Few of us would argue that habits have a huge impact on our lives. Habits can make monkeys out of us all…For better or worse, they can shape our destiny.

Repeated mistakes depend on the negative patterns in your life, the bad habits. The path of least resistance can easily turn into negative routines which become neural pathways that are terribly hard to change. Consider how hard it is to end a bad habit even when you recognize it as one. The first step towards changing bad habits is to recognize the negative patterns in your life. Here are some examples:

In life:

• Do you procrastinate?
• Do you try and “spend” your way to happiness?
• Do you eat when you aren’t hungry, maybe to help you deal with painful emotions?
• Do you drink to escape?
• Do you behave addictively with social media?
• Do you avoid doing the important things in life?
• Do you spend time with people who keep you from being the best you?

In your head:

• Do you worry about things over which you have no control?
• Do you obsess about every possible outcome of a choice?
• Do you constantly judge yourself?
• Do you nurture feelings of guilt even after you have been forgiven?
• Do you dwell on things that you could have done differently?
• Do you blame yourself even when it isn’t your fault?
• Do you constantly doubt yourself?

You don’t need a religious background to acknowledge that most bad things are distortions of something that was originally good. Rituals, habits, routines, and rhythms can be a terrific force for good in your life. They are part of a whole and balanced life.

Positive Patterns

Think for a minute about the positive patterns in your life. What are they? They might seem small and insignificant but they are, in reality, the things that hold most of our lives together in a good way. It might be taking your kids to school, reading the news in the morning, or lazing around in your PJs on Sunday morning, what you eat for breakfast, making love to your

Think for a minute about the

positive patterns in your life.

What are they?

partner, or walking the dog. Each of them is an informal routine or habit, a ritual of sorts. They create a strong pattern in your life and together, these sorts of experiences keep your life together in ways that you can scarcely imagine.

Here is a question for you to consider: When was the last time you set out to intentionally create a life changing habit? Overcoming habits is hard. It is hard a hundred times a day. You get hungry; you’re angry; you grow frightened, tired, lonely, and on it goes and you end up giving in. That is where your new habits come in.

When was the last time you set

out to intentionally

create a life changing habit?

As a coach, I spend a lot of time with people who want to improve, to create excellence in their lives. As with sales professionals where their activity, e.g., making calls and seeing clients, is what separates the good from the not so good. It is having better habits that make for the best business leaders and people who have the best personal lives.

Just better habits.

Better Habits

Your mind wants habits, and it couldn’t care less whether or not yours are good for you. If your habits are good, your success is almost guaranteed than if they are not. Habits easily help you handle difficult or surprise situations. The person who wakes every day and goes for a walk or a run—and has been doing it for the last 10 years—seldom runs into something more important when it is time for that walk or run. The person, perhaps you, has formed a powerful, positive habit and it has grown, almost effortlessly, to be more powerful than the resistance to it. In contrast, those of us who don’t exercise as regularly feel resistance when we even think of it. Our list of things to accomplish—or any distraction at all—instantly drags our attention away from the thought of working out, even something as easy as walking.

We all have habits in our outer and inner lives, good and bad. Negative habits of the mind and body are as easily formed as those of the spirit. Positive habits, on the other hand, require a lot of intentionality and grit as well as persistence. Once you develop that good habit, it is ingrained forever. It can be challenging but remember, we are all human.

Young Again

How many times have you said, or heard a friend say, “I wish I could be young again!” I don’t say it any longer. It has taken too much learning and effort to get where I am to give even an inch of it up. I don’t know about you, but for me it cost too much, was too hard to win or change. It was often at such a great cost to get here and have to fight for it all over again. I think that is perhaps why so many people elect to stay in careers or marriages that aren’t really what they want. It is just too hard to change that habit.

I hear of bloggers who lose entire blogs because they didn’t save them properly, or they lose whole websites, and I just cringe at the thought. Some of these blogs, if I lost them, I am not sure I could reproduce the thoughts and feelings that were there when I wrote. One of the fun things about all of this is that when finished, it can’t be taken away; it’s there for everyone to read. It is territory that has been gained and won.

Habits that help us be the best we can be are fabulous. I work with my kids to develop more of them. I want them to have good and strong habits. That isn’t a unique hope; all parents have this goal for their kids.

Getting Through the Resistance

As a coach, when I work with you, I help you develop good strong habits. Some of them are life changing, some only change your mood, but all are for the better. We don’t work with speculation or the latest trend, just tried and true methods that have been helping people develop good habits for the past thousand years. You master the resistance and gain the habit.  You might feel discouraged from time to time as you take an inventory of your life; good and bad can be a daunting thing. But together we work with that so that you don’t remain discouraged. Remember that every moment is a chance to turn it all around. If you find that don’t like what you have found in the inventory of your life, you have it completely within your power to start today developing new and better habits.

Good habits help you break through resistance; the best habits defeat effortlessly resistance.

Here is a little experiment for you to try.

Write down your three best habits, and then write down three that you want to change. Now, how badly do you want to change those last three?

Start Today

So, what do you think?  Do  you have some habits you need to work on?

If you are, give me a call so we can talk about it… schedule a time for a free call and tell me about it.

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