Habits Are Habit Forming

by Coree on March 31st, 2009

It is often said that for the first 30 years you make your habits; after that your habits make you.

All successful people have good habits, while unsuccessful people have bad ones. The trick is to replace your bad habits with good ones. As you can become a slave to bad habits, so can you become guided by good habits, it just takes your determination to do it.

So how do you replace bad habits with good ones? First, you must determine what good habits are. You can use the word HABITS as an acronym.

H – Healthy lifestyle. Take time to exercise and eat right every day. With creating and developing the positive habit of living a healthy lifestyle such as exercising daily and eating the right food, our energy and motivation will increase and we become more focused.

A – Action. Taking action is the most important thing you can do as a business owner. We can be the most intelligent people in the world, have a college degree in marketing and listen to priceless training however, if we do not create and develop the habit of daily action and put what we know and learn into action, then nothing is going to happen in our business. Create and develop the habit of acting now. . acting today. . . without thinking about whatever has happened in the past. Yesterday is history, tomorrows a mystery, all we have is today to act.

B – Befriending successful people. There was a study done that showed that an individual’s income is directly correlated to the individual’s friends and associations. In fact is showed that our incomes are within a few percentage points of our friends and the people we associate with.

I – “I time”. Taking time each day to do something expressly for your own pleasure and enjoyment. Your I-time can be as little as 10 to 15 minutes working on a personal hobby or reading the article about your favorite sports team or just meditating quickly. The purpose here is to do something that you enjoy doing for yourself and is also an opportunity to reward yourself. Celebrate your successes of the day and be grateful for them. I-Time also provides a sense of balance in our days that can be many times jammed pack with working, taking care of our families, and running your business

T – Time management. Plan your day the night before and commit to doing income producing activities. Income Producing Activities do not include organizing your desk or checking your email or reading cnn.com

S – Self development. Continuously seek out ways to learn more about self development, both in business and personal ways. Creating and developing the positive habit of daily self-development has proven to increase income, energy and the expectations for yourself and your future. Spending 15 – 20 minutes a day on self-development is sufficient and does not require a lot of time.

So how do you develop good habits? By constant repetition of an activity that is a pleasure to perform. When you consciously pursue good habits and perform them every day, in a short time they become habits. So if you have the ability to create the habits that create you, then choose the good ones!

If you follow this plan and replace all your bad habits with good ones, you will be amazed at the difference this will make in yourself and your business.