Creating Hope in Habits
Habits – Part 4 – Creating Hope In Habits
Over the past month we’ve focused on habits. We talked about what a habit is, why they are important, and how to create new habits and stop bad habits. We defined a habit as something that happens with regularity and automatically. We talked about how habits can have lasting impacts on our lives and actually compound either positively or negatively. Finally, we explored making new habits obvious, easy, attractive and satisfying while making habits we want to purge from our lives the exact opposite, not obvious, hard, unattractive and unsatisfying. If you’ve soaked in all of that, you now have the tools you need to move into 2021 creating new habits and eliminating bad ones.
As we continue to move through a relatively new year, you might have formulated your new year resolutions, or you might have reflected on last year and what this new year may look like. Thus, this is a perfect time to define what habits you’ll need to begin or end to make your vision of 2021 come true. There are some habits that have more impact on our lives than others. I firmly believe we create hope in our lives through our habits. From this point on, you’ll hear me reference Hope In Habits regularly as I am convinced the right habits will result in a future filled with hope. In this issue, I’m going to share with you some of the most highly recommended habits to create hope for a better future.
First, let’s talk about habits that drive overall performance and effectiveness in life in general. Do you ever wonder why some people appear to be more successful than most? They may have accumulated more wealth, or have more notoriety, or accomplished enormous social impact. I’ve sometimes found myself caught up in the comparison game and begin making all sorts of, let’s call them, excuses for why I am not experiencing the same results. I’ve consoled myself by saying, well, that person just got lucky. Or maybe that other person came from a wealthy family. Or maybe, that person had more passion about their social cause. Research however, has shown that even average people, like me and maybe you, can experience the same “success” if we practice some basic habits. In his book, High Performance Habits; How Extraordinary People Become That Way, Brendon Burchard, describes six deliberate habits that can give anyone an “edge” in life. His research has led him to the conclusion that anyone can practice these habits and when they do, extraordinary things happen in their lives, relationships, and careers. Sign me up!
What are those six habits? Hang with me here. This gets a bit lofty and conceptual because the habits he recommends are not the typical action based habits like exercising or eating healthy. Instead they lean more on the side of practices or approaches to life. He describes two forms in which these habits exist. The first is Personal Habits and they include Seeking Clarity, Generating Energy and Raising Necessity. The second form is Social Habits and they include Increasing Productivity, Developing Influence and Demonstrating Courage. Among the Personal Habits, Seeking Clarity is fairly self-explanatory focusing on always asking yourself and others “why”. In my former career I spent a great deal of time making sure my team and I understood not only what we were doing, but the why behind it. If you apply that in your personal life you will quickly reset your expectations and your passions. Generating Energy includes aspects like releasing tension, bringing joy and optimizing health. In this crazy year we’ve all just experienced, I think we can all agree that the world could use more joy. Raising Necessity is described as basically affirming the way you choose to go and similar to Seeking Clarity can help keep us focused. On the Social Habits, Increasing Productivity entails focusing on what really matters. In a sense it is a habit of intentional prioritization, every single day. Developing Influence relates to role modeling and finally, Demonstrating Courage simply put means honoring the truth and finding someone to fight for. There is so much more packed into his research, but these habits will set all of us ordinary people up for extraordinary impact if we can master these habits.
As I said, these are lofty goals when you look at them in a grouping like this. So if this feels overwhelming remember our guidance on how to start new habits. Start out focusing on one. Find the area that resonates with you the most and dive into that habit this year. Or, if you’re feeling really ambitious, chose one Personal Habit and one Social Habit to work on. Imagine however, what you might accomplish in 2021 if you always sought clarity before taking any action and if you truly found someone to fight for? Or maybe, this quote by Ralph Waldo Emerson, “The world belongs to the energetic” gives you the encouragement to Generate Energy and create a new kind of hope in your life.
Following these recommendations will no doubt impact the areas Burchard described such as our purpose in life, our relationships and our careers. Now let’s dive in a little deeper and talk about an area I know all too well. When my personal finances were in a state of disarray, I was lost as to where to start making changes. I knew I could, I simply had no idea how to begin. Do you ever feel like you are running in slow motion and getting nowhere, even though you swear your legs are moving as fast as they can? That is exactly how I felt as I awoke to the challenging situation I created for myself. I finally turned to the experts like Dave Ramsey and learned the habits that everyday millionaires practice. I’m not at millionaire status yet, but these habits have been transformational in my life, moving me in that direction. There are four habits and they are as simple as can be.
Habit #1 – Become an avid reader. Reading expands your mind in ways that watching or listening cannot. There is always a time and place for watching and listening. But there is something that happens in our minds when we allow a text, whether in the print of a book, or the letters on an electronic reader, that ignites our brains to think, to consume, to contemplate and ponder unlike any other medium. And it doesn’t matter what you read. Fiction or Non-Fiction makes no difference. The engagement of the brain is the same.
Habit #2 – Understand delayed gratification. Today we can push a button and have a package on our doorstep within 24 hours. That can be a huge temptation. Understanding that waiting, simply waiting for that purchase can provide us with control in our personal finances, focus on our spending tendencies and the enablement of meeting whatever our financial goals may be. Waiting gives us time to contemplate the purchase. A game changer question to ask yourself while you wait is “What happens if I don’t buy that item?” Time and patience may change the desire to buy. Waiting provides the time to make sure we are buying what we need with money we actually have.
Habit #3 – Stay away from debt. Getting in the habit of saying no to debt was a game changer for me. It ties in closely with delayed gratification. It is a habit I had to have in check when this pandemic hit. I could have so easily fallen into the gratification that would come from that package delivery regardless of what was in my bank account if I had not done the hard work previously to change my spending habits. The freedom I have now by being debt free is life changing. It is liberating and empowering. I now get to tell my income what I want it to do, instead of watching my income pay for my poor decisions of the past.
And finally, Habit #4 – Budget. There is a quote by Benjamin Franklin that I absolutely love. “Even a large ship will sink with a small leak.” Without a budget that is alive and relevant and an automatic and constant practice in our lives, we are at risk of that small leak sinking our ship. It may take a little more time than a big leak, but the result will be the same. If you’re like I was and not sure how to start budgeting, find an expert to help. A Personal Financial Coach is a great resource to help you start budgeting the right way. A good coach will help you make your budgeting an easy, relevant and productive habit. It is in my mind, the single biggest game changer when it comes to a productive life. Creating a habit of budgeting gave me the confidence to know what my personal life looked like allowing me to use my conscious thinking on topics of greater impact. By getting into the habit of budgeting I now had brain power to use on growing my career with confidence, leaning into my family with love and attention and working toward a life of significance.
Now you know what a habit is, why it is important, how to create or delete them from your life and what habits may move you from an ordinary to extraordinary life. What will you choose to do in 2021? How will you use your habits to create a future filled with hope?
