Step 9: Habits of Heroes
In Step 8, we looked at how the Systematic Approach is about doing ‘real work’ that achieves goals that brings you step by step closer to your Ultimate Goal and Desired Future. In this step we’ll focus on how to build productivity good habits and break bad habits. Learn why it’s important to having good habits as part of your systematic approach to achieving milestones and goals.
For those just joining us at this point, you can continue and learn about the systematic approach, but it’s worth starting at step 1, My Current State, to give you better context. And its the starting point of this adventure.
Let’s get started. In our Happy Path Flight Plan illustration, we are touching on Habits, now in orange and bold below.
Heroes are made through their actions and habits. By doing things repeatedly, they create a pattern of excellence that becomes difficult to break. Therefore, it is so important to be mindful of your actions and to make sure they are always working towards your goals and ultimate goal. If you can maintain this focus, you will be able to continue making a difference in your world. Forming on-going good habits focused towards your ultimate goal are not easy to form and maintain hence why we have covered 7 previous steps before arriving here.
Everyone knows that habits are important. Failing to establish good habits can have a devastating effect on your well-being, making you feel anxious and stressed out.
Luckily, there are ways to break bad habits and build good ones instead. With the right knowledge you can build new habits that will improve your quality of life and transform you into the person you want to be.
Form Good Habits with Small Changes
Habits are constructed when you make a small change that becomes a new, larger pattern. For example, if you want to start exercising, start off with getting dress for exercise and do something simple like jogging for 5 minutes.
Once you’ve made that initial start, you can increase the difficulty by doing more, adding a bit at a time. So, whatever habit you want to create, start with a very small change that you can make daily.
Similarly, if you don’t already write down your goals and how you are going to achieve them, start with writing down your ultimate goal that you can achieve and break it right down to monthly, then weekly and finally to a daily tasks that is one step closer to that big goal.
Good habit form dovetails with the Systematic Approach covered in step 7, working hand in hand forming the right habits becomes easier and a powerful edge in your skillset.
Next, we’ll discuss the technique to start forming good habits specific to building your business.
Set Up Cues/Triggers for New Habits
If you don’t set up cues/triggers for new habits, then you’re more likely to just forget about them. This is especially likely if you set up new habits during a busy period when there’s little time to remember to do them. In today’s world we are surrounded by distractions with the rise of the smart mobile phones.
Setting up triggers for new habits is a great way to make sure that you don’t forget to do them. The easiest way to set up triggers for new habits is to use a daily reminder app or set daily alarms on your phone. But you just need to be aware that they can also be a cue for you to turn them off and just ignore them, creating a negative cue unintentionally. If this happens then turn off this cue and create another new one using something else.
A great way to overcome this is to treat exercise/fitness/meditation/yoga/etc. as a trigger to work on your business after you have finished the previous good habit.
For example, you can set up a cue that triggers you to start your exercise routine, say, this is a common habit for people to do either in the morning or afternoon for health reasons. It’s a different kind of focus to compared to working, especially if you have a day job. The last thing many people want to do is do more work when they get home.
The exercising in this example acts as your trigger to work on your business once you have finished. The physical activity stimulates the endocrines and motivates you to continue to do work on your business. These chain of events forms your healthy habit routine. And makes you feel good.
This works for activities such as meditation or anything that you like to do linked to healthy mind, body, and soul. This is a powerful trigger to motivating you to do the work on your business, side hustle or passion project. Combined with the Systematic Approach to planning, scheduling and the closed loop feedback cycle and a Perseverance Mindset you form a Rhythm that’s so powerful it gives you an unfair advantage over others doing a similar ambition as you. The rhythm you are developing will speed up the achievement of your goals and skills. You are becoming the authority in the space you have chosen to growth yourself and your business.
In the two diagrams below the demonstrate the habit cycles that starts off with the cue. The routine/s is then completed and reinforced with a reward of your choosing.
Remember to always to make them easy to do, productive (adding value) and focused on your desired future, ultimate goal and/or short-term goals.
Once the routine cycle has been completed then it’s just as important to reward yourself, this must be meaningful enough so that you crave it.
Set An Anchor Habit for Better Continuation
An anchor habit is a new habit that you use as the foundation for all your other new habits. The idea behind anchor habits is that they are so easy to do, that you feel like you can’t break them. This makes you want to continue to do them, which builds momentum and makes it much easier to add onto new habits. Just like what we have discussed with one routine triggering a second routine.
As an example, let’s say you want to start meditating. The first step is to find an easy meditation to start with, so that you can make it easier to remember. Once you’ve found one, then you can use that as your anchor habit for meditation.
Once you’ve started with this anchor habit, then you can use all the other benefits that come with new habits, such as creating a new routine, and setting a goal for yourself. So, the anchor habit becomes a cue/trigger for other habit/s.
Pay Attention to Your Thoughts and Turn Negative Thoughts into Positive Actions
Habits are based on repeated behavior, so it makes sense that they are also based on positive thinking. So, the best way to build strong new habits is to focus on positive thinking, and to turn negative thoughts into positive actions.
All new habits will fail if you focus too much on your past failures, or dwell on your flaws. Instead, you need to focus on the good things about yourself, such as your strengths and talents. It is critical to develop a Perseverance Mindset, so to learn about this if you haven’t already, work through Step 7.
Be Ruthless When It Comes to Bad Habits
If your new habits involve breaking bad habits, you need to be ruthless when it comes to breaking those bad habits. So, once you’ve broken down the bad habits that you want to break, you need to be brutal with yourself and stop them by going cold turkey and completely focus on doing the new, good habits.
You should keep a daily journal to write down the new, positive habits that you want to build, and to identify the triggers for each one. This journal can be used as a tool to help you identify the best ways to build each new habit, and to keep yourself focused.
Also journal each time you do a bad habit, how it made you feel after and what action you are going to take to prevent it happening again. It’s important to acknowledge when this happens and work through a corrective action plan.
Use the Systematic Approach to build a plan and schedule for you to stick to and follow it daily. Review it daily to keep reminding yourself what you have planned as your ultimate goal and visualize daily what your desired future state looks like. It is critical to develop a Systematic Approach, so to learn about this if you haven’t already, work through Step 8.
Identify The Trigger for Your Bad Habits
It’s important to identify the trigger for your bad habits, so that you can control your cravings. You need to think about what triggers your bad habits and try to figure out ways to reduce those triggers, or to change them so that they’re not as harmful.
For example, if you spend too much time on social media, try to figure out how you can reduce the number of times that you are online that isn’t adding value and driving you towards your goal. Also turn the time you are on social media into a reward.
This provides a link between your routine to complete a value adding task with a previous bad habit. You just need to time yourself with an alarm of when you need to finish the reward and move onto the next task. This is where the Systematic Approach kicks in and manages the habits and the Perseverance Mindset gives you the frame of mind to overcome procrastination, distractions and setbacks. These give you the skill-set to overcome these roadblocks.
Plan And Stick to Your New Routine
Finally, you need to plan and stick to your new routine for your good habits, and for your bad habits. Scheduling is all about thinking about when you’re going to do your new habits, and how to structure them, so that they’re more likely to be done. Sticking to your routine means that you need to follow through, and to follow the steps that were laid out in your new routine. This is all about creating a structure that you can follow, so that you’re more likely to follow it in the first place. If you are new here then I’d suggest starting with identifying your Current State covered in Step 1. For those who have been following their adventure along the happy path let’s move onto Step 10 Rhythm of Heroes.