Pick a sport, a musical instrument, a job, a profession, or almost anything that makes up part of our daily life and everything we do we had to go through a “learning curve” to perfect. I can’t remember back to when I learned to tie my shoes but I do remember watching my children learn to tie their shoes. Every move was with great concentration and done very slowly. But with daily practice we get to the place we tie our shoes without any conscious thought given to it. In fact today (I’m over 60) I can tie my shoes and carry on a conversation at the same time.
We make thousands of decisions every single day of our lives. But most of them we are not even aware that we are making them. We have the ability to learn complex functions and then simplify them by frequent repetition until they become almost automatic to us. This ability is do to our habits. Habits are nothing more than what we do without conscious thought.
Benjamin Franklin once said that if you take all your good habits and subtract all your bad habits, the result is your contribution to society. What we have been trained to do, or trained ourselves to do, defines to some degree our benefit to the people around us.
Ted Pollock who is an expert in time management and behavioral psychology, says that training yourself in good habits requires stern self-discipline at first. But once those habits become second nature, the payoff is considerable. Good habits save effort, ease routines, increase efficiency, and release power.
The kind of man or woman you will be in five, ten or twenty years will be determined by the habits you have today. If you want to be known as a kind person, then you need to develop the habit of being kind. If you want to be known as a generous person, then you need to develop the habit of generosity. These characteristics do not come naturally. You have to cultivate a lifestyle in which those things can occur and become second nature to you.
Where are we supposed to start? We need to examine the habits we have today. All of us have our daily routines. We no longer think about them. Remember routines are habits. However, you cannot make a lifestyle change simply by overlaying them on your old habits. Habits need to be acknowledged and a deliberate plan made to change them. So, get out that sheet of paper and begin to think through your daily habits.
After you have made that list you need to write in the next column whether or not it is a good habit, bad habit, or a neutral habit. Bad habits are those that waste time or energy. I talked to people who say that they can’t go to bed at night until after the late news. I simply ask them, “why not?” The world is going to be there in the morning. People go to work tired because they stayed up late watching something they have no control over. People get in the habit of having an evening snack before they go to bed and then wonder why they are putting on weight.
I am not going to sit here and tell you that changing a habit is always going to be easy. Some habits are very difficult to change. But the good news is that the psychologists tell us that we can develop a new habit in as little as twenty-one days. Now I have to get to work and see which habits need to get gotten rid of in my life and what are some new habits that will help be get the most out of life and achieve success.
John Corbin developed some new habits and is becoming very successful. One of the new habits is that of learning a new business vibeforme com/?ID=161739.
James Heller
