If you want to accomplish something amazing then you need to understand the power of habits. The path to that success you want is going to happen by hundreds of days strung together consistently following a habit. Incremental success, over a long period of time, always trumps any individual single effort. You will never get where you want to go in one day, it will always take a long period of time and the only way you can keep it up is by and through habits. Your motivation will ALWAYS fade away, you cannot overcome what no human has ever overcome. You will lose interest, your motivation will sag and your intent will eventually fade. If you want to achieve something then the first thing that you must examine is what habits you are going to form to get there.
Getting to your desired goals require commitment and the commitment is always centered around habits. The things that you actually make the commitment to do. Goals are nothing unless you know the daily, weekly things that you have to accomplish to get there. The goal gives them meaning, true, but without those consistent behaviors then you are going nowhere. Habits are required because they are powerful. You want to get to the point when you wake up every morning and just automatically do the habits. By the time your mind even has a chance to shut you down for some stupid excuse, you have already accomplished the critical habits. This is the only way to take on major ambitions. It is through the pursuit and establishment of habit.
Habits can be improved upon, and you can increase how much you are doing, and that is also important. However, you absolutely must have the basic building block of habitual practice down. Therefore, it is recommended that you start small and easy and work first on establishing the habits. You may have enough motivation right now to take on a bunch early on, however, that will fade quick. You will give up after the first sign of resistance, so the best thing you can do is start small and build the habit first. This is not just me talking, this is every scientific journal article on the subject that I have read. Success requires small incremental habit formation. There is no way around it.
Establish a goal, set some measurable objectives along your path, then determine the habits that you need. Come up with something you can do on a regular periodic basis and make it ridiculously easy for you to follow, then just keep doing it. After 90 days or so, you will know you have a habit. You will naturally increase the intensity, do not worry about that. You will want to after a while, and you will actually start to enjoy what you are doing and the day will just not feel right unless you do. I have learned a ton as I have adopted this process and repeated it over and over again for multiple habits that I have formed.
It is funny, how there was a time when I had a hard time keeping a habit because I did not remember to do it. That is no longer a problem, once a habit is established it just happens. Writing this blog, for example, I have written something like this for 687 days in a row. It may seem like a simple thing, but seriously challenge yourself to think about this. Could you sit down and come up with something to write and then actually write it everyday!? It is something that we do not like to do. It sucks to put yourself through the mental exercise of crafting words and then putting some thought to it. So how do I accomplish it? Quite simple. Habit. Habit. Habit. My brain is now completely wired around this habit. I am already crafting the content based on my experiences. I am already done writing it in my head before I sit down to type. The day just does not feel write until I have finished my thoughts and there are sometimes when I forget that I did write the blog, then sit down at 11pm at night to get it done only to discover that I had already written and posted it earlier that day. Habit is amazing, powerful and the single ingredient to your future success.
Guy Reams (687)
