Day 31 of 84 – One Simple Ingredient

Do you want to be happy, successful, and in shape? Do you want to look amazing, win at everything, and be stress free?

If you are thinking, yes! Then you probably want to know how. Very simple.

Habits.

Habits are the key and only ingredient to saying yes to those things. Sorry. This came as a bit of a shock to me. I had no idea. I was completely blindsided by this fact. I made a commitment to myself. I said, if I can do this commitment for a full year, then perhaps I can accomplish what I was hoping for. What I did not understand, was that keeping the commitment developed a power to maintain habits and the accumulation of habits is what is fueling my current progress.

I was completely and hopelessly lost prior to January 7th, 2018. I have no clue as to how I was even functioning! I have now built at least 10 solid life improving habits. I have deliberately built and removed a few, and have added others. Constantly experimenting, but the point is that I am living a habit driven life.

I am now convinced. You cannot improve at anything without habit. You cannot be successful without habits. You cannot remove stress in your life without habits. Habits are the big secret of successful people. Discipline and will power are myths that successful people talk about, but do not really keep up. What they keep going is habit.

Habit makes it easy to be great. Habit makes it easy to be successful. You can try to fight through everyday to improve, doing it the hard way, or you can develop a few good habits.

So you are a product of your habits. Whatever habits that you have now, realized or not, produce a cumulative effect on you that will overwhelm any individual action that you choose to do. Did you eat good today. Awesome, but that will mean nothing when you compare that to the accumulation of adding that sugary, cream and other unhealthy things to your morning Starbucks drink of choice every morning, everyday.

You have a habit of sitting and doing nothing for extended periods of times. That is why you are overweight. That is exactly what was going on with me. The grand total of inactivity when compounded is an overwhelming force against any small action you take. Sure, I would get up an exercise for a few minutes here and there, but I was frustrated because no matter how much I tried, it was difficult to reverse the effects of sedentary lifestyle. It is insidious, and you do not even realize it. You have no idea what real activity means, and what real activity does for your physiology.

Nowadays, I am moving around all the time. I am constantly in motion, constantly doing the next thing. I take breaks, I meditate, I sit at a computer. I do all those things that I used to, but now I am keeping habits that get me out of a chair, off of the couch and moving around. Moving around is probably the factor in weight loss above anything else. Seems really simple, but the compounding effect of inactivity is so overwhelming that anything you do pales in comparison. You simply have to reverse this impact, and that starts with habit. Objects in motion stay in motion. So true.

I am impressed to say that habit, and habit alone, will have more powerful effect in a person’s life then anything else. Now the real debate is what habit!? I could make a real case the morning and evening prayer, which was a core element of the 365 commitment I made was perhaps the best habit to start. However, that gets to close to religion for most people, and that freaks people out. Suffice to say, that you probably already know the best habit you should start. Pick one and get on with it already. If you already have a good habit going, then get another one going!

Guy Reams

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