Have you ever wondered, “How did I get here?”
It seemed like the year started great. You wrote down your goals, determined that this year would be different.
The first few weeks of January were good, you were taking action, ticking off your “To-Do” list but now April is fast approaching and you haven’t even achieved one of your goals!
It’s so easy to drift in life without even realising because your days are filled with the busyness of life; however, you may end up not achieving your goals. This is because of habits.
Habits are automatic routines that we perform without conscious thought. They’re formed by repeating a behaviour over and over again until they become second nature.
Whether we want to admit it or not, we govern our life by our habits. They can be good or bad; and they can have a profound impact on our lives.
For example, habits like exercise, healthy eating, positive thinking and positive self-talk can all lead us to success.
While habits like smoking, procrastination, negative thinking and negative self-talk can hold us back and lead to failure.
Even experts say that 90% of our daily behaviour is based on habits. Think of your morning routine, the route you take to work, the things you eat, all of these things are daily habits. And they’re not something that magically happened.
They’re things that we’ve done every single day for so many years and because of that it’s become second nature to us. Our habits shape our future by influencing our actions, our thoughts and our beliefs; and they determine the direction of our lives and even the outcomes we achieve.
For example, if you have a habit of saving money – a habit I wish I had in my 20s! If you have that habit, you’ll be more likely to achieve financial stability.
On the other hand, if you have a habit of procrastination, you’ll be more likely to miss opportunities.
So I want you to think about your life and the things you want to achieve this year, spend a moment to think about your habits and those daily things that have become second nature to you; things that you say now, “it’s just the way I am”, is it really just the way you are? Because those things affect the outcome of your life, they determine your future.
I don’t want it to be all doom and gloom but I want us to admit that certain things in our lives are as a result of our habits, not our nature. Procrastinating or being a pessimist is a learned process. It may seem to be your nature but that’s only because you have done it repeatedly over a long period of time.
That’s the good news! Because if it’s a learned process, it means it can be unlearned! The beauty of today is that you can have a fresh start, you can have a year that’s super successful IF that’s what you want.
I have three suggestions for you that have the potential to make your year super successful. Are you ready for them? Here goes:
The first thing is
1) Identify those personal habits that aren’t taking you in the direction of where you want to go. How? Spend a few minutes to think about your last year, did you reach any of your goals? If you didn’t, list out the reasons why – be specific.
2) Once you’ve identified those habits, you can change them. It’s as simple as that. To help with that, list out productive habits that you believe will help you achieve your goals and take you where you want to be..
3) Once you’ve done no. 2 click HERE to download my 90-day Habits Tracker which will help you master those good productive habits that will help you achieve your goals. The best part of it is that the 90-Day HABITS TRACKER is free!
Because our habits determine our future, it’s important for all of us to look at our lives and decide whether our habits have been taking us in the direction that we want to go?
If yes, then great, let’s continue the good habits. If not then we need to replace unproductive habits with productive ones and use the 90-Day HABITS TRACKER to help us do that. Because this year is our year! And this year we can achieve exactly what we want if we change our habits and align it to the direction we want to go.
