How are your New Year’s goals going? At this point in the year, most have forgotten about their goals, let alone accomplished them. Goals are hard to maintain. The idea of change can be exciting, but most people aren’t great at the follow through required after the rush wears off. In fact, studies have shown that approximately 80% of New Year’s resolutions fail. So, what is an alternative? Creating habits.
40% of your actions are not conscious decisions, they’re a product of creating habits. 40%! That is almost half of your day. Habits can be good or bad. We can be creating habits of hard work or we can be in the habit of slacking off. We can be creating habits of consciously choosing things that make us better, or we can be in the habit of waiting for life to just work in our favor.
Interesting facts about habits
- It takes an average of 66 days for a habit to form
- Once formed, it’s hard to break!
- You can take control of your life by changing your habits
- Creating habits is more reliant than motivation because once they are established, they will sustain you whether you are motivated or not
Here are a few tips to inserting new habits into your life.
Create habits that will directly impact what you want
Do you need new customers, improved customer service skills, or better leadership capabilities? Decide on creating a habit that would support that desired change. Here’s an example.
Say you want more committed carriers on consistent freight. To create a habit, you may call 10 carriers based out of shipping and/or receiving location every day after lunch and attempt to sell them on taking the load on a regular basis.
Consistency
Once you know what you need to do, do it religiously. A real commitment is required but the payoff will be great. The biggest predictor of a person who can achieve things in their life is someone who is willing to do what is needed even when they don’t feel like it. Remember that you just need to make it 66 days!
Start small
It’s easy to try to bridge the gap between who we are and who we want to be with a huge and unsustainable habit. Maybe the answer is to just start small.
Let’s say you never flossed your teeth and your desire was to floss daily (totally a hypothetical statement), and you made it a habit to floss one tooth a night. So simple right? And funny. Once you get one tooth flossed, of course you’re going to floss the rest. When you go to the dentist, you could actually tell them the truth when you say that you do indeed floss. Habit created, and ultimately a desired change is achieved.
Jack Canfield said, “Your habits will determine your future.” Do something today that your future self will thank you for. We are in this together and we can do this together.
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