Things you DO that will BENEFIT you long-term (e.g. your regular walk, run, workout)
Things you DO that will HARM you long-term (e.g. too much sugar, too much alcohol)
Things you AVOID that will BENEFIT you long-term (e.g. exercise, learning a new skill)
Things you AVOID that would otherwise HARM you long-term
b) Now draw a Mindmap (or any other sort of visual you like) to link together each of the factors you have listed in Part(a) above. What does this tell you about how you are leveraging your habits as assets, and avoiding bad long-term results?
c) Looking at your diagram from Part(b):
What patterns of cause and effect can you see in your habits?
Which activities are you avoiding because you don’t believe you can be successful in them?
Why are you lacking inspiration or energy for others?
Do you have a big enough reason to replace some habits with others? What are those reasons? What inspires or worries you about what you are seeing?
What action – however tiny or decisive - will you take to move in the right direction?
‘We are what we repeatedly do. Excellence, then, is not an act but a habit’ - Aristotle
2. JOURNEY WITH FRIENDS
Psychologists tell us that it is easier to drop bad habits and to establish new ones if we mix with, and draw inspiration from, others who are already where we aspire to be or are ahead of us on that journey.[1] Well known entrepreneur and coach Daniel Priestley calls this ‘environment dictates performance’: search out the right environment for you and hang out there as much as is needed.[2]
We know that our brains and mindset have a wonderful plasticity to them – this means we can programme ourselves for extraordinary achievement and happiness or for a humdrum existence. This really is a choice!
The questions remain: Do we want our goals badly enough? Are we aiming high enough? I draw inspiration from the brain surgeon Dr Ben Carson. Here is someone who had a very challenging childhood and could not be blamed for giving up quite early in life (as he almost did).
However, through inspired choices and establishing good habits and principles he rose to graduate from Yale University. Many would have been content with that: settle into a cushy job and a comfortable life. But not Ben. He wanted to make a real difference through pioneering new approaches to surgeries that had high mortality rates. Ben never put any ceilings on what his role was on this planet and what could be achieved. That is what I like the best about him. No upper limits. But he never made this journey alone: he had lots of inspiration, counsel and support from many people. You can view excerpts of his life story from the movie ‘Gifted Hands’ on YouTube.
‘If you don’t like the road you’re walking, start paving another one’ – Dolly Parton
3. MAKE THE ROUTINE, ROUTINE
One of the best things about recognising, cultivating and embedding your habits is that it frees up your headspace and energy for decisions and actions which are NOT routine. That means you get a double-impact:
(a) A set of powerful habits, moving you in the right direction, with a cumulative effect (like interest added to an asset) plus
(b) A cold head, free to make the most of emerging opportunities and to tackle threats to your goals.
(Image: Aaron Burden, Unsplash)
SUMMARY
Our habits can be powerful assets, multiplying our impact, or can entangle and imprison us, shrinking our effect.
They can be part of our road to happiness, satisfaction and help to others or can scupper our good intentions and lead to ongoing stress, frustration and failure.
The choice really is ours. What will we decide today?
Here’s to our success!
(Image: Matthieu Joannon, Unsplash)
David Santineer is a Co-Founder at Proactive by Design. Having led change teams in private, public and third sectors, he trains clients in foresight for high stakes decisions and self-starting skills for better results from change.
[1] Burchard, B (2017) High Performance Habits: How Extraordinary People Become That Way, Hay House Inc.
[2] Priestley, D (2014) Key Person of Influence: The Five Step Method to become one of the most highly valued and highly paid people in your industry, ReThink Press