By: D. A. Slinkard
We have come to the letter ‘H’ in our alphabetical series on success and the word is “Habits”. We all have them and some are good, some are bad and some habits can be downright annoying to other people. Sometimes we disguise our habits by using another descriptive word such as “routine”. I do believe there has been a negative connotation with the word “habit” and we need to realize it is a part of our lives and who we are as individuals. We form a habit of how we go about our day.
I am sure the majority of people could tell you exactly what their day-to-day life looks like whether it be when they are at home, at work, at church, school, etc. We form habits that dictate the way our lives will go. I was brought up to always be on time, in fact, if you were 10 minutes early you might as well be considered late. There is a quote I often think about that says, “if you show up consistently 10 minutes late, you can also show up consistently 10 minutes early.” It is all about building the right habits in life.
If you were to take a deep dive into your daily living habits, what would you find? What habits would be considered good habits and what habits are those that should be eliminated? Taking the time to be critical of our own lives is not an easy task to do. Have you ever noticed how much easier it is to give advice to other people, but when it comes time for your own life you have no idea what direction to go?
Do not feel bad, there are times I am in the same boat. However, in the year 2022, we are focused on generating success as we have never had before. In the last article, I challenged you to write down ten specific goals and then target the one goal that if you could achieve in the next 24 hours would have the greatest, positive impact on your life. We take that article combined with our concept of habits and we need to start moving our life toward creating the habits that help us achieve our goals. We need to do it because no one else is going to do it for us. The fairy is not going to come in the middle of the night and just give to you everything you want. It will take work.
If you did not participate in the goal writing portion of the last article, I urge you to do so now and it will help you to change your life. For instance, if a person has the goal of losing weight, (which many people do) the person must focus on what their daily habits have created for them. What do the results suggest? If I have created a habit of eating junk food, I now need to retrain my daily habit and substitute the bad food for a healthier option. Will this be easy? Absolutely not, but it begins with making the choice to change. We must make the choice for change to happen.
However, before you can make the choice to change you must take the time to understand what you are and are not doing. It was not until I started paying attention to what choices I was making did I begin to realize I had some bad habits and I needed to get rid of them. I could not begin to think about goal achievement until I was able to remove some obstacles I was creating in my own life.
I believe our lives are impacted by the way we think and sometimes we think the wrong things and this is why we do not have success. Instead of thinking like the person we want to be, we think like the person we do not want to be. We do not think success, but we think failure, and this can be devastating for so many people. We enable doubt to creep into our way of thinking, and we go from being able-bodied creatures to people marred down in self-doubt. We have created the habit of holding ourselves back. Too many people do not take action until typically it is too late to do so. Whatever it is you want to achieve in life, you can, but you must first build the habits that bring you closer to achieving your goals.
By: D. A. Slinkard
D.A. Slinkard would love your feedback. You can contact him at da.slinkard@gmail.com
April 6, 2024
