Blueprint >> Habit-Building

Disclaimer: This document is in raw form as I process and distill 4 years-worth of my personal development notes. Expect some typos and cryptic language for now. I will be updating frequently and polishing up.

Prescription: Build positive habits.
Related Concepts: Momentum, Happiness, Mind Power, Eliminate Addictions, Kaizen, Willpower

What is Habit-Building?

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Why is it Important?

Good habits support your ideal life and free up your willpower to pursue greater things. Happiness comes from making habits out of the things that you value the most. Success comes from having a strong work habit.

Habit-Building Videos

[coming soon...]

Habit-Building: Key Points

Turn empowering activities into habits by doing them consistently, every day, without fail, for a period of at least 30 to 60 days. After 30-60 days, the activity will soak through into your subconscious and become much more automatic.

The power of creating habits is in releasing your willpower to do other things. When you first start a new behavior or activity, you will need to apply a lot of willpower and conscious attention. It will be hard. You will have to watch yourself like a hawk or you will slip up. But after 30 days, the behavior will become automated to the point where you can ease up your self-discipline in that area of life and apply it elsewhere. Creating multiple good habits over the course of a year is a very powerful strategy.

Successful, productive, happy people, are that way because they took the time to create successful, productive, happy habits. What are you doing on a daily basis that's promoting your success and happiness? What could you start doing? What should you stop doing?

Negative habits waste your time by taking up slots that should be used for positive habits. Negative habits are wasting your opportunities for success while at the same time making you feel guilty and miserable. Stop smoking, stop drinking, stop the drugs, stop overeating, stop partying, stop watching TV, stop checking your email all the time, stop interrupting your work, stop texting, stop worrying, stop watching porn, stop oversleeping, stop overworking, stop procrastinating, etc.

Don't build too many habits are once. Ideally, install 1 habit at a time. Perhaps 2 if you've been successful with 1. But don't try to install 3 or more habits at once — you will increase your chances of failure dramatically because you are splitting your willpower in three. Be patient with habits. If you only install 1 habit every 2 moths, that's still 6 new positive habits per year. 6 well-choosing habits, successfully installed, will dramatically improve your life.

Some habits will take longer to install than others. Some habits will be harder to install than others.

Piggyback new habits on old habits. ¹

References

1. High Performance Academy, Brendon Burchard