Quality is not an act, it is a habit. — Aristotle

So how are your new year’s resolutions coming along?

Did you set any at all?

If you did how successful have you been? Are you sticking to your desire to perhaps lose weight, give up smoking or cut down on alcohol? Or maybe you’re trying to change how you run your business or enhance your career.

Don’t be too downhearted if have broken your resolutions. As 44% of us do this in the first month and 66% do so within 2 months?

Most resolutions fail because people rely on will power, perhaps to lose those extra pounds, finally use that gym membership or to throw away those cigarettes and start vaping?

Willpower is a game of balance, and balance is a game of sustainability.

The fitness industry is a perfect example of the desire being strong but the will being weak. 

Come the first week in January Gym membership’s subscriptions soar. If you’re a regular gym goer you will have seen this at first hand as the new member’s crowd around your favourite exercise machines. But as the days and weeks pass, those numbers lessen.

A couple of months into the year and the crowds even out. We're all prone to thinking willpower is everything and can easily forget that without building balance into our plans or habits, even the most ferocious explosion of will is not sustainable.

An American health study showed found that 90 percent of coronary bypass patients go back to their old, unhealthy eating habits within two years of their operation!

Now not every desire for change fails, and people do transform their lives, every day. But for the most part they don’t do it by relying on willpower. The key, it turns out, is to simply start changing your habits.

Jim Rohn the motivational writer has a phrase which sums this up for me:

‘Failures most dangerous attribute is it’s subtly’.

What he meant was that failure is not a single, cataclysmic event. People do not fail overnight. Failure is the inevitable result of an accumulation of poor thinking and poor choices. To put it more simply, failure is nothing more than a few errors in judgment repeated every day as we adopt bad habits.

If we repeat these errors or adopt negative habits then how can we ever change for the better? However, all is not lost, just as failure is not one single event success can be achieved by practicing a few good habits every day. Success is having the discipline to apply the right choices and adopt these positive habits, which allow you to perform actions that give you the edge in life and in business.  

Managing change in your life is about five things:

Desire
No one can make you change or want to change. Improving your life or skill set can only begin when you decide you want to change and have a desire to stay the path. You must want to adopt new habits which will help you evolve.

Motivation
Don’t do it all alone surround yourself with positive people and in time your energy levels will increase. They can also help you in your desire to change and improve. Their help can be essential as we all face hurdles that are difficult to overcome. Avoid negative people they will hold you back and let’s face it they are no fun anyway.

Choices
You need to identify what are the habits you adopt for self-improvement? What little steps will you take every day to ensure that success happens? Conversely what habits will you choose to change? Remember failure like success does not happen overnight, it creeps up on you if we continue with negative habits.

Disciple
If failure does not happen overnight then success is a long term process so discipline is key. The ability to stick to the positive choices and the habits you have adopted is fundamental to improvement. Failures will happen along the way, the key is to accept that and persevere with your plans.

Action
Nothing can happen without action. Day dreams without a plan will always remain day dreams, so ensure you act on the ideas you have for improvement and move fast before someone else has the same idea and moves before you!   

This all hopefully sounds like common sense but sadly far too many of us ignore the simple changes which can deliver real change and ignore our own self-improvement at the expense of others or for the company we work for. I’d ask you all how much time have you invested in your own development in the last six months?

Every one of us controls our own destiny I would ask you all what choices will you make to ensure you invest in your future success?

I’d urge you all to think of the good habits you can adopt in the months ahead in both life and business.

I’ll leave you with another quote on habits which I think sums up what we have discussed.

Your beliefs become your thoughts, Your thoughts become your words, Your words become your actions, Your actions become your habits, Your habits become your values, Your values become your destiny. — Mahatma Gandhi

Why don’t you write one down one habit you can adopt now?

John Joe McGinley Glassagh Consulting February 2018