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Using systems and habits to improve your life is a proven method to succeed. It requires seeing the work as a system and then adjusting your thoughts and behaviors to be able to take advantage of your opportunities in life.
I heard a quote the other day from a friend. He didn’t recall who said it but he repeated it to me while we were having a conversation about self-improvement.
He said, “No one has the power over you unless you give it them, you are in control of your life and your choices decide your own fate.”
Read MoreWhen I first stumbled upon the systems and habits approach to improvement I started to slowly put in place new tactics to improve. I started small and looked to consistently change certain behaviors.
My focus shifted from effort and quality to consistency and quantity. I made sure to do X every day, even though X wasn’t anything major.
Read MoreWe all have the tools necessary to succeed in life. I see this time and time again through a disadvantaged individual who goes on to achieve great things. They often overcome their disability and then continue to rise.
They grow and improve. They don’t complain about their lot in life. They push past their limitations. In fact, they often push further than many non-disabled.
Read MoreWhy do you stick with it? This is a question I get from time to time regarding some system that I developed.
It could be that someone asks why I stick with eating a certain healthy lunch every day or why I exercise every morning. It seems that they always have other ways to accomplish the same thing.
Read MoreI’ve heard a lot of people compare human learning with computer programming. The idea is that we can easily program whatever we want in our life. It isn’t magic, it is simply doing the work of inputting the formula.
When it comes to inputting the formula that is the same as creating the process. When we talk about using systems and habits to improve, we rely on creating these new processes to control our behavior. This allows us to build new routines, habits, structures etc.
Read MoreEveryone hates the cocky, selfish person. We see someone constantly trying to take from others so that they get more and more, while others get less and less.
We all like generous people. We think highly of the person who gives more and more to others.
Read MoreHabits are a part of life that most people minimize. They assume when someone says habit that they are talking about some bad habit they picked up like smoking or biting one’s nails.
But habit is much more than that. Habit is how life operates. Animals rely on habits to behave and think the way they do. Humans rely more on habit than rational thought, allowing our decisions to form patterns and then utilize those patterns to dictate future actions.
Read MoreYears ago I shifted my frame of reference on goals from having a desire for perfection to being keenly focused on making progress. Instead of wanting everything to fall into place, I was more concerned about the fact that I was growing and improving.
This gave me a new perspective on life. It allowed me to change in order to ultimately improve beyond the level I found myself at the time.
Read MoreBeing creative is something that most people attribute to artists, musicians, and entrepreneurs. They don’t think they are creative because they aren’t creating works of art or new businesses.
But this isn’t true. Everyone is creative. We all create many variables in our lives. We create opportunities; we create our habits; we create our daily routines.
Read MoreWhen it comes to setting goals and trying to accomplish new objectives in life, it is natural to want to get there quickly. We want to reach the finish line right away.
This leads to a natural tendency to rush. We rush through the hard work in order to get to the prize. Unfortunately, though, this rushing hurts our ability to win the prize. It makes it more likely that we will fall short of our goal.
Read MoreWhen you are setting out to reach a goal, two elements are paradoxical but both are very important to your success.
You have to learn how to be flexible. This represents to some, a pivot from their original strategy. The second element is consistency. We have to take enough consistent action to start to see the fruits of our labor.
Read MoreAt the center of the systems and habits approach to improvement is the ability to understand yourself. For this method to work, you have to learn how to know your strengths and weaknesses. Then we leverage strengths and fix weaknesses.
This sounds easy. We all assume we know us. We know our innermost thoughts. We know what we did yesterday. We know how it felt to be in each and every situation.
Read MoreIn business environments we tend to measure and track much more than in our personal lives. Businesses utilize different types of information to get a good sense of how the business is performing.
But in our personal lives we don’t. It could be that we are too lazy or that we don’t think we need to measure because everything is directly accessible to us. But when it comes to improvement, performance measurement is very important.
Read MoreIt is natural to want to avoid embarrassment and criticism. I don’t know anyone who enjoys those things.
This prevents us from jumping into situations before knowing how it will all work out. We remain in our comfort zones to avoid potential embarrassment or criticism.
Read MoreRecently I was watching a college football game and heard the broadcasters praise the head coach of the winning team. They said the coach always remained calm.
They said he would calmly address a mistake from a player. He didn’t yell. He didn’t scream. He didn’t spend his energy trying to display his leadership to those watching. Instead he had confidence in his ability and would simply do the right thing.
Read MoreThe other night I was watching some college football and kept hearing a theme. The broadcasters kept stating that the team needed to “find a way.” They needed to find a way to win, find a way to make a play, find a way to get a turnover.
We hear this a lot in sports. During the course of the game, we watch, hoping a player will make a good play. We don’t know how exactly, but they need to do something.
Read MoreI love reading success stories and motivational books. I tend to find the ways that the individual used principles from the systems and habits approach to improvement in order to succeed.
Most of the time there is alignment. They started small and just kept working and working until they hit a breakthrough; they changed up their routines and didn’t allow themselves to fall back on bad habits, etc.
Read MoreProblems are everywhere. We all have them. They surface for everyone and each time a problem comes up, we will likely respond in a similar fashion.
We start to develop a habit of handling problems a specific way. Do we take it personal and get upset about it? Do we try to calmly work through the problem to see why it occurred and look for ways to eliminate the problem from occurring in the future?
Read MoreWe all go through life with people influencing us. Sometimes that is good and positive role models help us achieve more and sometimes we get caught up with the wrong crowd.
Either way, systems thinking tells us that those factors matter in our life. We can’t simply ignore them. They matter.
Read MoreOur behaviors follow patterns. We react in similar ways when confronted with similar stimuli. In certain environments we act by doing the same thing we have always done.
We often feel we have control over these types of autopilot thoughts and behavior. But time and time again we react and think about what’s happening much less than we realize.
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