Do You Control Your Habits?
April 24, 2009 by Sandrine
Filed under Success Tracks
You get home from work, park your car in a specific location, a specific way, throw your shoes in the right corner, leave your jacket on the middle chair, open the fridge, grab a drink, sit on the sofa, put your feet on the table, and grab the remote.
Then you stop to think; you just realized that you always do exactly that, every night, without ever thinking about it. It is a habit. You look at your drink, your foot on the table and the remote in your hand; you don’t know how they got there. You had made the decision this morning to do something else right away, as soon as you got home.
Do you control your habits? Or do your habits control you? Unfortunately, most people are controlled by their habits. We have behaved in certain ways for as long as we can remember or have been conditioned to behave in those ways while growing up. We never think about them and take them for granted.
We will never admit that they control us, until we decide to have new habits; we never feel the strength of our habits until we decide to break free of them. Now, if those habits are good habits, then it is good thing to be controlled by them. Chances are that most of your strongest habits are bad ones you would like to change.
The good news is that no matter where you are, you can begin taking action today to control your habits. Since ultimately your habits will always control you, what you want is to build habits that you want to be controlled by. Here is a simple system you can use to master new habit starting right now.
- Decide, every week or month, one bad habit you want to replace
- Decide which good habit you will replace the bad one with
- Plan exactly what steps you will take everyday to build the new habit
- Plan ahead for what you will do when you fall back in the old habit
- Focus your thoughts on the new habits and do not allow yourself to spend any on the bad habits
Getting rid of old habits is very difficult; fortunately you have what it takes to replace those habits with new ones that serve you better, one step at a time. Soon, you will be controlled by those successful habits you want to be controlled by.
For more help on how to become a better marketer, download one of our free audio.
[...] Where is Your Focus? [...]
[...] Have You Been Trying to Manage Your Time? [...]