Are Your Habits Limiting Your Growth?
Add comment August 3rd, 2007
We all have habits. Habits are something you do day in and day out without thinking, they just come naturally. What type of habits do you exhibit in your life? Are you a smoker? Are you a gambler? Are you a mentor? Are you a leader? These are all habits that we have in our life, some are good and some are not so good.
What type of habits do you want to have in your life? Do you want to have good habits that lift you up or take you to the next level or are you the type of person that blames your habits on what happens to you in your life, like a smoker who develops lung cancer and blames the cigarette company?
Successful people practice good habit forming activities that aid them in achieving the goals or successes in their life. You just need to turn on the television during the weekend to see some great examples of this. In my opinion, Wayne Gretzky was one of the best hockey players to ever play the game, however, he had some natural talent which is important, however, he also developed a habit of practicing every day to perfect is ability to play hockey extremely well. He practiced so the actions he took on the ice were habitual.
Successful people in todays business world focus on building exceptional habits. They develop lifestyles that become habitual just like Wayne did in his backyard. If you want to become the best hockey player or become the best IT consultant, you need to start working on building your habits. Work on sharpening your saw, so that your actions come naturally.
You want to focus on productive, good and success building habits. Habits dont happen immediately, they take time to develop. If you look at people that develop lung cancer due to smoking, that didnt show up immediately, it took years of smoking to develop lung cancer. It was a lifetime of a bad habit practices that developed into a major, life threatening health concern. Success habits work in the same way; the results never show up immediately, they always take time to develop. The challenge with good habits is many people give up when they dont see the immediate gratification and lose faith in their dreams and goals.
You as the business owner of your small business consulting business are demonstrating your habits to your team every day, bad habits and your great habits. If you want your staff to follow up with your clients regularly, you need to demonstrate that behavior and make it a habit so that your staff models your direction. If you want them to be late to meeting, all you have to do is create a habit yourself of being late to meetings. Your staff will follow exactly the behavior that you are demonstrating, either good or bad. If you dont like the behaviors that your team is exhibiting, you need to look in the mirror first.
When you fill your life with success building habits, your business will take off; you will become more successful in life and have the life that you want and desire. You will soon realize that you do not have the time for those negative habits to steal your energy and power.
Here is an exercise for you. Make a list of five bad habits that you are currently struggling with, these can include being late for meetings, overeating or becoming frustrated when stuck in traffic. Now the next thing you need to do is write a strategy to change that habit and post it somewhere you can see it all the time. A good example would be, if you are constantly late for meetings, write that habit down, next to it you can write, leave 30 minutes earlier or leave openings between meetings so you can get to your next meeting on time. This exercise is used by the majority of the overachievers in many businesses. If you can change one bad habit every month, which can lead to twelve habits you have changed over a course of a year, what type of person would you be when you accomplish just twelve habits? Not only would you be a better person overall, you may just infect others with your good and success building habits.
