Life is a wonderful thing.
With the exception of a few extraordinary
circumstances, no matter what happened
yesterday, you get a fresh start today. If
you had conflict at the office yesterday,
today is your chance to resolve it. If your
diet went off track, today is the best day
to start again. Feel like you've lost your
mojo on a project or resolution? No fear.
Today, our friend Jonathan Fields gets you
back on the road to success. It doesn't
matter what day or month of the year it is
now. You don't have to wait for January 1st.
You can start again today. And you will
finish strong soon.
Craig Ballantyne
"Watch yourself as you go about your daily
business and later reflect on what you saw,
trying to identify the sources of distress
in your life and thinking about how to avoid
that distress." - William B. Irvine, "A
Guide to the Good Life: The Ancient Art of
Stoic Joy"
By Jonathan Fields
Resolutions don't change bodies, minds,
careers, businesses and lives, actions do.
But, without the right approach, it can be
near impossible to take the actions needed
to get where you're desperate to go!
Behavior change--exercise, diet, meditation,
changing careers or launching a business,
writing a book, making art--is hard, really
hard. Most people fail. Not because they're
incapable of doing what needs to be done,
but because they don't know how to do it
right.
They don't know where to find valid
information. They don't know whom to trust.
They don't understand what it really takes
to cultivate substantial progress and
change. And they don't know how to create
the structures that absolutely must be in
place to support the small daily behaviors
that culminate in extraordinary change and
achievement over time.
Here are the 7 keys to successful behavior
change and quest achievement:
1. Knowledge
You must know what the right behaviors,
actions and decisions are. If you want to
lose 50 pounds, you need to know what action
will lead to that outcome. If you want to
launch or build a world-changing venture,
you need to know the steps that will make it
happen (and more importantly the ones to
avoid that'll tear it down). If you're
trying to build a good life, you need to
know what goes into that bucket and what
needs to be tossed.
2. Support
You need support on three levels, if
possible: peer support, co-striver support
and mentor support.
-
Peer support is critical as a source
of inspiration, information and
accountability.
-
Co-striver support (people who are
striving to do similar things at similar
times) adds the element of creating
what's called a "normalizing"
experience. Knowing a tight-knit group
of co-strivers are going through similar
struggles, embracing tough challenges
and working through them makes you
realize you're not alone and, although
it's tough, there are others right there
with you and you're all going to get
through it together. Note, too, you
don't all have to be working on the same
thing, project, quest or organization.
It's more about sharing the experience
on the level of parallel play.
-
Mentors and coaches are people who are
further down the road than you who can
share wisdom and insights designed to
help you correct course, avoid mistakes
(though, some you'll have to make
yourself to get how to do it right) and
accelerate your quest. Most important
when finding and choosing mentors and
coaches, too, is that (a) you trust
them, (b) they're genuinely qualified to
help you, either through training or
experience and (c) they're invested in
your success and genuinely care.
Collectively, these people come together to
form your Circle of Champions. Research
shows, having this group artfully chosen and
fully-committed to your vision ups your
likelihood of success exponentially and
often shortens the time frame and makes the
dance far more enjoyable.
3. Motivation
You've got to have a clearly established
"why." If it's a simple change or goal you
aspire to, old school carrot and stick,
i.e., extrinsic motivation will often get
the job done.
But for longer term, more complex, involved
quests, a deeper, more intrinsic, internal
source of motivation will be a stronger
driver of consistent action over time, which
is what determines success.
One key to intrinsic motivation is something
I call "alignment." When the behaviors
you're looking to cultivate or the quest you
aspire to complete is poorly aligned with
who you are and what makes you come alive,
it makes the process so jarring to your
system, your likelihood of doing the work to
needed to succeed plummets.
When what you're trying to build is so
tightly aligned with all aspects of who you
are that it feels like it's an organic
extension of your being, you'll still end up
working like crazy to get it done, but it
will feel far more effortless. High-levels
of alignment tend to jack intrinsic
motivation through the roof. And they keep
it there longer. Your "why" is more about
DNA than packaging.
This can be a huge issue with aspiring
entrepreneurs and career changers. In
addition to personal alignment, you also
need to align business model, mode of
delivery, creative orientation, leadership
orientation and a number of other "degrees
of alignment" that will be specific to your
quest.
When you understand how to tee it all up
right, your quest sings. You don't ever need
to look for a reason to do the work. Problem
is, very few people know how to do this
well.
Instead, they align their actions and vision
with what they think will succeed, what
looks good or "justifiable" on paper, rather
than aligning their quest and actions with
the fiber of their being. Huge mistake.
Because even if you end up building
something the world deems successful, you'll
end suffering way more than necessary and
will be significantly more likely to have
built a business or achieved a quest the
world deems a success, but you experience as
a miss or, worse...a cage.
4. Simplicity
Legendary Stanford professor, B.J. Fogg, has
studied persuasion for years and devised his
own model for behavior change. One of the
big discoveries, simplicity trumps
information. Take the complexity out of your
approach and make it as easy as possible to
learn what to do and then do it.
When it comes to action-taking, simplicity
rules, complexity drools.
If you want to exercise every morning, leave
your running shoes and clothes right next to
your bed when you rise and have a running
partner meet you every morning outside your
door.
I meditate for 25 minutes every morning like
clockwork, no matter my schedule is the rest
of the day. And no matter where I am in the
world or how tired I may be when I awaken.
One of the keys has been to prepare my
meditation area before I go to bed. I set up
my cushion, a glass of water, my timer, and
a blanket if it's cold. I remove complexity
and, more important, I remove
decision-making from the system.
What you'll find is that it's not the doing
of the thing that's hard. It's the
beginning. Once I'm on the cushion, the next
25 minutes flow with relative ease (okay, so
maybe that took a bit of practice).
But research shows beginning a task or a
process is a far greater challenge than
continuing it once it's begun. So make it as
simple as possible to begin.
5. Measurement
You need to create a very clear picture of
what success looks like. Because if you
don't, you wont understand what you're
aspiring to. Nor will you know when you've
arrived.
Things like mission statements, painted
pictures, perfect-day exercises, outcome
visualizations, they can all help you
understand where you're going and what your
personal metrics for success are.
But, when you're in the part of any quest I
call The Thrash, you often don't yet have a
clear beat on your metrics for success. But
you still need something to strive for. You
need something to measure. You need to know
if you're moving forward, backward or
sideways.
While you're in this part of your journey,
your Circle of Champions will be a powerful
source of guidance (and sanity) to allow you
to divine and refine what matters and what's
worth measuring. They will see things that
you are blind to.
6. Framework
Once you have the first five in place, you
need an action framework. A plan of action
that's not just some one-size-fits-all, but
rather a simple to use methodology (again,
if it's complex, it won't work) that allows
you to:
-
Identify the daily, weekly and monthly
actions needed to get from where you are
now to where you want to go.
-
Memorialize them, either in writing or
digitally.
-
Track progress over time (this,
according to the work of Professor
Teresa Amabile, is critical).
-
Adapt to changing circumstances and
new information, without losing momentum
There is no one-size-fits-all here. Some
great approaches to explore include systems
by Productive Flourishing's Charlie Gilkey
or Behance's Action Method
7. Ritual
This may be last but it may also be most
important. You must break the giant action
steps of your quest into bite size habits,
turning the big action steps from
intimidating behaviors into easy rituals.
What's the difference?
Behavior requires willpower. Rituals happen
auto-magically.
Rituals (or habits) are behaviors repeated
in a systematic way over time that move from
conscious choice to autopilot action. The
more you ritualize success activities, the
more you free-up brainpower and willpower,
making it more likely that you'll do the
things needed to change what you're trying
to change.
When you're building behaviors and actions
into rituals that require some level of
will, you're better off building the ritual
into the earlier part of your day. This is
because willpower is a limited resource and
by late afternoon, your tank starts to run
pretty close to empty.
If it's a behavior you actually enjoy or are
intrinsically drawn to, like painting or
playing guitar or creating a product,
business or service you love, these will
generally require far less willpower. Time
of day becomes less important.
Putting It All Together
Does all of this take effort?
Darn straight it does.
But the cost of not putting in the effort is
worse. Not doing the work leads to a life of
futility, unrealized potential, of
unexpressed humanity and unrequited
connection. I'd rather do the work than
muddle through life with my soul-tank, my
body, my mindset, my relationships, my art,
and my potential perpetually on half-empty.
So, what's the best time to reclaim your
quest?
Right now.
No matter what your goal, now is the time to
move your body, eat better, meditate, set
the wheels in motion for a new career, start
a venture, business, or movement or create
the art buried in your soul.
Just take action right now.
Your likelihood of success goes up massively
once you've put the above keys into place.
Do the work, find the people, create the
systems, implement the knowledge, and build
the support needed to breathe life back into
your life.
And most important, Commit.
"Until one is committed, there is hesitancy,
the chance to draw back, always
ineffectiveness. Concerning all acts of
initiative (and creation), there is one
elementary truth the ignorance of which
kills countless ideas and splendid plans:
that the moment one definitely commits
oneself, the providence moves too. A whole
stream of events issues from the decision,
raising in one's favor all manner of
unforeseen incidents, meetings and material
assistance, which no man could have dreamt
would have come his way." - W. H.
Murray
