Lifestyle Mastery Boxed Set

by Scott Allan

  Negative habits are rarely changed in the first few attempts. We have to keep trying. With every effort, you are strengthening the cords of repetition. Eventually, the cords become unbreakable cables.

  In a notebook, create a page with two sides. On the left side, make a list of habits you desire to give up. On the right side, adjacent to each habit, write down the method you are going to apply to reinforce the change. You only have to write down one method for now. There could be a lot of actions to take, but we only need one. You can work on expanding this later.

  For instance, if you’re willing to stop smoking, just stopping cold turkey isn’t enough. It might work for some people, but for many it’s a tough way to quit. You have to replace the habit with something else, such as following through on a new workout routine.

  If you want to get into the habit of saving money instead of spending it, just wanting to save may not work. Most people would like to save more. Few people actually follow through. Why? They aren’t willing to make the necessary changes to their daily spending habits.

  If your habit is impulse buying, there are two actions you must consider. First you have to break the pattern of compulsive shopping, and then you need to replace it with a new action that involves saving your cash instead of spending it.

  As you do this exercise, follow the steps I recommend for making changes. Through sticking with these steps, I have broken countless habits that would have ruined me physically, financially, and mentally. Be the master of your world from this day forth, but first, gain control of actions that influence these habits.

  Good habits build new worlds and give rise to a new way of living, whereas existing in a state of compulsive action and out-of-control, chaotic behavior leads you away from your destiny.

  Your world, the life you constructed, has largely been influenced by the habits you have adhered to all these years. For good or bad, habits have built your life.

  Replacing old, worn-out habits and limiting patterns is the key to obtaining long-term success. However, just stopping something isn’t enough. Without replacing the old habit with a new pattern, your chances of success are minimal.

  Old patterns, even after years of absence, still have active roots in the soils of your mind. The only thing it takes to invite those old ways back is a thought or action leading to reinforcement of the dead pattern. Before you know it, you’re right back where you started.

  Addiction is a perfect example. Those who relapse, even after years of abstinence, venture back to what’s most familiar even though it almost destroyed them. Even after years of staying on course, if we are not diligent in sticking with our newly formed habits, the bad habits that caused us grief will return, and in greater force this time.

  The habits you’ve changed, although no longer so powerful, still have invisible threads attached to your psyche. Like the roots of a dead tree, they linger beneath the surface, waiting to be called back into action.

  Be aware of their presence, and after years of positive reinforcement and changes, if you feel yourself being pulled back into old patterns, identify the root of the issue right away. Is it a thought, a feeling, or an action you performed? Did you meet someone who triggered feelings from the past? Was it a certain song you heard?

  There could be any number of reasons. Take the time to review where you are. Once you identify the cause, you become stronger because you’ll be able to close the door and sever the connection with the old pattern before it becomes active again.

  Elements for Creating Positive Habits

  Purpose - Why do you want to change? What do you hope to accomplish through this change? By implementing this habit, what positive influence will this bring you? How will this change benefit others? If you don’t have a purpose for change that motivates and drives you forward, your chances of converting a habit are slim.

  Define the reasons why you absolutely must change a pattern of behavior, give yourself powerful reasons why, and you will increase your success factor. A weak purpose only inspires a weak effort, whereas a purpose that motivates and excites you creates powerful momentum that inspires desire.

  Desire - When it comes to creating new pathways for habits, a powerful desire to change is critical. The only time I have been successful at changing anything, it was because I truly wanted to change it.

  You can have a reason to change, and know how to go about it, but it must be something you want and not what someone else wants. Have you ever tried to change for someone else, and even though you might have succeeded, you still felt miserable?

  This is because you have to want it more than anything else. Desire is fueled by purpose. See the changes you are making in your life and visualize the powerful results these changes are bringing. Visualize the world you are creating through developing and initiating habits that align with your truest values.

  Letting go - What would you be willing to give up in exchange for everything you’ve always wanted? What cravings, temptations, or addictions would you have to surrender in order to have everything you truly desired? What is your happiness and the happiness of your loved ones worth? What sacrifices will you make to succeed?

  Methods - To change your habits, there are certain methods you can use. Ask yourself what habits you’ll need to develop to accomplish your goals. What are the steps you’ll take from now on to convert these internal pathways to serve your purpose?

  Write down the constructive habits you want to have and the steps you’ll take to develop them. In order to succeed, you have to know what methods you’ll use. There must be a plan for success. Remember, failing to know how you will succeed (creating a plan) is planning to fail.

  Identifying the new habits you want is the critical step to making real changes in your life. Right now, write down a habit that you want to convert. Then write down the habit that will take its place. Using the habit conversion sheet, take the challenge to change this habit through a steady, consistent focus of your energy. Don’t think about failing. You can’t fail this. Make small changes through daily practice. Turn to the habit conversion challenge sheet and get started on making real, positive changes in your life.

  Now, here are the fourteen action steps you can take to make sure you are creating a system of habits that are working for you. Consider this a checklist, but you don’t have to carry out every step perfectly.

  Your Habit Destiny Program

  “I never could have done what I have done without the habits of punctuality, order, and diligence, without the determination to concentrate myself on one subject at a time.”

  — Charles Dickens

  When it comes to habit building, we can break it down into two stages:

  Build your new habit slowly.

  Break the bad habit gradually.

  For example, I was in the habit of consuming large amounts of sugar every day. This consisted of a chocolate bar, ice cream, and various sweets. When I decided to stop this bad habit and replace it with better foods, I cut my chocolate intake by half the first week. Then, I cut it again in half for the second week. By the third week of cutting down gradually, I was hardly craving it.

  When it came to watching TV, I knew I had to reduce television time in order to do more writing, reading, and meditating. So I approached watching TV the same way I eliminated chocolate. I scheduled my movie time at certain periods of the week so that it eliminated the impulse to turn on the TV whenever I felt like it.

  1. Visualize living the new habit

  A new habit can be hard to instill in yourself, but imagine how it will change your life. How would you look and feel after three months of steady exercise? Where would your career be if you dedicated thirty minutes a day to reading books on building a business? How would you change mentally and emotionally if you were meditating for ten minutes every day?

  In the first part of this book, we discussed visual imagination. You can use this tactic for forming new habits. Say you want to lose weight, but you have a habit of eating
junk food every night. You can visualize what you’ll look like after dropping twenty pounds. You can visualize the habit of exercising in the evening instead of just watching TV and consuming junk. In doing so, you will create the emotions that go with it.

  2. Focus on the daily action, and not the end goal

  It is easy to focus on the end goal. But it doesn’t stop there. If you form the habit of eating less junk food and more greens so that you can lose thirty pounds, what happens when you reach your goal? You mind could trick you into thinking, “This is it,” and revert back to your old routine again.

  Keep setting new goals for yourself so that you’re always improving. Stay fixed on what you can achieve each day. Be realistic, as well. Instead of deciding you’ll lose twenty pounds, stay focused on not eating junk food for today, or doing twenty minutes of cardio exercise.

  3. Focus on one habit at a time

  There are dozens of habits we could try to change next week. Habits we want to break, and habits we want to start. I would recommend focusing on one new habit until it is fixed. Then you can scale up and start another one.

  Can you imagine where you would be in six months if you committed to just one course of action? Focusing on one habit can have a tremendous impact. If you try to change several habits at once, you’ll become frustrated when you start to miss a day here and there, and then one failure becomes many. One habit is a manageable goal.

  4. Create an action plan for each habit and repeat

  The goal is to commit to a set action plan for each day. This can be as simple as committing to five minutes per day doing a single action. For example, if you’re trying to build the exercise habit, you can do just five reps on the first day. If you are writing a book, commit to writing for ten minutes for the next thirty days.

  What matters isn’t how much we get done. The idea is to follow through with the action and make it a consistent pattern you perform every day, regardless if it is ten reps or fifty. You can scale up later when you are conditioned to doing the action without thinking about it.

  5. Repeat this action every day for the next thirty days

  You can commit to the same time each day, which is the best situation. For example, write two hundred words of your novel first thing in the morning at six a.m. Meditate for ten minutes every evening an hour before bed.

  If you think about it, you already perform hundreds of habits a day unconsciously at roughly the same time each day. Now, we’re making ourselves aware of the new habit by pushing it into our schedule and making it a regular occurrence.

  6. Be realistic in your expectations

  Change takes time. We have to be patient with our progress and resilient in our approach. The people who become masters at what they do reach that level through decades of practice. Tony Robbins said, “We overestimate what we can do in a month but underestimate our progress in a year.”

  If you have had the same habit for years, it is deeply ingrained into your mind. Expecting to replace your habit with a new one takes time, and it could take up to six months. Even then, you have to continue practicing the new habit.

  7. Keep it simple

  Habit building isn’t complicated. You can keep it simple by trying the following:

  Focus on one habit a time.

  Perform the same action every day.

  And at the same time every day.

  Scale up gradually.

  Measure your results.

  8. Create your habit triggers

  Set up a trigger for your new habit. This works for both creating new ones and breaking your bad habits. For example, if your new habit is to read for ten minutes a day, leave the book you are reading on the table in the morning so that it’s the first thing you see.

  Whatever your focus is for building this habit, you can leave it out in the morning, or set an alarm to go off at a certain time each day. For example, I scheduled my habit time in my calendar. That way I would receive a notification when it was time to take action.

  The trigger becomes your permission to take action. Make it visible. Make it so loud that you can’t ignore it.

  9. Be aware of bad habit triggers

  Just as we need triggers to take action toward positive habits, we also need to be aware of the triggers that pull us back into bad habits. For example, when I reduced the amount of junk food I was eating, I had a habit of trolling through the junk food aisle in the store. As soon as I walked into the store it was the first section I visited. Then, if they were having a sale on chocolate that day, my trigger would associate cheap chocolate with pleasure, and I would give in.

  Whatever habit you’re working on replacing, make yourself aware of the habits that trigger you to give in and eat, spend, or indulge. The danger lies in our own minds. It is your thinking that causes you to seek out the trigger spot. You might be working on replacing smoking with exercise, and then after a workout, you stroll by a cigar shop because it’s on your way home.

  In the early stages of habit changing, we are vulnerable to our cravings and what a mentor of mine called “crooked thinking.” Make yourself aware of the habits that draw you into relapsing.

  People relapse all the time, in many cases because the old habit returns when they don’t get results after a week or two. We then unconsciously seek out our old routines because they are familiar. New habits have a certain level of discomfort until they become solidified.

  If you relapse, try again. The key is to focus on daily positive action.

  10. Set manageable goals

  Let’s say our decision is to create a habit for reading more books. This would increase your knowledge and would be a better activity than watching TV. If you stick with thirty minutes of reading per day, you could read five books in a month. But if thirty minutes is a tough habit to stick with, try just ten minutes a day. This is easily manageable.

  In fact, most habits could be built in just five to ten minutes per day. You don’t have to invest an hour every day or push yourself to the end of exhaustion.

  Break it down into small chunks and you’ll have created your new habit within thirty days. You want to write a book? Start with one hundred words per day. You want to wake up earlier? Start by setting your alarm ten minutes earlier. You could also build a habit to go to bed earlier. Remember it’s not the big result that we’re going for, but building the behavior. Once you master the routine, you can scale up at any time.

  11. Focus on long-term conversion

  It takes time to change behaviors. If it happened quickly, everyone would be doing it. According to a study released in the European Study of Social Psychology, a team of researchers led by Phillippa Lally surveyed ninety-six people over twelve weeks to find out how long it took them to develop a new habit. At the end of the survey, Lally analyzed the results of the experiment and determined the time it took to form a new habit was approximately sixty-six days.

  We need to think long-term. It takes approximately sixty-six days to replace a habit. This is a tough road to navigate for most people.

  We need long-term focus and consistent concentration over a period of months to make it happen. If you are expecting to see massive gains after two weeks, you could be setting yourself up to fail. Think long-term habit change, and stay focused on daily repetitions.

  An example would be pushups. I do fifty to seventy-five pushups four times per week. But it took me nearly three months to build up to this. I started by doing five a day for the first week, then ten a day in the second week. Then I increased by two push-ups a day until I hit my goal of fifty a day. Every day, I would add two more to the habit. By focusing on the long-term objective, which was to build up to one hundred a day, I could achieve this and get into better shape than ever before.

  Action Plan:

  Have a long-term focus and scale up slowly. Whatever your habit, you can achieve your goal by scaling slowly. Stay fixed on the behavior.

  12. Focus on habit replacement instead of elimination

 
; When it comes to building new habits, our initial thought is, “I have to eliminate the old habits.” If you want to eat healthier to lose weight and get into better shape, eliminating junk food intake isn’t a realistic plan. Instead, focus on reducing the habit a little bit every week.

  Reduce your sugar intake every day by ten percent. You’ll have less pressure to do it perfectly. You can apply this to any habit you are attempting to break. Want to reduce the amount of time you spend online? Start cutting down by five percent a day. You can set up blocks of time when you’re offline altogether instead of wired to your cellphone or computer.

  To get away from constantly looking at your cell phone, consider buying a regular alarm clock and a watch. This will prevent you from using your phone as an alarm, and keep you from looking at it as soon as you wake up. Now that you have a watch, you won’t need to check your phone for the time—which means you won’t get distracted by other notifications on your screen, either.

  Action Plan:

  Reduce your habits by five percent a day. Don’t simply eliminate. Then you can hit your goals much more realistically. Focus on reduction, not elimination.

  13. Build support through accountability

  New habits are difficult to implement and stick with, especially in the beginning. For this reason, having a habit buddy is a recommended approach to supporting your new routine.

  If you’re trying to get into the habit of exercising more, this could be someone you go jogging with twice a week, or you might do strength training together. If you can’t meet in person, you can connect via Zoom, Skype, or Google Hangouts.

  Set up a habit accountability call with your friend once a week to follow up on progress. Make sure you work with someone who is also interested in habit development, although they could be working on a different habit. It’s important to share not just the fun of habit building, but the struggles you are going through as well.