Using the systems and habits approach to improve gives us a great path to move forward towards our goals. It sets out specific areas to leverage in order to build new routines and habits in our lives. It focuses more on the process than the outcome and more on making progress than striving for instant perfection.
One thing in life that everyone faces on a daily basis is the incredible rate of change in the world. New technologies emerge or people make decisions that impact us and suddenly we find that the world around us seems to have shifted.
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Years ago I worked for a non-profit organization that assisted small businesses. We provided all sorts of resources for them and guidance on areas of their business.
This was a great experience for me. Being a former small business owner, I had an inside view to some of the challenges that small business owners face. I also had started to better understand how business owners could use systems to improve their business.
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One thing that can quickly trip someone up who is trying to reach a goal is to focus on perfection to soon. They expect perfection and anything less just isn’t good enough.
It might seem like a great strategy to work as hard as we can. But it actually causes an attitude of procrastination. It becomes safer for us to not take action than risk failure.
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We all have choices. Our days are filled with millions and millions of little choices that we make. But most choices are made automatically with little conscious thought.
Some choices are obvious. When we sit down at a restaurant, we consciously choose the food we want to eat. When we decide to go for an advanced degree we choose to go back to college. When we get a call from a friend asking to go out for drinks we consciously choose to go or not go.
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Everyone wants success and happiness. While most people don’t have the ambition to work towards goals and they simply go through the motions of life, you can rise above that with the right habits.
Habits are incredibly important in determining our future because our behavior is about 95% habit. This means that what determines most of our actions throughout the day we have done in the past over and over and formed a pattern in our mind.
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Having a clear vision of the future you want is important. If you are leading a group sharing the future state is important. It helps answer the question, “what’s the point?”
It allows everyone to be on the same page. Everyone may not agree with every step we take, but if everyone shares the same ultimate end goal, then we can often put aside our differences of opinion to keep making progress towards our goals.
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Most people put too much focus on events and not enough on patterns. This leads to a belief that these events are where success and happiness are made or broken.
They assume the vacation or new purchase is going to make them happy. It does, but because it is simply a one-time event, the happiness soon fades.
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Planes have always fascinated me. I love the idea that man can create something so large and heavy, yet keep it floating through the sky.
Every day planes are flying people and objects to far away locations. Every time I have flown on a plane, I sat in amazement at what was occurring.
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I’ve worked with many people and many different organizations. I noticed that most people seem to fall on a continuum between being too rash and being too afraid to act.
Not many fell on the extremes of those two, instead most people would tend to lean more towards not taking action or more towards taking action before thinking things through.
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Life is all about choices. We all have choices that we make throughout our lives that determine where we go and who we end up becoming.
But most people that I know only pay attention to the major decisions, like getting married or having kids. They gloss over the daily decisions and the decisions not to act when there is something that they want.
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Systems are everywhere. Everything about life is made up of multiple systems. Everything we do, everything we see, and everything we are can be looked at systematically.
While this may help gain a better understanding of things, it also complicates things a bit. Now that we can see that one system might impact several other, unrelated, systems, it can be difficult to know what to do to improve.
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We all feel trapped at times. Maybe something happened to us at work that was beyond our control but impacts us greatly. Maybe a friend said or did something hurtful to us. Maybe our health took a negative turn without any warning.
It is natural to feel as though we are shackled in our own mind. We feel like the victim and might even have proof to show that we weren’t responsible at all. We were just minding our own business when, all-of-a-sudden we are victimized.
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We all have probably been so busy at some point in our lives that we simply try to put out as many metaphorical fires as possible. It could be at work, at home, at school, or anywhere else where problems surface and it is up to us to fix them.
I’ve worked at places where people treat any problem as a five-alarm fire. They become chaotic and stressed. They get nervous and frustrated. They scramble around trying to find the quickest, easiest way to alleviate the stress caused by the problem.
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Most people never look at their personal routines and habits in order to identify ways to improve. They may see something they want and set a goal to get it, but it is usually driven by the reward or prize at the end of a journey.
Because we tend to work backwards from what we want and then start looking at what to do to get it, we often ignore the mundane systems in our life. Instead we try to identify one or two things that we can do differently.
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I’m currently about 50 pages into a book titled Work the System – The Simple Mechanics of Making More and Working Less by Sam Carpenter. It is one of the best books that I have read in a long time!
Carpenter describes how he came to realize the systematic nature of things. He takes the reader through a change in perspective so great that it completely changed his life.
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Most people think that the things they really want in life are out of reach. They assume financial freedom, a healthy body, loving relationships, etc. only come to us in pieces. They see chaos reign.
This keeps them wishing and hoping instead of taking action to change and improve. They might be able to take a small step forward, but because they view the end result is largely due to luck or some force outside of themselves, they stay where they are.
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Our world is complex. There are many elements of life and the more we explore life the more we tend to discover.
With all of this complexity, many people start to feel that they are simply being manipulated like a pawn on a chessboard. They feel that there must be someone else in charge.
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We all have problems. We all have stress and anxiety at times. We all experience fear.
While this are just part of a system that also includes pleasure, happiness, relaxation, fulfillment, etc. we all tend to dwell on the negative emotions from time to time.
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I used to dwell on all that I viewed was wrong in the world. I would find fault in everything. I took on a condescending attitude that said if only the world would just follow my advice; I could fix everything for everyone.
But, obviously, this was a horrible way to go through life. I didn’t know anything. I was naïve and oblivious to the real world. Luckily, I started to slowly realize how wrong I was and I realized it early in my life.
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Habits are a part of everyone’s life. We are all creatures of habit who follow patterns in our thoughts and behaviors.
While this may seem obvious, what isn’t obvious is that we have to deliberately design our habits if we want them to move us towards success and happiness.
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