The hard part of any effort is the start-up.  After that it gets smooth because things happen that help you.  Someone joins you or you become more efficient or you start to see results, etc.  How do you get through the initial period?  You need confidence in your plan.  That’s about it.

I would get into a specific but it would probably be better if you gave me a specific example of something that you have to get jump-started in the near future, in the comments, and then I could respond to that, in the comments.

Cool.

It is important that you stick with the plans you have in mind.  Adaptability and flexibility are great things, but you can’t let yourself or others become shifty toward the plans that you have.  If your current plan doesn’t include all variables, don’t shift it much, and just plan to leave that shifting for a future time.  If you regularly go to a dance class at 6:30, and someone wants to join you for it, and lets you know at 6:15, it is a good idea to tell them that they can join next time, and thus you continue to go at 6:30.

Your Plans Run The Show

You can’t let your plans get side-swiped, because the minute you start letting things go for others, you feel weaker as a person, because you feel like others are controlling your lifestyle in some way.  It is always good to include and work with others, but make sure it is on terms that fit with your mental circuitry.

You Have Defended Your Desires Before

Think about when you have really wanted something, whether it was a bike or electronic item or position in a group.  Did you let someone else prevent you from acquiring it?  Probably not.  You need to make each small goal you have as important to you as some of the big ones you have had in the past.  They are just as important, because we always have a desire to move forward in some way, so your earlier victories are not enough to make missing out on new victories an acceptable outcome.

As a side note, I had a basic title for this post, but then someone I was talking to brought up the same topic and used the phrase “strong armed”, so I found it fitting and used it.

Think About Your Potential

You can’t let yourself get strong armed.  We have too many things to provide to others and the world that we are not able to provide if we let each of our desires get demolished and derailed due to our thoughts about what someone will say or do in response.  It is like throwing away an apple seed because we think the tree will take up too much space where it is planted.  If you start thinking your plans are too imposing or too bold, you will cancel more and more of them, to the point where your plans aren’t really your plans anymore.

Bold Now, Nice After Accomplished

What do the strong people do?  You know some, and you can see the way they deal with their plans.  They situate everything around what is important to them.  If you don’t fit into what they are doing, whether it be for their work or rest time, you will probably not be dealing with them.  Some call these people rude or stand-offish or arrogant, but later they switch to calling them confident, self-directed, and passionate.  It is better to appear rude or arrogant now and later be able to assist others and feel good at the same time, as opposed to being nice or too weak with your plans now and later not having the authority to do what you desire.  I am pretty sure any poll taken of whether you would want to make a big mistake now or in the future would highly favor making the mistake now so that your future was more certain.

Punishment For Not Sticking With You As You

Not only do you miss out on your plans when you waver, you get punished by others.  When people see weakness in place, it is not rewarded, and not only that, it is often seen as a point to attack you with.  When you waver on your plans today, someone who knows of this will remember it and may later bring it up when you are trying to make a definitive point, thus weakening your point.  When you don’t waver, there is no fuel to use against you, and a nice way to think of it is that the fuel has been saved for you to fly to your destination.  I was able to use the fuel concept in both parts of that description.

Closing Summary

Maintain your mission as your own guiding blueprint, and maintain flexibility for those around you by adapting with them for the next occurrence of whatever it is you are doing if merging with them would alter your mission at the current time.  Even more concise, stick with your plan, and if others don’t fit into your plan for today or this week, stick with your plan again and schedule them in for the next time around.  This shows strength.  Wavering with your mission is a lose-lose scenario as you have shown weakness towards continuing your mission, and have shown weakness towards being flexible with others.

I have seen much material about early waking in numerous articles spread throughout the interconnected network that we call the Internet, and so I would like to discuss some points about it in a different fashion, or break it down into what it actually entails.

Why Early Waking Is A Popular Concept

One of the big reasons it that you can’t put down early waking.  If someone tells you they wake up early to feel or be more productive, you have no reason to attack them in some way.  It is a category of activity that is very protected from criticism.  We feel that a person waking early is going against the natural instinct of not doing so, and so they are putting out effort and diligence.

Early Waking Isn’t Meaningful To Some

When analyzing a process, it is always good to look at it with different perspectives to check its validity.  One example that comes to mind is of certain folks who work an 8-hour shift, for example, from 4 AM to 12 PM.  Early waking doesn’t really mean much to them.  This tells us that it is not so much about waking at a certain time, so then it must be about one of the other two issue.

It Is A Win Against All Others Who Wake Up Later

One is that early waking involves waking up earlier than the majority of people in your time zone.  This makes sense.  This is a successful entity because it is a competitive one.  It is like telling all the people in your time zone that you beat them to the day, and already have a lead by the time they wake up.  This is a mental victory when it occurs because we are competitive by nature.  Early waking actually means waking up “early” in comparison to others.  If everyone woke up at 5 AM, it wouldn’t be “early waking” any more.

The Environment You Rise To Is Different

The other concept relates to the way the day is shaped in relation to how we function.  A person who gets up at 6 as opposed to 7 has an extra early hour of dark and quiet and cooler weather, so that can certainly have an impact on their productivity.

Good Luck Finding A “Rising Late” Article

Also, you will rarely ever hear about late waking, as that is associated with laziness, and no one wants to be associated with laziness, including the lazy.  There is no benefit known to being associated with any form of lack of effort.  This can color the reality-based nature of messages you may read about early waking, so it is good to keep it in mind.

The Early Start Is A Victory Of Sorts

One item about early waking that has a large impact is that you feel like you started the day with a win.  You set a goal to wake up early, which takes some effort because the mind does not generally want to, and so when you do, you are 1/1 for the day.  Starting the day off with a win has a huge impact.  This relates to my article that talked about how 70% of teams that score the first goal in a World Cup game win the match.  That early victory of waking up early favors the likelihood of a successful day.

In summary, “waking early” often means either waking up earlier than others, or waking up while things are quieter or darker or colder.  There is the competitive aspect and there is the environmental aspect.

You are on multiple paths at this time.  While you may have some doubts that one of your paths is the right path, and may want to change what you are doing, you want to make sure that you give your current path a solid effort.  Nearly every path has value to take from it.

Stock-Trading

Let’s take, for example, a businessman who has been trying his hand at the stock market for nearly a year, with little profit to show for it.  He is likely to want to give up buying and selling of stocks because he hasn’t gotten results.  What he really should do is not focus on his poor results, and instead place a heavier focus on his stock-trading efforts.

While it is easy to give up on a path you have started traveling through, it is even easier to put a little more effort in than you normally do and end up getting results like you’ve wanted.

Working Out

Another example would be of someone who has been occasionally working out  at the gym for the past three months, and who is now wondering whether he should continue, with his minimal results, or whether he should leave muscle-building fitness to those who work out daily.

What most people fail to realize when in these types of situations is that they have already accomplished the tough part of starting down a path.  Just as the most energy-intensive part of driving is taking a car from a stop to a moving rate, the toughest parts of life involve starting down a path.  The person with the gym membership should increase his rate of exercise to a couple of times a week, which would not be difficult because he was already working out at times.  Big results would soon follow.

A smart thing to do is to examine the various paths you have begun to travel down, and to see the value you have now gotten from them.  An assessment like this is not something most do, but it will give you a solid idea of where you should “stick with it” and where you have actually invested too little to care about.

Bulk Shopping

As a last example, you may have started buying foods in bulk to save money, like big bags of spinach instead of single bundles, and large sacks of potatoes instead of 3 at a time.  This might not have been enough of a money and time-saving upgrade to make you want to make it an integral part of your routine.  What you want to do is recognize that you have already taken a big step with savings already in place, and can easily supplement it by purchasing 6-packs of spaghetti and a big bag of rice the next time around.  You take the value you have already created, acknowledge it, and then do similar things to improve even more.

Added Audio

Following your path requires some internal motivation and understanding.  Here I include an audio of me rapping to an instrumental made long ago by a producer named Toby Emerson(one of my favorite music-makers of all time, who makes beautiful trance music, and his page is here).  This freestyle rap is loosely about motivation, and was created straight from my mind, on the spot, with no preparation or writing beforehand(which is the only way I do them).  There are some parts where I got a little close to the microphone.  Feel free to take a listen:

Is there a main or side path you are on that you have  started to doubt the value of?  Do you get the feeling like some path that you’ve seen someone else take has more value to it?  Let us know in the comments.

photo credit: Tambako the Jaguar

photo credit: mikebaird

If are you out on the street by yourself, you will probably get the feeling that people driving by in cars think you are somewhat weird. On the other hand, if you are walking down the street with someone else, you suddenly don’t have those thoughts. The power of partnering up with others to do almost anything is something that you want to keep in mind.

Exercise With Someone

There is no shortage of ways to make use of this concept. One involves exercise. If you are a person who will feel socially out of place running on some trail, or at a local basketball court, or at an ice skating rink alone, you will be much more comfortable going with someone. It’s worth it to team up with someone. You don’t even have to be prepared. You could go to the beginning of the hiking trail and find someone else who is going up alone and join them. You could also search online to find others who are hiking in the area, or take a friend. It can make a huge difference if you are not up for doing activities alone.

On the other hand, you could go on your own and risk getting bitten by some person’s dog that wasn’t kept on a leash, even though dogs are supposed to be kept on leashes, and all is well and good until the dog bites someone and then they say “oh my dog was a nice dog”,  but it is too late because the bite already happened, and any excuses about the dog aren’t as relevant as dealing with the injury.  I like to include more entertaining bits like this in articles.

Partner For Your Efforts

Another example is in your efforts. It is great to have an accountabilibuddy who you can put effort in with together. However it is created, it will motivate you to do more than you normally would, and you will both have effort to discuss with each other after it occurs. It is quite easy to find a person for this, but the hard part is setting some real goals beforehand, and then working through them with your partner. Self-discipline of this type pays off more than normal, because you get the results, and also get to watch the results of your partner, and are able to talk about both.

There is much I have read in relation to partnering up in some way.  Bud wrote  an article about forming a mastermind group with others.  The members of a group of that type will help each other bigtime.  Then, I found this article about exercising with a partner to keep the motivation to exercise in place.  Here is an article I have found from Entrepreneur.com about teaming up for success.  It points out that teamwork equals success, and that the person who goes it alone is no longer as viable.  That article is from 2007, and is more about building businesses, but it still relates to the concept.

One other article on this topic is by Paul at Diary4Life about Creating a Mastermind team.  It contains a lot about the details of how to select a partner or team, based on criteria that are important to you.  This is an important aspect to take into account.  Picking the first person that you see might work, but any thinking you put in to who you choose will also be rewarded.

There Is Much Opportunity

Somebody is ready to team up with you right now for business, sports, yoga, studying, networking, motivation, goal-setting, going to events, and so on.  You probably thought of a person or two you might want to team up with now that you have read this article.  That is how good my writing and message is – it leads straight to action.  There hasn’t been a time where I teamed up with someone and regretted it afterward.  You might be surprised with how the person you want to team up with also wants to team up with you.  You might also be rejected and mocked for even trying, leading to a short bit of depression.  It isn’t likely, though.

You Won’t Be The Only One

Another thing you get out of partnering up with someone is a sense that you’re not alone in your quest.  Although it is good to feel as though you are leading the way through new frontiers, it is also good to get in touch with reality and connect with others who see a similar frontier.  I’ve found that there is always someone having a similar thought process to me in some aspect.

Partnering Makes Your Goals More Real

Teaming up with someone for something adds seriousness to it too.  Teaming up is saying that you are looking to fulfill your part of the collaboration.  If you have nothing to bring to the table, teaming up is not appealing.  It motivates you to bring something to the table.  If the table were a dinner table, you could bring some bread sticks to it.  Since it is most likely not, you must replace those bread sticks with your skill or effort of choice.

Collaboration and teamwork have such positive connotations because the people making use of them are getting leaps and bounds ahead of folks who are trying to stay as single entities.  There is a time and place for doing things alone, but there should also be a time and place for the opposite.

Random Example Story

How can I add more value here?  I could create a story.  Here is an example I am creating on the spot for you to relate to your own efforts:

There is a person named John, who is interested in learning C++ programming through tutorials.  He knows that he has tried it before, and did not go past tutorial 5 of a 31-day set.  This time, he finds someone else who is learning C++, like through the FreeNode C++ IRC Channel, and sets up a plan with them to go through the tutorial together.  He finds that their levels are somewhat different, so he resolves to do the first 4 sets of the tutorial on his own, followed by teaming up with the partner for the other 27 days.  John has put in effort and acquired an accountabilibuddy.

In Closing

If this article has made you think you want to partner up with me in some aspect(as most do), let me know through the contact page.  Other than that, feel free to leave a comment in relation to this topic.  Let me know if you thought of someone to team up with in some respect also, although you don’t have to mention who they are.

photo credit: dotbenjamin

Are you thinking “if only person A did this, and person B did this, and person C helped me with this, I would be able to really succeed”?  If so, you have to toss away that thinking.  Things don’t work out that way.  First off, people don’t know what you desire until you tell them, and second, even if you tell them, that doesn’t mean they are up for taking part as you have envisioned.

Your Focus Is To Be On You

This is an empowering thing to keep in mind.  Next time you get a thought like “if only this person did this”, realize it is not valuable.  You can’t let yourself be in the hands of someone else, as that is the opposite of self-control.  You have to run your own show.  Other people have their own show in place.

Bigshots Did What They Could Early On

Also, as you notice with successful folks, they didn’t need the perfect circumstances.  They needed their hunger and patience.  Later on, biographers describe their circumstances as having been great, or so on, but they took whatever they had and labeled that “the right circumstances”.  You can do the same.

The day when everyone is on the same page as you in bringing your initiative to fruition is not going to come.  That isn’t a real day.  It is an idealized day, and you shouldn’t need it anyway.  Maybe a couple are on your support team and a couple are either not helpful, or possibly against you in some way.  That is the normal way of things, and so you need to see it as normal and not bad.

That Ideal Day Is As Uncommon As Winning The Lottery

The perfect day doesn’t come, and even if it did, it wouldn’t impact you as you would imagine.  Instead, remember that today is a day that has come, and that is good enough.  You certainly have some potential in this instance, and ignoring that potential in search of some greater potential is like not eating bread, even though you are hungry, because there is a chance you may later have bread and cheese.  While bread and cheese can certainly be great, you don’t need that combination to be effective.  Also, if you can do fine with just bread, if bread and cheese arrives as a package for you later, you will have your self-discipline maintained, along with a reward on top of it.

Others Have Their Own Items To Focus On

People do generally have a sense of your desires, but they either might not be available, or don’t have the interest in helping, or don’t feel that they have the ability to help or support you.  Blaming others for any lack of support takes power away from you.  It is like saying you need their support to proceed, which is a very limited state of effectiveness.

Create Your Plan Around Your Own Abilities

You have to take a potential lack of support into account when you plan your efforts.  Know that not everyone will come to your side, and that you might have very little in the form of assistance.  This has to be in your game plan.  If you formulate a game plan that expects too much of others, you’ll get part of the way there and start to break down, because one of your “fuel sources” is depleted.  You can think of support like a fuel source, because support and help from others does lead you to take more action than you normally would.

Taking that into account means planning for having less fuel than what you think of as being at a full tank.  You have to be able to replenish your own fuel at times, through directed thinking, or exercise of some sort, or so on.  As I pointed out in a recent article, you might need some “foolish pride” to get through the difficult part of your venture.  That is somewhat like creating fuel out of thin air, at least temporarily.

When It Is Based On You, It Gets Done

There are quite a few folks waiting for a certain event or state of events to arise before they do something important they have been thinking of.  There are risks associated with this.  One is that you miss out on opportunities that would have been available had the action just been taken on a regular day, during regular circumstances.  Another risk is that the special day or period of time doesn’t come, and then the whole process is not started.  There is little we regret more than something we did not do.

So, when is the special day or time to act?  Many say you should treat today as that special day of sorts.  This is reasonable.  Also, you could leave tomorrow as your big action day, as long as it is tomorrow from today and not a vague “tomorrow”.

Do you have any examples that come to mind, where you have left control in the hands of others, in hopes of great results?  Let us know in the comments.

This post is both parts 4 and 5 of the hiking series of articles I had started.  This post will discuss the concepts I was going to go over in the last two parts of the series, and I will discuss them not in relation to hiking, but in more general terms.  There is a lot of value in setting a plan and going with it, and sharing strengths with others will get you further than you could ever get on your own.

Acting On Your Plans

Going with a plan is a big deal.  I know many have a problem with planning to do something and then not doing it.  Somewhere between the planning and time where the action is skipped is some sort of giving up.  This creates a bad feeling that would not have been there had you not made plans outside of your interests.  This is completely within our control, as we eliminate the reasons why our plan-to-action ratio is not very near 1:1.  We are in control of both sides of that equation, but often act like we are only able to make tentative plans, and the actions working out is the part we hope for.

The Value In Plans Is High

When you plan to go to a sports match with two buddies on a Thursday night, or plan to go to a comedy show with an old friend on a Saturday night,  you are creating a future memory.  The plan you make and act on will be “the thing you did” that day.  Maintaining a good ratio of plans-to-action reduces the amount of days you will look back on as days where the main plan didn’t work out.

Sharing Strengths Is A Winning Tactic

If you are good at singing and your friend is good at making melodic music, the obvious match there is something to not take for granted.  You may not have that friend around later, or may lose the motivation to sing publicly, or so on.  We sometimes assume that the window of time we have to team up with someone is huge, when it is actually reasonably short before something changes in one of your lives.  They may move on after waiting for you to team up with them, finding someone else interested in singing to their music, for example.  Use that opportunity when it is there, and you will be unstoppable by most, because the ability of two people teamed up is more than double that of a single person, due to each person’s skill added to any synergistic effects.

Seek Out Those Who Are  A Match Right Now

There is likely at least one person right now who would like to team up with you in some aspect.  They might have already signaled it to you, or are leaving you to see the chance, but either way, you likely have a sense of it too.  Give it a shot, because if you don’t, you will later still want to give it a shot, even when they have moved on in their efforts.

This concludes the mountain hiking trail adventure series in a way that was enjoyable for me.

What do you think about the value of some activities you plan and perform?  Do you often plan something and then not follow the plan you made?  Is there someone you can share strengths with at this time who you have not approached yet?  Let me know your thoughts in the comments.

Links To The Rest Of The Series

• Series Introduction
• Part One – Punctuality
• Part Two – Realistic Optimism
• Part Three – Setting Goal Points

Lots of trees

The next topic at hand in the outdoor mountain hiking trail adventure series is that of setting goal points. When you are performing a task, you need to have signs along the way that you are getting somewhere, in the form of stoppage points where you can recognize that you accomplished part of your goal. Your goals that don’t have these points written or thought of are much more likely to not progress, because your interest to continue will subside with no success feedback coming in.

The Goal Points Of Our Hike

As far as the hike, the various points along the 3-4 hour trip up the mountain were:

• the bottom
  

  Green ski hut

• waterfall on the side
• ski hut
• small creek
• rocky plateau
• steep final stretch
• the top

Each point along the way was a notable memory point that we could use on the way back for safety issues, but was more valuable as a memorable site on the way up showing that we were getting to the top. Walking through the Sahara desert isn’t appealing because it is sand followed by sand followed by sand. Our minds want to have some result to latch on so that we can progress forward.

Rocky plateau

As we went up the mountain, about halfway through, there was a green ski hut where we stopped for a bit, and that was one of the “landmarks” along the way that we could come back to.  There is a feeling of safety that comes with recognition, and unless there are stoppage points to recognize, that feeling of safety through accomplishment won’t materialize. When we were about 80% of the way up the mountain and had about an hour of sunshine left, all those points along the way became relevant return points, letting us know we were on the right path back.

The Same Is True With Your Goals

With respect to the goals you have, you need to write down a list like I have above for the mountain trip. Writing down this list on paper with a pencil, leaving lines in between each step, will help you break down what you want into manageable chunks. It is then that you can see if your interest is in doing those chunks, because if not, the larger goal is also out of reach. Sometimes we hold ourselves back from doing something because it seems too large, but that is alleviated by breaking it down into parts. At that point, the steps to take are visible, and you will know whether they interest you.

Book Reading Example

If you want to have read a certain book that you bought or loaned from a library, but have not read it as of yet, this is the process you want to take. Look at the titles of all the chapters. Read the first paragraph of some chapters. The table of contents is like the step-list of what material you will gain from reading it. Doing this will get you to the point where you decide that you won’t read it, or that you will read it right away. You need to clear out those books you “might” read, because they are taxing your thoughts and making you feel like you don’t tend to complete things you start.

Cooking Example

Setting goal points along the way is how to turn cooking into something easy. At a certain point of making a cooked fish meal, you will have the tomatoes cooked, or put rice in on the side, or pour water in, or other key points of the process. Thinking this way is similar to how it would say to think in David Allen’s Getting Things Done book.

Thinking Through Steps Gives You Control

If you have something big you see ominously looming in your future, setting steps leading to how you want it to turn out from the present time to that point in your future will give you a solid feeling of control. Lack of control is something that makes us act awkwardly, because we start to get into a dampened version of fight-or-flight mode, which we don’t need to resort to.

The next article will discuss setting up a future activity to take part in, like I did when I planned doing this series.

Links To The Rest Of The Series

• Series Introduction
• Part One – Punctuality
• Part Two – Realistic Optimism
• Part Four And Five – Going With A Plan And Social Sharing Of Strengths

A task of yours will only remains as focused and directed as you maintain it. The minute you start joking around with the concepts that are the foundation of the task, it becomes more likely to crumble. Playfulness and focused effort don’t mix too well. Here I discuss why you want to stay serious when in the middle of a task, and the problems that can be caused by even a short bit of relaxation or feeling of content during the process:

Studying For A Question-Based Exam Example

Let’s say you are studying for a certification or higher learning examination.  You have spent the last two weeks working through practice questions in a Kaplan study booklet or an online course.  Your focus has been maintained up until this point.  You could now become content with your recent studious success, and do any of the following things:

• start studying less because “you’ve already come so far”
• talk condescendingly to others who haven’t studied as hard as you in the past couple of weeks
• take much longer breaks between studying times just to absorb your good position without continuing it
• let yourself get distracted during study time
• do the practice questions without time constraints even though the test would have a time limit

The Slippery Slope Away From Seriousness

When you start to take it easy with even a small action that lacks focus, you head down a path where you end up working less diligently, and without as much concern for the results.  You have to take each question seriously, one-by-one, until you get done with a set.  People who joke about things they are doing usually don’t get far in doing them.  I can’t think of one successful individual that makes low-level jokes about anything, because making a joke about what you are doing shows others that you think you are in a good enough position where you don’t have to continue to work as hard.

Your Position Will Match Your Level Of Seriousness

The person who is “too serious” for their current position will move up to the next position, and the next one, until they get to a point where the people around them don’t see them as “too serious”, in comparison to themselves.  The more you joke about what you are doing, the more likely it is that you move down a level or two.  Often-praised traits that are had like unflappability or determination don’t come from relaxing at the first sign of success.  This doesn’t mean to turn into an individual that has no choice in relation to pursuing your interests, but that you don’t want to show deviation from the pursuit.  Deviation lets people know you are not fully focused on your goals, which will prevent them from fully supporting you, just as a woman will turn down a man who shows indecision in pursuing her.

Check the dictionary and you will find that a habit is an acquired pattern of behavior that often occurs automatically.  Habits are things that you do subconsciously, often not even thinking about it.  They are part of your daily routine and can often be hard to break.  Have you ever got in the car to drive home from work thinking, “I’ve really got to stop and pick up some milk from the shop”, and the next thing you know, you’re at home without the milk!  This is an example of a habit, and these habits that are part of your daily life can be both bad and good.

It depends on whether they add quality to your life or not.  It would be exhausting to have to go through the day concentrating on everything you do – like washing the dishes or brushing your teeth.  These are things that we do on autopilot that help life run more smoothly.  There are also negative things that become habits however, such as worrying about things at work or doubting your ability to achieve things, which can hold you back in life, and stop you from achieving the level of success that you desire.

It is difficult to break old habits, and instill new, positive habits.  Ever tried to get fit or lose weight and you’ll know what I mean!  It takes time, and effort to begin something new, and stick to it, and it is only once you have been doing it for some time does it begin to become a habit.  Studies have shown that it takes approximately a month of consistent effort to instill a new habit, or break an old one, so it will take some time and perseverance on your part, but there are a few simple things that you can do to make the transition a great deal easier and ensure your success.

1. Decide on the habit that you are going to change – Once you have done this, you are half way towards making the change.  If you don’t have a goal, then you will never achieve it!  Successful people have goals, and this can be a differentiating factor in your success.
2. Substitute negative habits for positive habits – Once you have decided on the habit to change, you need to decide what habit you will replace it with.  This is very powerful and will accelerate your progress.
3. Write down the new habit – Take a piece of paper and write your new habit down.  Say it out loud to yourself and then put it in your pocket.  Carry it around with you and take it out and read it to yourself throughout the day.  Read it out loud first thing in the morning and then last thing at night.
4. Visualize yourself doing your new habit – Visualization techniques are very powerful and can have a great impact on your subconscious mind.  If you have never tried it before, then try out this simple exercise.  Lie down in a quiet comfortable environment and feel your whole body relaxing as the tension from each of your muscles disappears.  Once you feel yourself relaxed, imagine yourself doing your new habit.  Make the images bright, colorful and bold, and imagine what you are saying and doing as you carry out your new habit.  Smell the smells, hear the sounds and feel the emotions.  Really put yourself into the situation and make it as real as possible.  Do this at least once a day and the effect that this will have on your subconscious mind (and ultimately on your behavior) will be huge.
5. Ensure you have plenty of reminders – Put up notes on your fridge, set alarms in your calendar or phone, take out the piece of paper that you have in your pocket and read it to yourself throughout the day.
6. Be patient and persevere – the first month may be difficult, and you may suffer from lapses, but remind yourself that these things take time.  You are only human after all.  With consistent effort and determination, you can succeed.

Although breaking a habit can take time and effort, the steps involved are relatively simple, but can have lasting impact on your success and overall happiness in life.  Good Luck!

About the author: Brian helps companies embrace emotional intelligence to develop staff, and if you are interested in self-development techniques, then visit http://www.MonthlyMillionaires.com/blog to get your free copy and mind-blowing analysis and summarized version of world famous motivational book “Think and Grow Rich”.