“Nothing in the universe can stop you from letting go and starting over.” —Guy Finley
Everything is in full bloom here in South Carolina.
As I look at the tulips and blooming azaleas at my office, I am reminded that every living thing has an opportunity to become renewed and refreshed. However, many have habits that prevent them from reaching their full potential. My challenge to you this week is to take a look at your current habits and try to eliminate just one habit that is keeping you from making the most of your life.
For example, do you sometimes hit the snooze button more than once in the morning? Do you stay up too late watching mindless television and rise without any pep in your step? Does your mind race from task to task because you have failed to plan your day/week? Do you make excuses for not working out? Do you go to networking events and leave with two or three follow-ups and then fail to ever follow-up? I’ve been there. But I choose not to stay there because I did not want to live my life stressed out and with a sense that I was working a lot but accomplishing very little.
After reading The Power of Habit by Charles Duhigg, I realized that my bad habits followed a self-imposed pattern. For example, my alarm was a reminder that I should get up, but I choose to hit snooze each day and this became my routine. My “reward” was whopping 8 extra minutes of sleep that consistently became 16 minutes. This 16 minutes of delay added stress to my morning and impacted everyone around me. So, I changed my behavior. I moved my alarm across the room. I now had to physically get up to hit snooze. Once out of bed, it seemed useless to get back to bed.
This small change led to less conflict with my daughter each morning, more time to eat a healthy breakfast before I leave for work and a more productive day. So, what bad habit do you need to break? Will you take time to reflect on your current habits and determine which ones you need to change or eliminate? Are you willing to let go of the bad habit in order to become more productive? What reward would be in store for you if you changed your behavior? I’d love to hear from those who are willing to take the challenge to eliminate one negative behavior this month, so please shoot me an email and let me know.
