By Ahsan
We are the sum total of our habits. All of our good habits, render good results. All of our bad habits, inhibit results. Habits make us and habits break us. Think deeply for a moment and see if this is true in your life.
What is H.A.B.I.T ?
A helpful acronym for HABIT is: Holistic Actions Building Incredible Traction
Traction towards what, you ask? Traction towards your goals. When we want to achieve our goals, we need to have habits that help build sustained traction. When considering your goals, start building a list of habits that are needed to support the achievement of your goals. For example, if we want to be on time for appointments, we might make it a habit to be ten minutes early. Likewise, if we want to build a strong and muscular body, we probably should make the habit of thinking of a muscular image of our body and exercise regularly. Habits are always actions that we take either mentally or physically. These actions (read habits) drive us toward our goals.
The challenge is making habits stick, isn’t it? If we do some thinking and list out the habits we need to reach our goals, we will find that some days we will do them and other days we will forget to do them. Intentions alone do not make a habit automatic. The habits that stick need more than just alarms and reminders. We will be better off, if we can make the habit a part of a routine. For example, if your goal is to work out when you come home from work, what is your usual routine? Do you change into something more comfortable? Do you flop down in front of the T.V? Do you raid the fridge? Do these habits support your goals?
In other words, build goal-driven habits into a routine and see your goals being achieved. Make exercising a routine by having structures in place. That structure could be exercising five days a week except for Saturday and Sunday, 30 minutes after arriving home, after changing into your work out clothes.
Just be sure to build one habit at a time. If you are a normal human being, there are probably 37 habits you want to change. Realistic achievement of changing 37 habits starting tomorrow all at once will guarantee failure. Instead, identify one habit and work on it for two weeks. At the end of two weeks, start working on the second habit on your list and so on. Over time, you will see more of your habits becoming natural and ingrained, especially when they are part of your routine.
This approach is holistic because these actions are being implemented so as to build rare and incredible results in your life that have traction and magnetize your goals into reality.
Action Steps:
List a goal you want to achieve in the next three months.
List the step by step plan (structure and routines) to achieve it.
Figure out the key habits that will magnetize the goal into reality.