Tag Archives: habits

Your environment must support your goals

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Who you see, the tools you use, where you work, the position of your desk in your home, the stuff you experience every day – it all has to support you in the daily journey towards achievement of your goals.

How can you improve your environment along these lines?

Think in terms of people, process, and technology.

Do you need to be around a more supportive crew on a daily basis?

Is your bedtime routine making it hard for you to get up on time, and therefore start the day on time, and in a good frame of mind?

Do you use software tools that help you day-to-day, or are you the kind of person who signs up for everything but uses very little functionality of each app after the initial flurry of activity once the novelty has worn off?

It could be time to move your desk towards the window for more light, or even move to somewhere new.

Are you warm in the winter, and cool in the summer, or do you need to get warmer in the winter months, for example?

Could a new picture in a frame on your desk of someone you care about make a difference to how long you spend sat there, and the quality of work you produce?

Ponder on this topic for a while.

Understanding the impact of this overarching statement can have a big impact over time. That’s our shared goal, right?

Learnings from the last couple of years

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A long time has gone by since I last wrote here, and a few things in life have changed, so here we are…

We are living in Australia as permanent residents and we are striving to build a solid foundation for ourselves. My business is growing and there are now three of us in the team, and as I continue to drive this business growth I’ve had a few things in the back of my mind, helping with the steering.

I’ll share them below in no particular order. Some are attributed to a couple the people that I read and follow for guidance and inspiration, but not all:

  1. The more genuine your interest in other people, the more people trust you.
  2. The better you are at listening, the more people want to spend time with you.
  3. Be precise in what you say (Jordan Peterson).
  4. Be very careful what you wish for as it will come to you in time.
  5. Remember people’s names if you can and use them.
  6. Let others save face. Don’t drop them off the cliff unless you have no choice.
  7. Be somebody by doing something.
  8. Become an expert and work harder at this than anything else in your life.
  9. Our minds control everything we do.
  10. Our attitudes will always define our results and outcomes in life.
  11. Do things that are hard, often.
  12. Save money and build a stack before making investments.
  13. Think like the seasons (from Jim Rohn) – be ready for them, plant seeds and work hard to grow them.
  14. Stay cool and shut up.
  15. Struggle teaches us who we really are. Accept the struggle that is life.
  16. Improve what you’re not happy with. Obsess on the things you have to improve.
  17. The easy option = bad results.
  18. Honesty is the way to progress.
  19. Get people on payroll doing things they are great at and that you can’t do.
  20. Negativity will bring you down in the end. It repels all things.
  21. Build self confidence through small daily actions done well to then rise above your circumstances and achieve more.
  22. If you think you’re the smartest person in the room, you’re likely to be the opposite.
  23. Massive action taken towards a goal gets results.
  24. Patience, passivity and caution are killers for anyone entrepreneurial.
  25. Find your why. It will drive you through bad times and keep you focused.
  26. Know the way broadly and achieve in many things (Musashi).

 

Focus on the good stuff

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The process of making change is one that can add levels of frustration, anxiety and straight-up fear to lives that are already highly stressed and this isn’t always a good thing. Illness can follow very quickly behind if the change isn’t properly managed, whatever it’s context, so avoiding this has to be a top priority.

Our move to Sydney is still in progress as the container carrying our belongings is not yet with us and, so far, we have thankfully had few problems. But Katherine did get sick after only a couple of days in the country and this was very likely due to the scale of the change we had undertaken and the unsettled nature of what was ahead of us over the next few weeks of looking for accommodation, settling into a job and a new city, etc.

The frustration around the change I am going through at the moment is about the pace of it. Life in Australia does go a whole lot slower than it does in the UK and this can be difficult when you have little patience and are ready to start something new. A phone call or email not being returned seems to increase the overall level of tension and the ability to stay patient pays huge dividends.

I try to solve these little problems by thinking of all the things that have worked out well over the last few weeks as we have moved our lives and there are lots of them. It’s always beneficial, to me, anyhow, to keep a focus on the good stuff and the positives that are around me instead of the negatives and this does seem to do the trick. The negatives come easy and are always there without looking too hard, but make an effort to see past them and the dark clouds will start to lift a little.

Copying the habits of the greats

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Getting into good habits is a step towards greatness in any area – sport, work, healthy living, you name it. If you can hardwire yourself to get out of bed and head straight to the gym or read for half an hour, you’ll feel good about your start to the day and the positivity this brings, even when times are tough, is not to be underestimated.

I like to think about people who could be classed as ‘masters’ at what they do and try and think about the things they have become so masterful at. I ask myself how they have gained these skills and what I can do to mirror their training and apply it to my own life.

At the end of the day, these are people who live and breathe the same way that you and I do and so it can’t be all that hard to be as good as them, right? Well, yes, but, in practice, it’s all about the effort we are all prepared to make to attain the levels that these people have achieved and this is the true test.

I read a lot, as much as I can find, about those who are on my ‘masters’ list and there a lot of common traits they all share:

  • hard, hard work from the moment they decided that they wanted to do whatever they did for ever more
  • discipline and focus to levels that others would consider to be strange and not worth the effort
  • determination to succeed in the face of doubters – colleagues, family, the press and media, etc.
  • high quality outputs at all times from them or their teams or people that they lead
  • political skills in order to handle difficulties that they come across as they navigate their work/non-work lives
  • failures on many levels in home and work life – lost opportunities, mistakes, bad decisions, misjudgments, loss of friends, divorce and so on.

So, what’s there to learn here? To me, it’s all about learning as much as possible from the biographical stories of these people’s lives and trying to make use of the positive aspects in our own lives. Hard work, discipline and focus are always key determinants of anyone considered to be a success of some kind so these should be the starting point of focus. Give it a try for yourself by making a ‘masters’ list and see what you can learn along the way.

Get into good habits

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If you can get into some good habits, they will provide you with a really solid foundation in everything you do.

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I have some really bad ones and I think we all have them, somewhere. My worst is biting my fingernails. I do it ALL THE TIME and it causes great annoyance to both me and my wife. I stopped for a while with some NLP-style help a long time ago but I got back into it very quickly. Soooo annoying!

There is a phrase that I have heard quoted a few times – “habits over good intentions, every time” – and this is what I aim for. It takes work to make a habit stick, but if you can keep at it and it will pay you back over time.