7 Steps to Develop Success Habits

Did you know that around 95% of everything you think, feel, do and achieve is the result of habit?​

So the habits that are making you productive or unproductive, keeping you stuck or making you successful, right now, have almost certainly been with you since your youth. 

Unsuccessful people have a number of common habits, habits that revolve around the words ‘should’, ‘must’ and ‘have to’; habits that feed their inner procrastinator; habits that keep them stuck. Successful people have habits in common too, habits that keep them focused, keep them prosperous, keep them making great decisions and enjoying life. 

And the great news? New habits can be learned. You can develop new patterns of behaviour by modelling the habits of successful people and making them part of your personal management system. Success habits like: 

• Setting daily goals
• Reading/listening to a business book a month
• Getting up before 7:00am  
• Exercising for thirty minutes every day
• Giving back/contributing
• Practising focus on one thing at a time
• Having a date-night/friends-night once a week/month. 

Even better news – there’s a proven seven-step formula for embedding a new habit into your psyche: 
Step 1: Decide what habit you want to install 
Step 2: Tell people what you’re doing – make it public 
Step 3: For at least twenty-one days, stick religiously to the habit – no exceptions, no excuses 
Step 4: ‘Act as if’ - visualise yourself doing it - use the power of muscle memory 
Step 5: Develop an affirmation you repeat over and over. ‘I get up and get going immediately at 6:00am’, ‘I arrive five minutes early for everything’ 
Step 6: Show resolve and commitment – persist until it’s second nature – a hard habit to break 
Step 7: Reward yourself to reinforce and reaffirm.

The Henry Habit 
Take Henry, for example. Henry was tasked by his school to read more, and challenged by his dad Peter, to read for thirty minutes every day. Both Henry and his dad told friends about the challenge (Step 2) and then for one month, every single day, Henry would announce both when his half hour started, when it had finished, and how many pages he’d read (Step 3). 
With this habit, Henry had to act as if he was enjoying it, to talk about it as something he looked forward to every day (Steps 4 and 5). He stayed the course, completed his month, and was suitably rewarded for his perseverance (Steps 6 and 7). 

Did the habit stick? 

Of course not – he’s a thirteen-year-old boy! But, as a result of supporting Henry in his habit-forming activity, his dad has developed The Henry Habit, and now reads one business book a month, for thirty minutes every day! 

This formula really does work. Give it a try! 

Good luck and thanks for reading :)