5 simple habits to help you reach your goals faster

2024 Author: Malcolm Clapton | [email protected]. Last modified: 2023-12-17 03:44

Our habits control our lives. What we do determines who we become and what we achieve. Therefore, you need to cultivate good habits. In this article, we'll share five habits that can help you reach your goals faster.

All people dream about something and set some goals, but only a small part achieve these goals. Do you know what makes these people different? Their habits. It is habits that determine how a person's life proceeds and what he achieves.

I'm not going to "pump" you with motivation in this article, but just want to share five good habits that will help you achieve your goals faster. You can start building these habits into your life today.

1. Develop self-discipline

Great victories are achieved only through discipline. Without discipline, only mediocre initial results are possible. Believe it or doubt it, it’s true.

Do you know what laziness is? There are many definitions of this phenomenon, but of all I like one:

Laziness is a lack of discipline.

Just imagine how drastically your life would change if you did all the things that you should do, but don't because of your laziness. Lack of discipline turns a person into a weak, helpless loser.

And the question is how to learn to be disciplined. The good news is that it is not difficult to develop discipline (no phenomenal actions are required), it is difficult to maintain this discipline at the proper level.

Here's what to understand if you want to develop discipline.

Scientists have found that human willpower is a resource that tends to deplete. In other words, willpower is gradually expended throughout the day.

Have you noticed that the dumbest decisions we usually make at the end of the day? Because willpower is running out.

I will not provide links to research. Instead, I recommend reading the book by Kelly McGonigal, which is called "". This book has all the necessary evidence and scientific justification.

So, if by the end of the day willpower is expended, then its peak occurs in the morning. And if so, then it makes sense to accustom yourself to discipline from the very morning, when there is a necessary reserve of will for this.

Many different exercises are known, but I want to suggest the simplest one: train yourself to wake up earlier. Promise yourself to get up at 6 a.m. for the next 30 days (excluding weekends) and follow through on your promise. Trust me, waking up so early every day takes discipline. But if you break your promise and cannot show discipline even in this simple matter, then what kind of high achievements can we talk about?

2. Feed your mind to develop intelligence

There is a category of people, we call them nerds, who like to think that all power is in knowledge. These people read a lot and are happy to absorb new information. In part, this makes sense, but overall, this philosophy is far from the truth.

Strength is knowledge backed up by practice. The one who did not take his head out of the books to try something will not gain strength. But a botanist who tries to apply the knowledge gained is a completely different story. Bill Gates is a prime example.

We nourish our body by absorbing various foods. What happens if we overeat? We gain weight, become slow, and in general the extra pounds are harmful to our health.

A similar situation is with the mind. He, too, needs only to be fed, and not fed to everyone.

The easiest place to start with is reading those books, knowledge from which can help you on the way to your goal.

Start reading 10 pages a day (you can do more, read more). It won't take long to read 10 pages (I, for example, do this in the morning after waking up). How many pages are there on average in a book? About 300. This means that you will read one book a month and 12 a year. This is a very good result.

The ability to learn is also a habit that takes effort.

3. Strike a balance between work and play

There is a perception that you need to work smarter, not harder. It seems to me that this philosophy is far from reality. It might sell more books with this slogan, but in the real world, "hard work" almost always wins over "smart work."

I have not yet heard a single story about how someone without much difficulty, using some clever method, achieved success in a short time. Usually a triumph is preceded by hard work, and with experience comes lightness and seeming simplicity. In my opinion, combining hard work with a smart approach is an ideal to strive for.

But hard work is mentally and physically draining. And to avoid burnout and run at full power again, you need to recharge the batteries. Everything in the world needs rest, and you are no exception.

I've met people who said they didn't need a break. But in fact, there is another reason behind their answer: they don't think they deserve this vacation.

You should not turn into a person who thinks about rest at work, and about work at rest. This is not good. Find a balance between work and play. What does it mean? It means taking actions that will help your body and mind to repair itself.

These activities for me include meditation, sports and healthy sleep, as well as my family, friends and hobbies. I try to find time for all this. You need to find yours.

Working all the time and not finding time for fun is a trait of boring people. Do you want to become like that?

4. Monitor your energy level

We cannot go full speed towards our targets when our fuel tank is empty. This means that if we want to be as efficient and productive as possible in working towards our goals, we need to learn to monitor and regulate our energy levels.

There are many different factors that affect the level of physical energy in the body. I don’t see the full list of reasons, it’s very long. Instead, I recommend Jim Loer's excellent book "". There it is written about this in detail.

I will give only a few recommendations from myself:

Find the period of time when you are most effective, and arrange your work schedule in accordance with it. For example, I noticed long ago that it is most effective between 8:00 and 13:00. During this period, energy just gushes out of me. Therefore, my most important things - whenever possible - I try to schedule for this time.
Choose your environment. Gossipers, negative and depressed people are energy vampires. I noticed for a long time that it is worth talking to such people and the desire to work somewhere disappears. Therefore, isolate yourself from those who slow you down on the path to your goals.

And remember that you are still limited by the reserves of your physical energy, which means that you need to think ahead of how to properly distribute it, so that it does not turn out that small things have exhausted you even before you start something important.

5. Learn to control your fear

Have you noticed for yourself that you work tirelessly for days on end, but you still do not get the cherished result?

One of the explanations for this is that the brain imperceptibly slips you only those tasks, the work on which is as safe and economical as possible in terms of energy consumption. So he protects and protects us from overwork and danger. This is one of the functions of the brain.

All great achievements are outside your comfort zone. But the problem is, when we get close to the comfort boundary, a defense mechanism called fear kicks in.

By nature, fear was conceived as a means of warning of danger, and without it humanity would hardly have survived. But in our situation, fear makes us a person unable to achieve our goals. Fear prevents us from becoming who we want to become. Fear clouds our minds and prevents us from realizing our full potential.

Therefore, you need to learn to control your fear. Unfortunately, there is no way without this. The truth is, fear does not control you any more than you allow it. Fear is just a signal that there is discomfort ahead. A person is able to simply ignore his fear if he really wants to.

For example, when I am experiencing a fit of fear or intense excitement, I begin to breathe deeply and often. If circumstances permit, I devote 10 minutes of meditation to clear my mind. And it helps me to relieve tension.

But stopping you on the path to your goal is not the only thing that fear can do. Fear is also a beacon that indicates the shortest path to the goal. After all, usually what we are afraid of is what is worth doing first. Remember this and use it.

My advice to you is, never focus on how much you fear. Think about what kind of reward awaits you after you overcome your fear.

Personally, I'm used to thinking of my fear-fighting efforts as a price to pay for the opportunity to play in the "big league." Those who cannot or do not want to pay this fee play in the “lower division”, where there is no great responsibility, but the reward is different, much more modest.