How To Quadruple Your Chances of Success in Business
How To Quadruple Your Chances of Success in Business
We run our lives by habit much of the time, so it makes sense to focus on creating helpful habits. A high degree of success in creating winning business habits and achieving goals comes down to your repeated behaviours. They either help and support you or stall and sabotage your success. To check your habits are serving your business success, take a close look at how you spend your day. Do you get distracted and procrastinate, wasting valuable time on interesting yet unimportant things? Are you focused on the activities that grow your business success or put them off until tomorrow? Are you someone who plans their day carefully or leaves it to chance?
Unless you become more aware you may continue doing the same thing and getting the same results. In this article, I will share a strategy, which over the long term will help you gently and effortlessly create better habits. A simple methodology that is virtually pain-free, is easy and won’t add too much to your already big to-do list. Furthermore, when you stick with this methodolgy you will radically improve your chances of success in business habits.
Your habits are beneath your conscious awareness which makes them difficult to recognise and change
The truth is your habits are run in your subconscious mind, below your conscious awareness. What this means is you are probably not aware of many of them. Furthermore, habits are often hard to change and time-consuming to create, yet they are the key to improving your results and overall success. Creating habits in your personal life has the potential to build success in business habits as well.
Over the past decade, I have worked with hundreds of people to help them change challenging behaviours and create healthy habits. I know that forming lasting habits takes time and often much longer than anticipated. However, the end result can be transformational and life-changing. Consistency is the part that many fail to stick to. When a new behaviour feels hard and progress is slow, it’s easy to give up and fall back into our old ways.
‘We first make our habits and then our habits make us.’ John Dryden
Here’s why creating success in business habits is hard
First, let’s have a quick look at why we fail so often at creating lasting habits and fall short of our desired business or personal success:
- Your brain is hard-wired for safety and danger. Creating new habits require change which signals danger to the brain.
- Because you are a creature of habit, you have a type of inner thermostat set at your current habit. Most attempts to change habits are way outside your comfort zone which means the inner thermostat works even harder to return it back to current ‘normal.’
- The majority of New Year’s Resolutions fizzle out. As many as ninety-three percent. Committing to going the gym four times a week from a base of zero, is like opening the door on a forty degrees day when you have the aircon set at twenty-one degrees. As the hot air floods the room and warms it up, the thermostat works overtime to bring the temperature back to its current setting. It usually succeeds!
- Our brains are hard-wired to move away from pain and towards pleasure, which is why when you tire, as you run your life much of the time by habit, you fall back into your default behaviours. Selecting easy tasks such as scrolling through social media posts instead of completing a tedious report. Or, putting off focusing on marketing because being hands-on in your business feels more fun. Not the best recipe for success in business or helpful habits.
We tend to overestimate what we can do in the short term
- We usually overestimate what we can do in the short term and underestimate what we can do in the long term. This in itself is a mindset that sets yourself up for failure.
- We want instant gratification rather than long-term reward. As your goal may be way in the future, it’s too far away for us to keep motivated to do what is required.
- Ultimately you are an emotional being who is driven by how you feel. Consequently, it is much easier to choose the simple option in the here and now. Furthermore, when you tire or get decision fatigue, your subconscious mind takes over and you simply fall back into your familiar habits and ways of behaving. Moreover, this often pulls you further away from your desired level of success in business.
How can we overcome our propensity to fall back into our comfortable ways?
The solution is to change your expectations, extend your time-frame and simply focus on small daily actions instead of wondering why you haven’t achieved your goal yet. Much research leads us to believe that you can create a new habit in twenty-one days. However, there isn’t actually any empirical evidence to prove this. Furthermore, I know in reality it is often longer. You are unique which means one size doesn’t fit all. If you have never been organised or a great planner, you are going against a lifetime of poor habits. If you are new to business you may not have much experience in running a business. You may not yet be adept in success in business.
It can take one person a week to commit and another six months, one year or longer. I recently worked with a client who achieved transformational results. However, he had unsuccessfully tried to master this habit for five years before we worked together. Furthermore, it took us the best part of nine months to truly lock it in. Once done, it was a game-changer. This habit was a major turning point in his ability to take his success in business to a new level.
It will take you as long as the equivalent effort, desire, mindset, focus and commitment you put in.
Thirty-day challenges, while a great way to get started, don’t always create winning results or better business success. I know many people who have returned to their original slothful exercising habits once the challenge has ended. Their inner thermostat pulled them back to what was comfortable.
I believe in a new simpler, more realistic approach. Recent research suggests that to create lasting habits, whether to improve business success, health or personal goals takes anything from sixty-six to three hundred and sixty-five days. Yes, that’s right. Up to a year. While that may disappoint you, it also explains why so few people achieve the things they set out to do. They don’t stick with it long enough.
Embracing exercise as a natural habit takes time
I have helped smokers quit in one session, however, this is different from creating a new healthy habit. Quitting smoking is about breaking a bad habit; one that has no real benefits. Embracing exercise as a natural and normal habit in your life is different. It can radically transform lives and has numerous benefits. The same goes for becoming a master at planning at organising your workload. It has the potential to revolutionise your business success.
Here is your new solution for creating habits for success in business
- Take a look at what you are tolerating in your business and life. What would be the one thing if you could change that could be a game-changer?
- What benefits could this have in your life? Physically, financially, socially, emotionally or spiritually?
- What has it cost you by not changing it? What will it continue to cost you? Write it down.
- Get clear on exactly why you want to create this new habit. Ask yourself ‘why’ four times until you connect with a positive feeling.
- Decide on what would be a truly small step, a tiny behaviour you will commit to doing. Make it so easy that you know you will nail it.
- Consider how you will tack this tiny step onto something you already do. This is the key to avoiding overwhelming and feeling like you are adding yet more to your already large to-do list.
- Imagine how you will feel when you have nailed this new behaviour and made it part of your life.
- Do it daily for sixty-six days.
- Don’t miss a day. And if you do, one is acceptable, but never two. Don’t break the chain.
- Tick off your wins daily and celebrate.
Ultimately you are merely proving to yourself that you can do the things you say you will
The key here is to make your new behaviour super easy so it doesn’t feel time consuming or hard. You are ultimately trying to prove to yourself that you can be the sort of person who can do this. In other words, making a change at the core identity level. This is key in success in business. Later on, you can increase the intensity and frequency or simply continue with this small behaviour for another sixty-six days. Focus on the small daily step required rather than the outcome.
Here are a few examples:
- If you want to become a master planner in your business, commit to two minutes when you sit down at your desk.
- To create a habit of exercise, start small. Commit to two times a week for ten minutes. Anything extra is a bonus.
- Get up earlier? Set your alarm just five or ten minutes earlier to start with.
To reduce stress at work stop and breathe consciously
- Reduce stress at work? Breathe for one minute every two hours. Repeat a calming mantra such as ‘I breathe in calm, I breathe out stress.’ If you can’t give yourself the gift of one minute a few times a day, then maybe you need to take a hard look at what you are doing and where you are headed?
- Eat healthier? Start with using a smaller plate three times a week. Once you get used to the smaller plate over time, you can reduce the amount of food.
I detest cold showers and jumping into the ocean when the water is cold. What’s your one thing?
So, now it’s time, to be honest, and share my challenge. I hate cold water. Years ago as a competitive triathlete I frequently swam in the ocean and in cold water. As the years have gone by and I no longer compete in triathlons, I have become even more prone to cold. However, I have given myself an excuse not to get in the ocean, if the water feels cold or there is a slight cool breeze. Even though I bought a wetsuit last year it remains hardly used in our winter months. Furthermore, I loathe cold showers, even in the hot Queensland summer. This sort of bugs me, as I feel it has reduced my mental toughness, and I realise I have made up a convenient story around it! When I asked myself what am I tolerating, this one popped up. I believe changing the things we tolerate have a massive yet often unseen ripple effect into every area of our lives, including business.
My challenge is every day I will turn the tap to cold at the end of my shower just for a few seconds. When I get used to this I can increase the duration. However, to normalise cold water, I will start slowly. I don’t want to upset my inner thermostat. The ultimate result of this I know will be not only in increasing energy and long-term health, but I know it will help me build more mental toughness and GRIT. Both are essential ingredients for all business success today and for our fast-changing world.
What behaviour would you like to make a normal part of your business life?
So, what behaviour will you now make part of your day? What difference will it make to your business success or personal results? Pick one small behaviour. Decide, start small and do it every day. Don’t break the chain and tick off your wins. In conclusions, it’s a simple methodology that is virtually pain-free, is easy and won’t add too much to your already big to-do list. Furthermore, when you stick with this methodolgy you will radically improve your chances of success in business habits.
If you would like some support and accountability, key factors in achieving success, I invite you to join my FREE Sixty-six day challenge starting on 01 September 2019. I will be running this on my Facebook Group, Winning Mindsets.
About the Author
- If you are looking to discover how to do the things you know you should but don’t, grab a copy of my free PDF guide Your Winning Mindset
- To boost your productivity and learn powerful Mindset strategies for focus and success, check out the new online supported program, Get Breakthrough Results
- For online programs and FREE Mindset Tips check out the Mindset for Success Academy
- To be consistent in the area of food and eating, or even shedding a few kilos, I have researched and written a short report on three ways to free yourself from the agony of dieting.
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