What habits are getting in your way?

We all have habits. 

Most of what we do every day is habit-driven. It makes sense!

If you had to stop and make decisions about everything all day long you’d be exhausted by lunchtime! For instance, all your morning cycle of getting washed, dressed, breakfasted and so on are HABIT.

You don’t have to give them a thought. You just switch on the mental program and do it.

So those are useful habits. They spare you having to make new decisions which are hard and use up lots of energy!

Did you know that decisions are energy-sapping?

And isn’t this just what students in my Brilliant Family Dog Trainer Business Program are finding? That developing systems that become habits is how they can build their Dog Training School effectively, without waking up each morning and wondering what to do!

The flip side

But there are lots of other habits that are NOT useful!

•   The habit of procrastination, for a start!

•   The habit of perfectionism, that will derail you at every turn!

•   The habit of unsupportive self-talk which runs in your head all day preventing you from achieving any meaningful change.

Have you ever wondered WHY others get things done and you just seem to watch in awe while you tread water? Maybe you can see it’s down to how they build the habit of supporting themselves.

We can look at procrastination and perfectionism another time - but suffice it to say that they are a RESULT of that negative self-talk you may be hearing.

They are excuses for not doing things because - come on, let’s face it! - you KNOW what you want to do!

So why aren’t you doing it?

Here’s why.

Every time you think of the thing you want to achieve - the thing you KNOW that you are able and qualified to achieve - something or someone in the back of your mind pipes up:

“YOU can’t do that!”

“Can’t you remember when you tried before and failed dismally?”

“Who do you think you are that you can try that?”

You may even find yourself saying “I’m a failure.” This is devastating! Please don’t ever say that! Because what you say is what you are thinking and that dictates your actions.

If you say “I’m a failure”, then - that’s what you’ll be! You are giving yourself an order.

Do this, and fail.

So … you comply! You do it. You fail. Perfect. Just what you wanted to happen! NOT.

You don’t really want this to happen do you? to fail when you try something that’s important to you? of course you don’t!

So don’t set yourself up for failure by saying that in advance! What should you say instead?

We’ll look at exactly where to go from here in next week’s post.

Meanwhile - I’m giving you the tools, but for the full instruction manual on how to use them have a quick guiding word with me!