Summary
We are the sum products of our habits, behaviors and the routines that we carry out each and every day, often without thinking. If we build the right habits into our lives, we can automate the process of attaining success and meaning.
But this also often requires that we unlearn bad habits that we have picked up over time. It can be tricky to unlearn behaviors that we do without a second thought. The secret is to replace negative behaviors with ones that give you a reward now and lead to lasting fulfillment.
Read on to learn how you can begin today.
Transcript
There’s a lot to learn along the path to building a successful business and achieving financial independence. You’ll need to learn about marketing, sales, and customer service, not to mention an ever-evolving array of changes in technology.
But it’s not enough to just learn new skills. You must also be in the habit of un-learning. We all have adopted some unhelpful habits over the years, ones that can actually impede us in making progress toward our financial goals. The question is whether you are able to unlearn these habits and re-learn or teach yourself new ones.
21 Days
It takes time to change and it rarely habits overnights. Studies have shown that it can take at least a minimum of twenty-one days to make a new habit stick. That’s true in some cases, such as picking up a new exercise or work routine. But the problem is that some of our old habits are so deeply engrained in us that they can take much longer to unlearn.
I have seen plenty of people over the years “fake it” with picking up a new habit for that twenty-one day window. But then they quickly are reverting back to the same challenges they had to begin with. The real key is to making significant personal change is to replace your old habits with new ones.
Habits make up a huge portion of our lives. It’s those things that we do on auto-pilot each day without even thinking of them that determine where we end up. It will save you enormous amounts of time and effort if you can put the right habits into place. As an example of a time-saver habit, some busy executives like President Obama and Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg have adopted the habit of wearing only a few outfits that they select from on any given day. By setting a habit in which they know in advance what they are going to wear, they save up valuable time and decision-making energy for more important and strategic considerations.
Harness The Power of Your Subconscious
I have benefitted enormously in setting better habits from learning how to better harness my subconscious. Repetition will help instill new ideas and behaviors in you, if you have your subconscious on board. This requires that you are being deliberate what you allow to seep into your subconscious. You need to be literally programming these thoughts, rather than allowing any stray concerns to seep in that will throw you off of your focus. This is where Personal Programming Messages, or PPMs, can be so effective. They allow you to align your outer and most inner thoughts, feeding yourself daily personal reinforcement to maintain your focus on what you want to be improving and where you want to ultimately end up.
Money Habits
It goes without saying than some of the habits that must be eliminated first and foremost pertain to spending behaviors. This may seem to fit more into the realm of personal finance than business, but you absolutely need extra capital and liquid funds to be able to fully take advantage of business opportunities that come up. This means that you need to be very careful about where you are spending your funds. You may need to move to a less hip or vibrant part of town for lower rents, but you will be very glad that you did so in the long run. All of those incidental costs, everything from taxes and utilities to repairs and maintenance, can add up dramatically. Ask yourself if this is really what you have been put on the planet to do, to serve as the overseer for a facility or bit of land. I suspect that you would be better served by freeing up more of your funds and times to direct your talents elsewhere.
The same principal applies to spending excessive amounts of your net income on expenses and assets that depreciate immediately or provide little value, such as car expenses, gambling, and shopping splurges. It can be tough to walk back from a lifestyle that you have grown accustomed to in terms of your spending so this is a habit that it may indeed take some time to change.
Time Use Habits
Another habit that can pay major dividends if you break it is watching excessive amounts of television. Surveys of very successful and high net-worth individuals reveal that very few spend any significant portion of their time passively consuming entertainment compared to the average person. They simply value their time too much to be putting too much into an activity that is taking time away from them without providing any substantial value in return. You will most assuredly see major changes in your life if you can replace your television habit with one centered around active and purpose-driven reading. Staying on top of the latest developments in your field of expertise is one of the most sure-fire ways to stay ahead of your competition and investments in reading time will never be regretted if you are doing it with intentionality. Adopt a habit of reading voraciously everyday, beginning with the news in your area of expertise.
It all begins with identifying the habits in your life that have held you back and why you persist in doing them. It’s not enough to identify the negative behavior itself, but you must also figure out the triggers that compel you to do it.
An excellent example is Bill Wilson, who founded a highly influential organization that has helped millions to stop one of their most troubling habits. He is the creator of Alcoholics Anonymous, which was sparked by his own struggles with drinking.
Bill’s insight that helped save his sight was to determine that his drinking was driven by anxiety. He was able to find other ways of coping with this problem that weren’t as destructive to his health and relationships as his drinking. He learned that it helped to eliminate the triggers and desires that led to this behavior. So someone seeking to not drink would stop hanging around bars; someone seeking to waste less time on television would not keep the remote control readily available with countless premium channels to scroll through. Instead keep a reading device or stack of books by your bed. Make it easy to default into the behavior you want to see. Over time you will not even need to remind yourself to do it P it will come to you effortlessly.
Be easy on yourself. Know that we all struggle with addictions and habits that are hard to break. But luckily there are countless others who have come before you who have learned to reduce their destructive habits by focusing on the positive and making steady progress toward the life they want to build. You can too and replace those behaviors with ones you chose that will create the life you want.
You can also learn more by visiting tonyneumeyer.comJand registering to receive free trainings articles and more. Also subscribe to my YouTube channel and follow me on Facebook. You can get your copy of The 7 Minute Millionaire and check out my other books at https://tonyneumeyer.com/books/.
