Success is not sexy, we just see the end product of success; the beautiful building, the gold medal, the wonderful relationship, the beautiful body–and we think that it is magic, we think that it’s talent, but you know, it is not so because success is not done in one day. Success is done by habits: habits of thought and habits of action.
- how we wake up in the morning,
- what we eat,
- what kind of exercise we do,
- how we interact with other people
Those are habits and the way to build them is with discipline. I’m sorry, I know that this discipline doesn’t sound sexy, but it is what we are missing in the society today. We are just so distracted; the telephone interruptions, with television, you go to a restaurant and you see televisions with aggressive messages everywhere. We don’t have time to be present, we have to change this if we are meant to really turn around the future of humanity, turn around the future of the economy. Are you on*? You really want to be that epic self that you deserve to be, that we need you to be? Let’s get disciplined*.
How? The first step to build habits, to build great discipline is to trigger yourself, to program yourself in a way that this is what you do every day, every day when you wake up, every day at 12 ‘o clock, every day at this time. So that there is no excuse about it, this is what you do, this is how it is, this is what happens every day. So if you have your tennis shoes, just close to your bed, you’ll know that every day you put these tennis shoes and you go out for a run. In my case, what I do, is I do my journaling in the morning. So my trigger is that you have my journals sitting on a table where I’m going to find them every day, so the moment when I see them, that is my trigger to start following my habit. So your trigger is basically to move you from where you were, to just do it, just do it. What trigger can you give yourself? It can be a physical trigger like I mentioned the tennis shoes and the books, but it can be also a mental trigger. Now is the time to learn. A dear customer of mine wanted to change how active she was in meetings, and she picked a meeting that was very challenging for her, and her trigger was now is the time to learn, this meeting is the time to grow. And she just used this trigger until she changed her behavior and now it’s just the life of the meeting, she’s just expressing herself openly. She has built the habit.
And then of course, you have to do it. And a wonderful thing of doing the habit is that it rewires your brain, it makes part of your identity; this is what I do, I don’t smoke because I just don’t smoke, I don’t drink coffee because I just don’t drink coffee. This is just the way it is. I drink water and I drink another glass of water because this is just the way it is, this is habits. So the same here, every Tuesday I record my videos for you, it’s every Tuesday. I know what I will be doing in 10 years from now on Tuesday, I will be recording videos. So if you can say that your habit makes it really boring so that you know what you’re meant to do in each one of the days with your life, it will just be easy, it will carry you, it will make you unstoppable.
Number 3, reward. Yes, give yourself a reward for the wonderful construction of your discipline. The reward that I love to give myself is that I write down my successes. Every single day I write my successes of the previous 24 hours. This makes me so happy and this makes me think this day is going to be a great day. There are two schools of thoughts in writing your successes daily. You can write them at night so that you close your day, ‘I did this, complete. I can sleep.’ Fantastic way of doing it. Another way is to do it in the morning; you write your successes of the day before and then you feel empowered, yes! Today is going to be a day when I accomplish even more. So enjoy, take it easy, make it a game, really gamefy* this process, gamefy* what is going to be your trigger, how can you make it fun–your trigger, how can you make fun the habit itself and how can you make fun, exciting and rewarding, your reward. You can also choose different rewards, buy yourself a bunch of flowers, choose the reward that works for you.
So there you have it, become more disciplined with these three steps. Set up your triggers, actually do it and reward yourself. So if you like this video, please like it, and if you like it please share it. We need more people making a difference in this world with action. And also I would like to invite you to my blog so that you can share with us, what is what touched you of this video, what are you going to do, what are you going to implement. And also share with us how do you implement your best habit, how do you do it, we all want to learn. And as always, I say goodbye to you, reminding you to be all in.
Featured image by Ibai