This blog post is not written by me - but the rather wonderfully titled - Laptop Zentrepreneur (Andrew Spence)
I liked it - apart from the first quote - where I would think it is "your network which is your net worth" - but hey ho - still a cool blog idea.
As Andrew quotes Benjamin Franklin who says:
“Your net worth to the world is usually determined by what remains after your bad habits are subtracted from your good ones”
But this was before the world of the internet and Linkedin - and perhaps he was thinking about something else :)
Habit forming
Waking up early, eating healthy, exercising, meditating, working hard; these are all habits that most of us crave for. Most successful people are good at habit forming and most of those who struggle to form them, struggle to be successful. Being positive and staying successful is in itself a habit. Learning the process of habit forming is one tool that will help you for the rest of your life and this is what has worked for me personally.
Habit Forming Tips to Help You Form Any Habit Quickly
Tip 1 – Start ridiculously small.
This is the most important thing to remember with habit forming. When you are trying to form any habit, you are also trying to quit the habit of not doing that thing. Interesting perspective right? For example, If you are a network marketer and want to start calling ten people a day, you should keep it in mind that you are already in the bad habit of not calling ten people a day. So its sometimes hard for you to break that habit and form the exact opposite of it. That’s why its often the case that if you try to go to the gym daily, you might do it once or twice but then find some excuse not to go. In the beginning all that matters is to be consistent even if it’s so small that it doesn’t provide you any benefit at first. But, this is how habit forming develops. When I say a ridiculously small step I mean like starting with just one phone call the first day for a few days. How ridiculous is that! Just 1 phone call! You can have absolutely no excuse for not making one phone call in one day. The point is to repeat the activity daily for at least a month for maximum habit forming effect. That will ingrain it as a habit. So don’t make it too difficult to ensure that you maintain that consistency of calling people every day.
Tip 2 – Increase intensity in baby steps.
Once you start with very small steps, slowly you’ll start feeling more confident about it and that is when you will notice habit forming is working. That’s the time to increase the amount and that should be done in little baby steps. You don’t want to put too much pressure on your newly formed habit as that might lead you to crash and burn. If you’ve been gradually habit forming by building up the number of phone calls you make on a daily basis you’ll start feeling better about yourself so you can start doing a little more. Do 5-6 phone calls per day. But don’t try to increase too much. This is still early days for your habit and it’s more important to take things slow so as to make sure that you do it consistently.
Tip 3 – Never miss 3 days in a row.
Once you start habit forming consistently make sure that you never miss 3 days in a row. It’s okay to miss one day here and there. Sometimes laziness catches us unaware and a day is missed even though its still only a ridiculously small amount of activity being undertaken. You find that illusive excuse for not making that call. That’s okay. Don’t fret too much about it. 2 days in a row should sound the alarm in your head. If you miss 2 days in a row, your most important task for the next day should be to make that call.
Tip 4 – Reward yourself for reaching milestones.
Habit forming is hard work and if you don’t reward yourself for hard work, after a while your brain is going to refuse to do any sort of hard work. So it’s important to set up milestones and goals and reward yourself with a treat whenever you reach those habit forming goals. For example you can set a milestone at calling your leads everyday for a week. When you reach that goal, give yourself a day off where you sleep in late and relax (or whatever you consider to be a reward) This will let your brain make the connection between working through pain and getting a pleasurable reward.
Habit Forming Will Change Your Life
If you apply these habit forming tips you can start to apply these tips to all areas of your life and business. Instead of going head on against old habits and failing again and again it’s much better to be smart about the whole process and learn these simple steps to forming habits. Once you understand and start applying this process in your life, no habit will be too hard to form and you’ll be that much closer to success. This is a great quote which sums up the power of forming habits:
Successful people are simply those with successful habits – Brian Tracy
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