Life Transforming Habits!

"We are what we repeatedly do. Excellence therefore is not a act, but a habit" quote by Aristotle has always influenced me. Habits form when you engage in behavior repeatedly in the presence of consistent stimuli. That habits are "automatic" responses to familiar environmental cues. You save mental energy by developing habitual responses to familiar cues, situations, and even people that you encounter on a regular basis.

If we don’t learn good habits, life becomes more difficult. We have a choice: Get hard on ourselves so life becomes easier, or get easy on ourselves resulting in life getting harder.

Successful people choose good habits over a stagnant life. At first it might not seem like you are accomplishing much, but don’t be fooled. “Small hinges open big doors.”

Changing habits is not just a matter of willpower, despite what you’ve probably learned. Sure, we all have habits we’ve tried to break and failed. And good habits we’ve tried to acquire and dropped. But the real obstacle to change for most people is not a lack of determination — it’s a lack of understanding how habit works.

POWERFUL HABITS TO CHANGE YOUR LIFE (IF APPLIED)

1. Embrace life, don’t resist it

When things aren’t working, our first action is often resistance. Instead of resisting, take a moment to consider what isn’t working and why. This kind of information is valuable.

Tough times can be used to disrupt stagnant patterns in thinking. If we embrace the disruption, it can have a purifying effect that knocks off the rust and barnacles we naturally collect on our daily voyage. Embracing life is resisting stagnation.

Life might wreck your plans when your plans are about to wreck you. So pay close attention.

2. Affirm yourself, don’t degrade yourself

One of the most common ways to degrade ourselves is to ask the wrong questions. Wrong questions are dis-empowering. They immediately change our subconscious thought patterns from positive to negative, or vice versa. They are powerful.

• Question: Why can’t I do things right? Answer: Because you’re not smart!
• Question: Why am I so broke? Answer: Because you’re a loser!

Ask a bad question and you’ll get a bad answer. This is how our subconscious mind works. Because the conscious mind programs the subconscious, take charge. Good questions lead to productive answers.

• What is a better way to do this?
• What are three things I can do to increase my cash flow?

Asking the right question is empowering.

3. Do something, not everything

It’s good to be resilient—to a point. Sometimes quitting is the smartest thing to do. There are times when I look at my to-do list and complete one or two of the items quickly, just by eliminating them. For example, if I have 10 things on my list, Pareto’s Principle reminds me that 80 percent of my results come from 20 percent of my effort. Let me get those top two done first and I’ll go from there.

The secret of concentration is elimination. This leads to productive living and has health benefits as well—a needed message for a society of high achievers.

This is not a polemic for a carefree life! The happiest people are busy but in control. They are not rushed. 

“Be quick, but not in a hurry.” —Coach John Wooden

4. Speed Learn

Being able to boost your own learning curve to a point where you feel comfortable with learning about new topics is a sign of successful people. Just fifteen minutes a day of non-fiction is all that you need to make a genuine difference to your own development.

Simply start by reading up on books that make sense to you and can be the ideal solution to helping you see through problems that you are facing at the current time.

Speed reading is very popular across the globe, and has been used by plenty of highly successful people to improve their chances of success in the long-term.

5. Know How to Identify Problems

Being able to actually see your problem in front of you is a great thing. If you are able to get to a stage where your problems are more than just a confused equation in your mind, you can make a genuine success of yourself in the long-term. The hardest part is going to be making sure that your problems are something you can relate with visually, though.

Being able to see the problem in front of you rather than just having a big, scary image in your head is much easier – plenty of big names across the world are known for using visualization, such as Oprah Winfrey.

6. Set Priorities

Having a list of different priorities throughout the day can stop you either from getting bogged down in meaningless tasks or simply from dealing with the easy ones and then not having enough time to deal with the “real” tasks.

This isn’t some weird, new-age idea that does nothing for you by the way – it’s been used by many people throughout history.

7. Manage Money

As financial management is going to be so important to your long-term success as an individual. It can take a bit of time and getting used to but once you start seeing the fruits of your labor it becomes much easier to deal with.

Of course, it takes a lot of time and planning but is well worth looking into further as it can help you totally transform your fiscal management and make your life much more comfortable than it has been in the past.

8. Rise And Shine

An easy way to make the most of every day is to attack it – get up early, get into these difficult tasks, and see the rest of the day through. Successful people don’t start at 1PM – they start at 8AM! Be sure that you get the most out of each and every day. Long lies and sleeping in can be done when you have fought towards achieving your life goals rather than when you are nearly there!

9. Set Clear Goals

Everyone needs to have clear life goals and ambitions to strive for – because without them, what is the point? So as long as you have something to aim for then there’s something to keep you motivated and successful. It’s when you start running out of things to see as progress or an achievement that it can become quite tough to manage.

However, with the help of some expert thinking and by having written down goals on something you see every day, you can make sure that you never lose track of where you are going and what the endgame is going to be.

10. Know Your Strengths

When your own strengths – and weaknesses – are so apparent to you, it becomes much easier to start correcting and improving upon them. Rather than letting your strengths hold you back in the future, make them a focal point of how you will kick on and start to improve yourself moving forward.

11. Keep Brains Busy

Steve Jobs of Apple fame did a few things better than almost anyone else. One of them was always keeping his mind working. The wheels were constantly turning in his head, giving him the opportunity to come up with the many revolutionary ideas he did in his lifetime. Keep your mind busy to have similar success.

12. Spend Time Doing What You Love

Billionaire entrepreneur and Shark Tank star Mark Cuban worked with computers because that’s where his passion lied. In his own words,”More importantly no, most importantly I realized that I loved working with PCs. I had never done it before. I didn’t know if this was going to be a job that worked for me, or that I would even like and it turns out I was lucky. I loved what I was doing.” Do something you love and maybe you’ll be rewarded for it.

13. Maintain Healthy Relationships

Good relationships have the power to help us get through the bad times and make the good times great. to cite a dramatic example, the tight-knit yet wide-reaching relationship Oprah Winfrey has with her audience is awe-inspiring. I'd say she's highly successful, wouldn't you? Follow her lead by making sure the relationships in your life are in good places.

14. Practice kindness & love

Love is unlimited and never runs out. You can give it away as much as you like. But our ego stops you from doing that. We always want something in return.

So give this a try. Realize that you have an unlimited resource. Give some of your love and kindness away every day. Don’t worry about keeping score. You have enough love anyway.

15. Focus on what you have

Gratitude is the surest pathway to health, happiness and success. It shifts our attention towards what we have rather than what we don't have. It's the natural abundance of simple pleasures and opportunities that we've been afforded with and blessed with that we often take for granted.

16. Contribution

When i say contribution, it doesn’t mean monetary it can be your time or helping someone. The purpose of education is to become yourself so you can make meaningful contributions to society.  

“Habit is the intersection of knowledge (what to do), skill (how to do), and desire (want to do).”

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