Tag: habits

Positively habit forming.

“Excellence is not a gift but  a skill that takes practice. We do not act ‘rightly’ because we are ‘excellent’.  In fact we achieve ‘excellence’ by acting ‘rightly’.

Plato

Acting rightly is never the result of flipping some internal switch.  You do not wake up one morning to find yourself transformed into the epitome of excellence. 

And yet, you do house some of the infrastructure that can become the mechanisms needed to learn, develop and hone this particular life skills set. As long as you can follow direction, accept input, both externally and internally driven, and handle some of the disappointments that come your way, you should be in a good position to assemble a diverse and deep array of habits.

You see, achieving excellence is all about acquiring habits. 

Habits that can last a lifetime.  Habits that create a positive and lasting impact on you and those around you.  And for a habit to take firm hold in your life, it needs reps.  Not one, two a dozen or a gross.  The habit acquisition process needs to be constant and committed.  Certain and ceaseless. Ongoing and unremitting. 

Self-discipline is an invaluable friend, confidant and ally throughout this process. Enabling you to follow directives, both external as well as internal.  It reinforces the assembly process as you create the personal mechanisms that lead to the creation of excellence. 

Self-discipline keeps you with and on the program.  Finishing “this” before you start “that”. Holding you right “here” in the present while shedding just enough light on what may lay ahead as to keep your head up and eyes down that path. Focused on the here and now, inspired by what is yet to come.  

If you have the right mindset about this venture, then there will be nothing burdensome about the effort and journey whatsoever.  Its purpose is to lead you.  To create the trajectory that will direct you to become what you were meant to be and where you were meant to go. 

In time, your actions will rightly lead you to excellence. 

One of the best versions of self-inducement.

Positively habit forming.

Choose.

I want to circle back  to a gem I love from James Allen:

“Let a man radically alter his thoughts, and he will be astonished at the rapid transformation it will affect in the material conditions of his life. Men imagine that thought can be kept secret, but it cannot; it rapidly crystallizes into habit, and habit solidifies into circumstance.”  

This is a keen insight, built upon thought, habit and circumstance.  A genuine pattern of consequence with a lasting resonance.  An interconnectedness solely made by  and accountable to you. In certain respects, how your character is woven into a pursuit of excellence.

Then, how you choose to follow a suggested path governed by three simple questions.

#1 What thoughts hold you back?   

Is it  fear?  

Like it isn’t  within you to start? Or is it the avoidance of commitment; that it is too much to see it through. To finish.

Perhaps it is all about the unknown.  The possible uncertainty of the  outcome that dogs you.  The daunting spectre of disappointment. Discouragement’s inherent distractions. Disapproval. And ultimately, defeat.

Maybe it is the fickleness of change. A need for security. The inability to trust.  An aversion to honesty or criticism.  Selfishness. Arrogance. Ego.  Misperceptions about the call for leadership. Misconceptions about its demands for constant, unrelenting accountability, presence and effort.

And despite your efforts at containment, your thoughts rarely remain secret.

Your doubts are truly, traitors.

By word or deed, they make their way to the surface.  A little here, a little there. Followed by a hitch, the glitch, the sticking points, avoidance. Soon, all at once, you become an open book.  Your once private thoughts, come to govern habit, control action, impede achievement and prohibit excellence, all in a very public manner.

#2 What are you willing to do to change?

Not simply a change for change’s sake.  But renewal with the highest intention. The reclamation of a positive and fulfilling future through the development of the requisite and lasting habits of this instant.

Making the choice to acknowledge, address and act upon constraints now – that prevent you from maximizing your capacity in the moments yet to come.

Engaging in an intensely personal process of assessment, evaluation, reassessment, reevaluation, until the change you aspired to achieve has been accomplished and received. 

Preparing yourself to begin the work, commit the resources, and transform the internal  obstacles  of your own creation into a method of optimizing opportunity and enhancing abilities, forging a path for your own pursuit of excellence.

Mustering a level of will, faith and fortitude to maintain and nourish sustained level action.

Finishing.   No matter what.

#3 – What will be different?  

What will you endeavor to become while on this path ?  Who will you be once you get there?

How will you fit into a much bigger picture?  What will your impact be?

And then once you get “there”, where do you go from that temporary point?

Crucial questions, requiring thought, fully employed vision and an honest examination of intent.

All of which leads to choice.  And then, ultimately transformative action. The very mass of your character, woven into the fabric of excellence.

There can be no secret to this pattern that you designed, made and upheld. 

Nor to the circumstances that only you helped to create.

Essentially, it all comes down to these three questions. 

And, how you choose to answer them.  

Choose wisely.