Habits control so much of our lives, they are the things we do that we don’t really give much thought if any to
Things we do that because we don’t notice we do them, we don’t really know why we do them
In this week’s episode Tom talks about the power habits have in and over our lives, and how we can leverage them to accomplish what we want in life!
3 Must-Hear Takeaways from this episode
Take an inventory of habits and identify the good, bad and neutral habits so you can remove the bad and neutral habits to create more space for good ones.
Create a path for new habits by creating triggers and setting boundaries for that habit.
Celebrate progress, however minor it is, in a fun way.
Show Notes:
Habits control so much of our lives and most of them go unnoticed. But they impact our time and effectiveness.
Some habits are harmless, some are harmful, and some get in the way. In order to cultivate healthy habits, take an inventory of your current habits, then write them out and identify if they’re helping you or harming you. Remember that a neutral habit can be the enemy of a great habit, because they consume time from good habits. Don’t tolerate a neutral habit and let good be the enemy of great.
You need to create a path for healthy habits. That means changing up your routine. You can do that by inventing a trigger. Those can be based on things like a time of day or an action in the household.
Then, we need to put a boundary on that habit so it doesn’t consume all of our time and energy.
Be sure to measure your progress and make a big deal about a little progress. This is not about over-celebrating, it’s about knowing that your triggers work.
Lastly, keep it easy. No one is ever going to do the hard stuff right off the bat. We all do a bunch of easy stuff first in order to see results.
The hard stuff is consistency. The right decision consistently is what makes massive change.
For example, one of my daily habits I cultivated was once I got home from work and my wife was cooking dinner, I would go out back and water our grass. The trigger was my wife cooking dinner and I had until dinner was ready to finish. It was easy to measure because I could see the grass growing. And, the second I had even the smallest peach fuzz on a patch of dirt, I made sure to get my family out there and show it to them and I was so excited that I was one step closer to my goal. That habit transformed our backyard to be more enjoyable for the whole family.
Remember: We can identify our daily actions, identify the power they have over our lives, and leverage them to accomplish our goals.