Execute Like A Champion: Forming New Habits To Get Great Results And More Fulfillment In Life
Just Get Started: The Power of Tiny Habits
Sometimes the habits you want to implement in your life seem so challenging that you don’t know where to start. Remember, it’s EXTREMELY important that you believe in your ability to consistently implement your new habit. This kind of belief can be a struggle for many of us, but
starting small is a great way to work around it. If your new habit feels too overwhelming, try a smaller, modified version of it that feels manageable to you.
Tiny Habits are very powerful and have multiple benefits. Even the simplest habits are easy to neglect. By enabling you to lower the bar to a level that’s more comfortable, Tiny Habits make it much easier to ensure you take consistent action. They also decrease the amount of willpower you have to use to implement the habit. Our brains don’t like change and our minds love efficiency, minimizing the use of willpower is a wonderful thing.
Consistency Over Intensity
If there’s only one thing you remember from our two previous articles it should be the fact that consistency is far more important than intensity.
If your habit requires so much energy that you can’t sustain it long enough for it to become automatic and ingrained in your subconscious, you’ll be very unlikely to succeed in implementing it. You run the risk of crashing and burning, and the harder the task is the more you are likely to procrastinate. This is yet another area where Tiny Habits come in handy.
Below are examples of Tiny Habits that you can incorporate into your life without exhausting yourself:
Name: The Running Habit
How to Do It: Just put your shoes on and go.
Name: The Push-up Habit
How to Do It: Do a push-up. And yes, I mean ‘a’ push-up. Just one.
Name: The Writing Habit
What to Do: Open whatever you use to create documents and start writing something. It can be anything you want, as long as you’re writing.
Name: The Diet Habit
What to Do: Eat an apple. They say an apple a day keeps the doctor away (and what if they’re right?)
Name: Setting daily written goals
What to Do: Write one simple goal and achieve it.
Is the habit you’re currently trying to implement a challenging one? If so, how could you make easier to get started? Think of a way to turn it into a smaller, more manageable habit.
I did this with meditation not too long ago. I really wanted to get back into it, but I knew that diving into it headfirst would probably be too intense. I made it easier by working it into my morning ritual and starting with just 3 minutes. It’s been about 2 weeks and I’m already up to 9 minutes. See how daunting things can become totally doable just by scaling them down a bit?
You may be wondering whether you should scale things back and start smaller. That’s a good question, and the answer will vary from person to person. That said, the following question will help you figure out what’s right for you: Will you be able to perform your habit every day for the
next 30 days even when you’re tired or extremely busy? If the answer is yes, you’re golden. If not, then you need to consider modifying your habit until you can say yes to that question.
Never Skip Twice
New habits are very easy to skip and you might think that it isn’t a big deal. However, nothing could be farther from the truth. There are many people who say that skipping a new habit twice in a row has a devastating effect on your ability to stick with it. I’ve had more than one habit fade away after skipping it twice, and I’ve seen the same thing happen to other people on multiple occasions (New Year’s resolutions, anyone?). Considering how hard it can be to make a new habit
automatic, I would say the Two Skips Phenomenon is very real. Unless the habit is a well-established part of your subconscious, skipping it twice in a row comes with major risks, none of which are worth taking.
As harmless as two skips may seem, its dangers make a lot of sense if you really think about it. Skipping a fresh habit twice sends a signal to your brain that the habit isn’t that important after all. If skipping it twice is okay, it must be pretty insignificant.
Remember, your brain doesn’t like change. It’s geared towards efficiency, which can make it lazy in a way. It likes to keep things automated and predictable. Disrupting this is hard enough, don’t make it worse by sending it mixed signals about whether your habit is important. When that
happens, your brain will ultimately view the habit as irrelevant and sabotage your efforts to work it into your life.
Want to know the best way to keep yourself from skipping a habit twice? Don’t even skip it once!
Prepare a Contingency Plan
While it’s best to never skip your habit, sometimes that’s easier said than done. Nobody is perfect. We can’t get around the fact that you very well may skip your habit at some point. What we can do, however, is anticipate this issue and combat it with a contingency plan. If you do wind up
skipping a habit, the contingency plan will get you back on track. Let’s say your habit is 15 minutes of meditation every morning. If you wake up late one morning and don’t have time to meditate, you can decide to do it as soon as you come home from work.
You should always be honest with yourself and have a clear reason as to why you’re skipping your habit. More importantly, you should identify likely obstacles and prepare an IF… THEN plan in advance.
I Suck. So What?
As Tynan mentioned in his book Superhuman by Habit, it’s better to do poorly at something than it is to just skip it. It’s better to perform your tasks and push through fatigue than it is to skip it and rest. You might not do so well at them, but it’s still much better than doing nothing.
Lack of consistency is one of the main reasons we end up quitting our new habits. There will be days were you really feel tired and don’t feel like doing anything. There may be days when you want to procrastinate because you’re afraid of failing. In these moments, it’s best to get started anyway. Give yourself the permission to suck at what you’re doing if that’s what it takes for you to get it done. Just tell yourself that you’ll give it a shot for a few minutes and see what happens. More often than not, the momentum gained by starting your task will allow you to accomplish more than you expect. If you’re haunted by fears of doing a bad job, just take a deep breath and say, “I suck. So what?” Then carry on and tackle that task, knowing that whatever you do is a step forward, regardless of how well you do it.
Don’t Blame Yourself
Sometimes it’s tempting to blame yourself for skipping your habit, but that won’t help you succeed at implementing it. In fact, it’s one of the many tricks your mind will use to make you give up on your new habit. Your brain is lazy and will be more than happy to give up that new habit and go
back to “normal”. Don’t fall for that! Remember, consistency is key. If you happen to skip a habit once, make sure you don’t skip it the next day. Do it poorly if you need to. But whatever you do, don’t lose your momentum. If you can manage that, you’ll be just fine.
To help you here is a quote on self-compassion from the book The Willpower Instinct by Kelly McGonigal. I found it to be quite true.
“When we do experience setbacks – which we will – we need to forgive those failures, and not use them as an excuse to give in or give up. When it comes to increasing self-control, self-compassion is a far better strategy than beating ourselves up.”-Kelly McGonigal
Actions Vs. Results: What Really Matters?
Have you ever felt that you weren’t good enough? If so, you’re definitely not alone. Almost everyone feels or has felt that way at some point. This is actually one of the main reasons we procrastinate and fail to take consistent action. We’re afraid of being inept and unable to do a good
job. If your new habit is challenging, you may be afraid that you won’t perform as well as you’d like to. This is especially true if you’re a perfectionist.
Unfortunately, most societies and school systems condition us to be result-oriented rather than process-oriented. As children, we are praised for our accomplishments, whether it’s learning to walk, getting good grades, or winning a sports game.
This may not seem particularly harmful, but there’s actually a major problem with it. This approach teaches us that it’s the end result that counts, not the actions that led to it.
In reality, the reverse is true. The process matters much more than the result. Our brain is such an incredible machine that, if you keep taking the right actions, it will eventually figure things out. Your brain will learn through “failures” and a process of trial-and-error until you finally get the results you want. If you can keep trying until you get what you want and take each so-called failure as a learning experience, you’ll be build more strength and confidence than you ever imagined. After all, being conditioned to focus on results is the reason we’re so afraid of failing.
For clarity’s sake, let’s take a look at a real-life example of what I’m talking about. Let’s say you’re a blogger and you’ve decided to write 500 words each day. If you’re writing just to write, 500 words isn’t much, but you’re probably writing with a specific objective in mind. Maybe you’re in
the process of writing a book. Or perhaps you have a great idea for a blog post and want to produce high-quality work that will have a real impact on your readers.
It’s easy to imagine why you’d be tempted to procrastinate in this situation. You might worry that what you write won’t be good enough for your readers, or that your book will get rejected by publishers. These fears may be crippling enough to stop you in your tracks.
You don’t have to be ruled by fear, however. You can overcome it by shifting your focus. Instead of worrying about the end result of your labours (writing great content or getting published), focuson taking the right action. In this case, the right action is pretty simple: Just sit at your desk and starting typing until you reach 500 words.
Taking the right action means doing what you know is right regardless of the outcome. You know that you want to write 500 words every day. That is your right action. What sounds worse: writing something that’s less than your best, or doing nothing because you’re scared, tired, or uninspired? Are you going to wait until you think you can write something phenomenal, or are you just going to get started anyway?
You’ll come to find that you’re better off doing something than nothing, even if what you do doesn’t turn out that well. We learn by doing, not by procrastinating.
Extra Tip: Erase the traditional definition of failure from your mind. What many people see as failure is actually feedback. It’s a learning opportunity, an unavoidable stepping stone on the path to mastery and success. Failure goes hand in hand with success. Make no mistake however, failure is real. Fortunately, there are only two things that can lead you to true failure: Never trying or failing to learn from your mistakes. The good news is that these things are choices, and it’s
completely within your power not to avoid them.
The Power of the Right Action Framework
If you understand it well and practice it regularly, The Right Action Framework (the method of focusing on actions rather than results) is an extremely powerful tool. It allows you to take action while decreasing your anxiety about the results. The Right Mind Framework redefines the notion of failure, but it also redefines the notion of success. This framework defines success as taking the right action, NOT as getting results. Getting results without taking the right action doesn’t qualify
as success. If you succeed via luck, doing something that goes against your right action, or engaging unethical behaviour, your success would be invalidated by your flawed process.
In a nutshell, true failure means not taking action, taking the wrong action, or neglecting to learn from your mistakes.
Tips: Take a moment to reward yourself each time you take the right action. That will train your mind to focus on the process of taking action rather than on the results.
Procrastination? What’s that?
Okay, you’re now armed with several tools. Let’s take a look at them:
- Having a strong why (Should vs. Want)
- Starting super small (Tiny Habits)
- Accepting a flawed performance (I suck so what?)
- Avoiding self-blame
- Taking the right action
So what excuses do you have left to procrastinate or skip your habits? Not many, right?
The 21-Day Myth
How much time do you really need until your new habits are fully transferred to your subconscious mind? You may be familiar with the famous “It takes 21 days to form a new habit” theory, but I think that’s mostly BS. Believing in it can be very counterproductive. In reality, everybody is different, and the amount of time it takes for a habit to become automatic varies from person to person.
According to a 2009 study on habits published in the European Journal of Social Psychology, it took an average of 66 days for participants to fully adopt a new habit. But, of course, this is an average based on the varying results of multiple people. So how much time will it take you to form your new habits?
The answer is: Nobody knows. It could take 3 weeks or several months, but it doesn’t matter in the end. A habit is, by definition, something you want to do every day for years to come, so there’s no need to worry about how long it will take to fully assimilate it. You have plenty of time!
If you hold yourself to the 21-day rule, you’ll probably get pretty discouraged if you’re still struggling after three weeks. You might feel like you’re abnormal and ultimately quit your habit. Forget about the 21 days. Consider the fact that it may take longer than that, and stay consistent
with your habits each and every day.
How fast you form a new habit depends on the following 4 factors:
1. Your specific situation.
2. How challenging the new habit is.
3. The strength of your “why”.
4. Your level of motivation.
Identify Your High-Leverage Habits
Changing just one habit in your life can create great results long-term, particularly because new habits have a strong effect on current habits. If you change your habits strategically, you can maximize the amount of positive change you experience.
Think of it this way: If you make going to bed early a habit, you may find yourself meditating, exercising, or working on your side business in the morning. The increased energy that comes from getting more rest will positively impact your productivity, mood, and ability to follow-through with pre-existent habits. This holds true for any new habit; it tends to make it easier to stick to the ones you already have.
Now take a look at your current habits. Are there any pivotal habits around which many others are revolving? What is the one habit that, if implemented, would have the most positive impact on your life?
Setting Up Triggers
You may be wondering about when and how to schedule your habits. Since consistency is the cornerstone of developing your new habit, you want to schedule it in a way that minimizes your risk of skipping it. The best way to do that is to set up a trigger for that specific habit. By anchoring
your habit around a specific daily event, you make it easier to create an automatic pattern and ensure consistency.
There are a variety of potential triggers you can use. For instance, you could choose to engage in your habit after your shower or as soon as you wake up.
Choose a Rock-solid Trigger
The most effective triggers are things that you do every day at the same time, such as having breakfast, brushing your teeth, or walking your pet. If your trigger is weak, you’re already shooting yourself in the foot. If the trigger is eating breakfast, but you don’t always have a morning meal,
you’re going to have trouble staying on track with your habit.
Act AFTER Your Trigger
It’s better to perform your new habit after the trigger and not before it. This makes it easier for you to remember. Let’s say you’ve chosen showering as a trigger for meditation. If you try to meditate before your showers you’ll tend to think, “Oh, I almost forgot, it’s meditation time” (which we all know can easily lead to just plain forgetting meditation time). If you do it after your showers however, you’ll think something along the lines of “I’m done with my shower, so now it’s meditation time.”
Make a List of Triggers
Make a list of the tasks you do 7 days a week. This list shouldn’t be very long. Now ask yourself: What would be the best trigger for my habit?
Let’s say you want to meditate every day. Going back to the meditation example, is it better to do it as soon as you wake up? Would you prefer to do it after you take a shower? Or maybe you’d rather do it after breakfast? Choose the trigger gives you the best possible change of sticking to your habit.
Creating Series of Habits
Once you’ve successfully implemented your first habit, you can go bigger and create a series of habits. A chain of habits is just multiple habits that occur one after the other. You complete one, and then start the next. By repeating this process you can create powerful series of habits that will help you make positive changes in your life. This offers many benefits, and creates clear patterns that will become automatic over time.
Let’s say I’ve been meditating consistently for the past 2 months and want to start writing my goals down on a daily basis. I would simply add that habit into my life with my meditation practice as its trigger and voila: I’d have a budding series of habits. I’d add a third habit once the second one became solid, and keep going from there. I would eventually have a strong chain to lean on.
A Potential Pitfall
If used effectively, a series of habits is very powerful. That said, it’s absolutely crucial to ensure that your current habit is strong enough to support the addition of another one. If you have a seriesof 5 habits, but most of them are pretty new, you could end up skipping one or two and ultimately destroy them all.
Series of Habits Example
A morning ritual is an excellent example of a typical series of habits. A morning ritual is simply a succession of habits that ensure you start your morning in a positive way that sets you up for a successful day. Most successful people have some kind of morning ritual. Here is a list of activities that might be included in a morning ritual:
- Meditating.
- Walking/running/stretching, etc.
- Setting daily goals.
- Doing gratitude exercises.
- Reciting positive affirmations.
- Reading books.
- Watching motivational videos.
- Eating a healthy breakfast.
Do you have a morning ritual? If not, I highly recommend creating one. It’s one of the most effective way to ensure you stay consistent with your habits. It also allows you to leverage your series of habits. If you commit to sticking with your morning ritual, you’ll be able to maintain your
habits for as long as you want.
Morning rituals are adaptable, so you can tweak yours when necessary to increase its effectiveness and tailor it to your needs. If reciting affirmations is part of your morning ritual, for instance, you can modify the affirmations as your goals evolve.
Example: As I write this article, I could design my morning ritual around my goal of completing it. Affirmations should remind you of what excites you about what you’re doing. In this example, my affirmations would be linked to my current goal, and would include the following statements,
or something similar:
- I’m excited about writing incredible articles that will impact the lives of thousands of people around the world.
- I’m excited about creating great blog posts that will inspire thousands of people to set goals, find their passion, and attain the career of their dreams.
- I’m excited about writing content that will enable thousands of people to positively impact those around them and society as a whole.
The affirmations you use are totally up to. As you go through the process you’ll find affirmations that will resonate with you and strengthen your “why”. What does and doesn’t resonate can change over time, but your morning rituals are wonderfully malleable.
If you ever struggle to find affirmations that speak to you, ask yourself why you’re doing what you’re doing. In this case, I would ask myself why I’m writing this article and what makes it so important? Ask these questions until you find answers that inspire you.
Later on, you might want to change your affirmations if you decide to shift your focus to a different area of your life. As an example, I might decide to concentrate on eliminating harmful beliefs and realize that I hold limiting beliefs regarding money that are preventing me from reaching my ideal income. I could then use my morning ritual as a way to overcome these limiting beliefs. I could recite affirmations on wealth or read books about building wealth to help me shift my mindset. Or
I could do some money-related exercises to dig deep and get to the root of the negative belief.
The 7 Most Powerful (Yet Simple) Habits To Have In Life
In this section, I’d like to provide you with what I believe are some of the most powerful habits that you can have. These habits will have a profound impact in your life in the long run. This short list is far from being exhaustive, but it will give you some ideas for future habits you might want to incorporate into your daily life.
1. Setting daily goals
Setting your goals every single day will, from my own experience, double (if not triple!) your productivity. To set your goals, just take a pen and a piece of paper (avoid typing on the computer) and make a list of 3 to 5 tasks you want to accomplish for the day. Then, prioritize your tasks by
numbering them in order of importance. Start working on your first task until you complete it and move to the next one. Repeat the process. If you can do this on a daily basis you’re bound to get a lot done.
2. Reading your goals every day
This is a powerful way to ensure that you stay on track with your goals. Ideally, you should think of your goals as often as possible. When things get busy, it’s very easy to forget about our goals, but reading them out loud on a daily basis can prevent that from happening. You shouldn’t just
read your goals, however, you should also ask yourself why they’re so important. There has to be a strong reason behind your goals if you’re going to successfully work on them. It’s equally important to take a moment to visualize your goals and how achieving them would feel.
3. Meditating
Meditation provides a plethora of benefits. You can begin with just a few minutes a day. There are many ways to meditate, but it can be as simple as closing your eyes and focusing on your breath. There are also several good books for beginners that can help you get started.
4. Practicing gratitude
Forgetting to express gratitude is a major cause of unhappiness for many of us. We take everything for granted and don’t fully appreciate the little things in life (or even the big ones).
Every day during my morning ritual, I ask myself what I’m grateful for. I then spend a few minutes thinking about everything that crosses my mind. You don’t have to come up with anything major, it’s okay to think about the little things. The following list will make it easier to practice gratitude by reminding you of some basic things you can be grateful for:
- Facebook, YouTube, and other such platforms that provide access to an endless supply of knowledge at little to no cost.
- Living in one of history’s most exciting time periods. Children will study our time period a thousand years from now and be amazed at the rapid increases in technology. We’ve gone from telegrams and carriages to race cars, camera phones, internet access, virtual reality and Artificial Intelligence (among other amazing things) in less than 150 years. It’s incredible!
- Having food, shelter, running water, and electricity.
- Having a phone that enables you to communicate with your friends and family no matter how far apart you are.
The list is endless!
I say what I’m grateful for out loud, but some people prefer creating a written gratitude list. The trick is to feel genuine gratitude as you contemplate the things on your list. As Jim Rohn says, “Our emotions need to be as educated as our intellect.” So be patient and stick with this habit. I can guarantee it will pay off in the long-run.
5. Consuming motivational books and video
In the words of Zig Ziglar, “People often say that motivation doesn’t last. Well, neither does bathing – that’s why we recommend it daily.” No matter how exciting your goals may be, there will be time where you won’t feel like doing anything.
Feeding your mind with inspirational material on a daily basis will help you stay motivated for the long-haul. If you can’t find the time to read, you can also listen to uplifting audiobooks and
podcasts.
6. Self-reflecting
Taking a few minutes to reflect upon your day is a very effective way to improve yourself. Self-reflection is one of the best ways to supercharge your growth. When you analyze the events of your day, consider asking yourself the following questions:
- What did I do well today
- What could I have done better?
- What can I learn from today?
- What will I do differently in the future?
7. Exercising daily
You already know that you should get some exercise each day, so I’m not going to try to convince you. These days, most of us spend too much time sitting down and looking at our televisions or computers. According to Dr. James Levine, author of Get Up! Why your Chair is Killing You and What You Can Do About It, for every hour that you spend sitting cuts off 3 hours of your life.
Take Action Right Now Or Else…
I have one question for you: Have you started to take action and implement a new, powerful habit in your life? If, not will you?
Will you be the person who sets goals, finds their passion, creates a fulfilling career, and becomes an inspiration to those around them? It would be a great honour for me to have helped you form positive, life-changing habits in some way, and I would love to hear from you regarding your progress.
After posting articles on my blog, I have received comments from people telling me that they made a real impact on their lives. These people put the articles’ contents to use and turned the knowledge they received into tangible result.