Getting in the Habit

"Don't spend your precious time asking 'Why isn't the world a better place?' It will only be time wasted. The question to ask is 'How can I make it better?' To that there is an answer.”    - Leo F. Buscaglia

I just returned from the annual National Association of Professional Organizers conference where I presented a couple of workshops and also heard three wonderful keynote speakers: Jack Canfield, Mark LeBlanc, and Sam Geist. All three speakers offered great suggestions that, if implemented, could completely alter the course of one’s personal and/or professional life.

There’s just one thing that stops us from implementing great ideas: our habits!

If you keep doing what you’re doing, you’ll keep getting what you’re getting. Your thoughts are habit. Your actions are habit. Your relationships may be maintained as a habit. If you want something in your life to be different, you are the only one who can make it happen.

This month I’ll share some of my conference notes with you as we examine each of these areas – thoughts, actions, and relationships -- and look at ways to shake things up a bit and form new habits.

Your THOUGHT Habits

"Your own mind is a sacred enclosure into which
nothing harmful can enter except by your permission."
- Ralph Waldo Emerson

We think an average of 50,000 thoughts a day. A large percent of those thoughts are negative. Someone once said, “If you think you can or you think you can’t, you’re right.” 

Be careful about what you think, as your thoughts are blueprints for actions. A great deal of what we see depends on what we're looking for.

It is important that we review our thoughts each day. Many of us are not aware of how much we actually think or how negative our attitudes might be. Positive thinking is the only way to produce positive results. What we believe to be true and what we think about consistently is mirrored back to us in our experience.
A friend just sent me a great Japanese folk tale. I’ll share it below…

Long ago in a small, far away village, there was a place known as the House of a Thousand Mirrors. A small, happy little dog learned of this place and decided to visit. When he arrived, he bounced happily up the stairs to the doorway of the house. He looked through the doorway with his ears lifted high and his tail wagging as fast as it could. To his great surprise, he found himself staring at 1000 other happy little dogs with their tails wagging just as fast as his. He smiled a great smile, and was answered with 1000 great smiles just as warm and friendly. As he left the house, he thought to himself, "This is a wonderful place. I will come back and visit it often."

In this same village, another little dog, who was not quite as happy as the first one, decided to visit the house. He slowly climbed the stairs and hung his head low as he looked into the door. When he saw the 1000 unfriendly looking dogs staring back at him, he growled at them and was horrified to see 1000 little dogs growling back at him. As he left, he thought to himself, "That is a horrible place, and I will never go back there again." 

All the faces in the world are mirrors. Ugly thoughts make ugly faces. What kind of reflections do you see in the faces of the people you meet? If you don’t like the reflection coming back at you, you can change it by starting with yourself!

Take 100 percent responsibility for your life. Don’t play the victim. I love Jack Canfield’s equation, which I’ve shared before and it bears repeating:

E (event) + R (your response) = O (outcome).

Although you do not have control over all the EVENTS that take place in your life, you do have control over your RESPONSE to those events. When you change a variable in a mathematical equation, it changes the quotient (the outcome). So change your response…and you’ll change the OUTCOME, which will change your life!

Have a positive expectation. Your thoughts and feelings are the most powerful part of you, because they affect your actions and outcomes. Use the Law of Attraction to help you get what you want. (Read my April Ezine for more about this.)

A June 1997 story in the Wall Street Journal mentioned that HMOs reported that as much as 70 percent of all visits to a primary care physician are for a psychosomatic illness -- a disorder that involves both mind and body. According to Dr. David Sobel, a primary care physician and author of the Mind-Body Health Newsletter, only 16 percent of people who visit their physician for common complaints like headache and stomach upset are diagnosed with a physical, organic cause. That means that 84 percent are suffering from an illness that originated in THOUGHT! The majority of people literally think their way to sickness.

It's not just our health that our thoughts affect. In Make Your Life Worthwhile, Emmet Fox wrote, "The more you think about lack, bad times, etc., the worse will your business be; and the more you think of prosperity, abundance, and success, the more of these things will you bring into your life. The more you think about your grievances or the injustices that you have suffered, the more such trials will you continue to receive; and the more you think of the good fortune you have had, the more good fortune will come to you."

According to Mark LeBlanc, author of Growing Your Business!, failure is caused by the lack of Clarity, Congruency, and Consistency. Set your intention for each of these areas of your life by writing down your goals. Be sure they are specific and are congruent with your values:

• Financial
• Health and fitness
• Business and career
• Relationships
• Fun time and recreation
• Personal (spiritual, emotional)
• Contribution (legacy)

On a 3- by 5-inch index card, identify one breakthrough goal. State this goal as if you have already achieved it, using I AM or I HAVE to begin the sentence. Carry this index card with you wherever you go and review your breakthrough goal daily.

Your ACTION Habits

We first make our habits, and then our habits make us.”
- John Dryden

In her book, Choose the Happiness Habit, Pam Golden writes: "Take the story of two brothers who are twins. One grows up to be an alcoholic bum. The other becomes an extremely successful businessman. When the alcoholic is asked why he became a drunk, he replies, "My father was a drunk." When the successful businessman is asked why he became successful, he says, "My father was a drunk." Same background. Same upbringing. Different choices."

Most of us have routines we follow. While some habits are good ones, they can stifle our creativity and prevent us from experiencing major breakthroughs. Something as simple as choosing a different route to and from work each day will cause you to see new things which will spark new thoughts and ideas. As a result, you will increase your creativity.

What could you do to change your routine? Could you change some of the daily actions you take? For example, would changing the way you handle email enable you to take a new action or complete a more urgent task? I sometimes answer my email first thing in the morning, and this one action almost always takes me off course for the whole day. Scheduling a specific time to answer my email later in the day has freed my early morning time for exercise, meditation, and work on important projects.

When I go out, I try to take a different route to wherever I'm going.  Some of my best ideas come to me when I am on my way to an appointment. I carry a small digital recorder to capture any great ideas that come to me while I am driving.
The more you can shake up your routines, the more you will stimulate creative thinking. If you want to try an interesting experiment, when you're getting dressed in the morning, change the way you dress yourself.  If you usually place your right leg in the pant leg first, try putting your left leg in first.  Or try changing something in your routine as you shower, shave, put on makeup, etc.

The more you take advantage of opportunities to stimulate your mind, the more you will come up with new, creative ideas that ultimately will produce significant results.

To achieve your breakthrough goal, try this idea from Mark LeBlanc:

• Identify 3 baby steps – high volume activities done in the morning that will move you toward achieving your breakthrough goal. Make your three actions specific and measurable.
• Ask yourself two questions daily, and write down the answers:
• AM Question: What will I do today to achieve my breakthrough goal of ____ for this month? (Be specific and measurable with the three actions you write down.)
• PM Question: What did I do today to achieve my breakthrough goal of ____ for this month?
• Be aware of your self-talk when you choose your actions:
• “Need to” produces stress.
• “Should” (based on what others think) produces guilt and distress.
• “Want to” produces tangible success.
• “Love to” produces significance.

Your RELATIONSHIP Habits

“The relationships we have with the world are largely
determined by the relationships we have with ourselves.”
- Greg Anderson

As the saying goes, “You are what you eat.” If you believe that your relationships “feed” you in some way, then it’s time to take a look at the steady diet that you consume, based on the relationships you surround yourself with.  

Make a list of people you spend time with and ask yourself these questions for each name on your list:  

• Is this person generally positive or negative?
• Does he/she encourage and uplift you or discourage and pull you down?  
• Are his/her core values consistent with your own?
• Do you feel appreciated and valued or discounted and discarded by this person?
• Does he/she consistently succeed or fail (however they define success)?
• Does this person challenge you to reach for stretch goals, or does he/she encourage you to "play it safe" and hold back?

Mark LeBlanc suggests that you identify the 25 most important people who are in a position to impact your life by being an advocate for you and your business. If you don’t have 25 people in mind now that can be true advocates (not just supporters), it may take time to develop this list. Stay in touch with your advocates so you make contact at least once every 30 days and create a top-of-mind presence. Don’t ask for anything. Just be a valuable resource to them. Stay in touch by calling, emailing, sending cards or notes, and personal visits. By keeping in touch regularly and adding value to their lives, they will remember to tell others about you. What you send out will come back.

Join me in implementing at least one of these new ideas to effect change in your life. Then let me know the impact it has. I look forward to hearing from you a month from now!

"If you change the way you look at things,
the things you look at change.”
- Dr. Wayne Dyer