So as a student of personal and professional development,
I often come across these articles that say,
Here are the five habits of successful people.
And of course,
You got to click on them and read them.
And if you click on them and read them,
You're going to find that pretty much they all say the same thing.
They say things like,
You got to get up at five in the morning,
And you got to make yourself a nice big healthy breakfast,
And you got to go out on a three mile walk before you come home and do your yoga and your meditation,
Then you can start your day.
Now I love all of those things.
And I try and implement all of those things throughout my day or week at some point.
But here's the thing,
You'll never see the article that says,
Oh,
Here's 17,
000 other people who are really successful who don't do any of those things.
It's one of those things that makes us feel like we have to do something a certain way to get a certain outcome.
And that's completely misleading.
So what I'm going to encourage you to start thinking about is what works for you and what does not work for you.
And if there's something you really like the idea of,
The actual habit may not be the thing that helps you,
But what the idea of that habit gains for you.
So let me give you an example.
I love the idea of being one of those people who wakes up every morning at 5 a.
M.
And just jumps out of bed and starts their day.
Now for about a period of two years,
I tried to do that several times.
And here's what I learned in a nutshell.
I'm not that person.
I'm just not.
And at some point I had to accept the fact that I'm not someone who's going to jump out of bed consistently at 5 in the morning.
And that's okay.
But I didn't have to let go of the idea of that habit.
Because when I thought about what is it about that idea that really was striking a chord with me,
It had nothing to do with where the hands on the clock pointed.
It had nothing at all to do with that.
It had to do with some other things that that time of day often conjures up.
So for example,
It's quiet.
The phone's not ringing.
You're not online with your emails popping in.
Other people in the house aren't necessarily awake.
You can go outside and it's dark and cool and it smells great.
There are other times of the day when I can experience those things.
I don't need to have it be 5 o'clock in the morning in order to create even a 15 or 20 minute period of time where I can choose to have quiet time.
I can choose to do something for me.
I can choose to go out and tune out for a little bit.
I can do that at 1130 in the morning.
I can do it at 3 in the afternoon.
I can do it at midnight.
If I go along with where my tendencies are,
Where my energy is,
And where it's not,
And I apply the things that I truly want to experience into my time,
It's going to work phenomenally well.
We a lot of times think that we've got to find the perfect mix of things.
If I just do these five things,
I will be more successful.
I will be more happy.
I will be more healthy.
In truth,
There's very little you need to do some of those things.
All of those things are a habit.
Happy is a habit.
You learn how to look at things a certain way and work with things a certain way.
It all comes from the inside out.
It's not about waiting until you have something outside of you.
You can choose what those thoughts are,
What those actions are,
How you want to handle things.
All of that stuff is a choice.
When you make choices consistently that are in alignment with what you're looking to attain,
You've created a habit that works for you.
Go out and figure out what are the things that work for you.
You'll know them when they're there.
What are the things you're trying to do that aren't working for you?
They may be working for someone else in that person's plan,
But if you're working someone else's plan,
Chances are they didn't plan much in there for you.
