Success Squad Blog

Make it a Habit to Swim Upstream

In the previous post, “Elephant’s Don’t Bite” I explain how your life is ultimately dictated based upon the choices you make which in turn creates a habit.

Whatever choice you made in life is the direct result of your current financial status, size of your pants, your relationship status, and overall happiness.

Many of us want our lives to be better but we are already comfortable (or have just accepted) where we are in our lives.

Definition of insanity:

Doing the same things you’ve always done and expecting different results.

Now I know you are not insane so it all begins with the choices you choose from now on that will dictate what type of life you want to live.  So now the big question you are asking is, “How do I know what the right choices are?”

Here is a simple formula I learned from Darren Hardy (the publisher of Success magazine):

When in doubt, choose the harder task or what you don’t want to do – that’s usually exactly what you should do.  Take the path of MOST resistance to create a positive habit.

Many of you are probably thinking (like I was thinking) why would I want to do that?  But let’s put it this way: If you are disappointed in where you are in life right now, whatever choices you have been making aren’t working.  So maybe you should change some choices you are making now.  Remember the definition of insanity?

You and your brain are creatures of habit.

It is easy enough to talk yourself into taking the comfortable and easy route.  Just like a rushing river, these bad habits will wash you back downstream in the wrong direction.  The only way to change that direction is to retrain those negative habits into positive ones through habitual tendency.

Think of this like climbing a mountain.  Someone doesn’t go against gravity and suffer because he knows that it’ll be easy going back down.  Usually people tackle climbing a mountain because they know that once at the top they will have accomplished something very few people have dared to try.  They also look forward to the view at the top and the feeling of knowing that they took on a challenge and have conquered.

So what I am asking you is to conquer your bad habits and to pursue a path of MOST resistance in order to accomplish your goals.

Here are some examples of low resistance and high resistance choices.

Low Resistance:

  • Surrendering to peer pressure
  • Starting your new program on “Monday” or tomorrow (instead of today)
  • Reacting in anger
  • Holding a grudge
  • Going along with gossip
  • Giving the ‘silent treatment’
  • Blaming others
  • Making excuses

High Resistance

  • Feeling the fear and doing it anyway
  • Admitting you were wrong and apologizing
  • Going to the gym when you don’t feel like it
  • Ordering a salad when that burger is tempting you
  • Forgiving someone who wronged you
  • Saying no to (yet another) alcoholic drink
  • Taking responsibility for your actions

The only way a person grows and learns new experiences is to reach outside of their comfort zone.  These experiences are what many people fear but through repetition it becomes a habit and it is no longer uncomfortable.  If you want to finally obtain what’s missing from your life you need to start doing stuff you avoid and things that you think are hard.

Make a commitment to do something you fear each day or dedicate yourself to accomplish a task you have been postponing or hate doing.  Start off really small like swapping out a meal with a salad or going on a 20 minute jog.  I don’t expect you to be a new person overnight, but just make a commitment that you will reach outside of your comfort zone.  Fight the tendency. Climb up that mountain. Take the path of most resistance.

I will leave you with one of my favorite quotes by Ralph Waldo Emerson.

“Do not go where the path may lead, go instead where there is no path and leave a trail.”

Make a list of the things you avoid but know you should do.  Once you have written them down, declare it and take action.  What three things do you NOT want to do, but you will commit to doing today? Let us know in the comments below!

See you at the top,

Jus10

PS - Click here for the original article and other useful success tips.

Filed under  //   choices   positive habits   success  

Elephants Don’t Bite – Choices

Have you ever been bitten by an elephant? How about a mosquito?  It’s the little things in life that will bite you.

Our lives are completely dependent upon an accumulation of all the choices we make.

These choices can send us sky rocketing to our goals or they can throw you far into a deep hole that will require more than just a ladder to climb out.  The funny thing is that it is not usually the big mistakes that sabotage our lives, but the frequent and minuscule choices that has you digging a hole that it is too deep to climb out of.

Heck, we all fall victim to these dumb choices and I fell miserably for this evil trap.  If you really think it, life basically exists because you made a choice about something.  Once you make a choice soon after comes a result.  Whether it is a good or bad result is based upon the choice you have established in the beginning.

Each choice starts a behavior that over time soon becomes a habit.

If that choice becomes a bad habit, you will find yourself often making harder choices or using more force to get yourself off that bad habit.

So here is where I stand today.  I’ve got a confession to make and I can tell you from experience that this phenomenon of slowly digging your own grave will creep on you without any warning at all.  A few months ago I felt that I was on my way to becoming someone who I felt I could be proud of.  Financially I was doing pretty good, I had awesome support from people who were constantly uplifting me, I was waking up with enthusiasm, and felt that I was living an empowering life.  However, I soon strapped on a bomb to my chest and set the timer to explode with each small, insignificant choice I began to make.  I reverted to my old bad habits in thinking that I should reward myself for all the hard work I have put in and what I have accomplished.

I first started to watch mindless TV shows again…which lead to hours of wasted time that made me panic about doing work late at night.  Stressed and needing to stay up, I reverted to drinking soda (which I haven’t done in years) in order to stay up.  With having little sleep I began to feel sluggish through out the day and unmotivated because I didn’t have the same energy as before.  Stressed because of not feeling like I was having a fulfilling life I decided to go out to night clubs to look for that long lost excitement again.  As you might have guessed this resulted in late nights out, an empty wallet, and days wasted recovering because of all the money I spent donating to the life of bad habits.  This constant cycle plummeted me down the rabbit’s hole.
So now what is there to do?  I and like many of us have allowed ourselves to make choices with out thinking about the consequences.  As long as you continue making a choice unconsciously, you can’t consciously choose to change that ineffective behavior and turn it into productive habits.  In other words…WAKE UP and make empowering choices.

In essence, you make choices, and then your choices make you.

Now I’m not telling you to make some drastic change right now and turn every bad habit into a good one.  The biggest challenge is that you’ve been sleepwalking through your choices.  Half the time, you’re not even aware you are making them.  What separates the successful from the mediocre is that the successful are aware of making choices that support the expansion of life while the mediocre make unconscious decisions.  Just by simply being aware of your choices and spending 30 seconds weighing the risks and potential outcomes of some of your decisions could save you days, months, even years of bad habits.

Nobody intends to sabotage themselves and become obese, go through financial hardship, or destroy a great relationship, but often (if not always) those consequences are the result of a series of small, poor choices.  It is time to WAKE UP! :)

Stay tuned to future posts where I will be sharing with you guys some techniques and fundamentals that will help in regaining that momentum.

See you at the top,

Jus10

PS - Click here for the original article and more great blog posts.

Filed under  //   choices   positive habits