In a previous post, I wrote about how to use willpower to establish new habits. But what is the purpose of a good habit?
Simply put, if you can build a constructive action into your daily routine, then over a period of months and years, this daily action can have a massive compounding effect (for good) on your life. The reverse is also true. A bad habit that becomes a part of the way you do things can have a seriously harmful impact if it is maintained over time.
Walking two kilometres at lunchtime as a once off event will not make any difference to your life. Similarly, eating a couple of biscuits with lunch on a particular day will not have an adverse effect on your health. But if either action is performed every day for a year, you will be either seven hundred and thirty kilometres to the good, or seven hundred and thirty biscuits to the bad. This difference is much more likely to lead to a noticeable change than a choice on one given day.
Thomas Corley wrote a book called Rich Habits about the daily success habits of wealthy individuals. He studied people who have been successful (in monetary terms at least) and identified ten common habits which are commonly adopted across the cohort. Here are the top ten resolutions that Corley advises we make and adhere to.
1. I will form good daily habits and follow these good daily habits each and every day. The best way to begin is to compile an inventory of all of your habits. If there are some bad habits in there, try to replace them with good ones. My willpower article gives advice on creating new habits. In particular, it advises to only start one or two new habits at a time, and to work on them daily for forty five days before you consider them “locked in” and move on to form new ones. As such, it may take nine to eighteen months to embed ten new habits.
2. I will set goals for each day, for each month, for each year and for the long-term. Goals are the things which help provide direction and a sense of purpose in life. Goal setting has been a big part of my life. See my posts on goals and which goals to chase for more about this.
3. I will engage in self-improvement each and every day. There’s always something in my life that can be improved. It may be the way I interact with others, it might be a process at work, it might be a relationship that I need to repair or strengthen, it could be my mindset. Taking a couple of minutes every day to identify one such opportunity and put it into practice will help keep my life on a positive trajectory.
4. I will devote part of each and every day in caring for my health. When things get busy, it’s all too easy for me to forget about this, but there is always something simple I can do. Take the stairs, do something for my fitness or for strength, take the time to visit the doctor for a nagging ailment or a check up, or consider my mental well being. And I must never forget that I never feel worse after exercising.
5. I will devote part of each and every day to forming lifelong relationships. This is a vital one. I found it interesting to find this in a list of habits practiced by the wealthy. Presumably this might be because the wealthy have discovered that money and achievements are significantly less important than cultivating the important relationships in your life. This daily habit may see you think about reaching out to someone special who is remote or do something thoughtful for a significant other.
6. I will live each and every day in a state of moderation. Moderation is sometimes an unfashionable word, and there are many instances of successful people who pursued success in a single minded manner that is not moderate. I agree moderation is an important element for a well-rounded life, as opposed to one with extreme success in some realms, and dysfunction in others.
7. I will accomplish my daily tasks each and every day. I like spending a few minutes at the start of each week and each day thinking about what is important. Having done that, it’s important to follow-through and complete the nominated tasks. Corley calls it adopting a “DO IT NOW” mindset. To help avoid procrastination, I try to schedule the tasks at my most productive time of day.
8. I will engage in rich thinking each and every day. I’ve read a few books about this, and have written a post about the importance of your thoughts. Taking the time to practice positive self-affirmation, trying to see problems as opportunities, avoiding negative media, fostering gratitude and dreaming of audacious goals are all attributes that I am convinced help ensure that your reality is as good as it can be.
9. I will save ten percent of my gross income every paycheck. The importance and benefits of paying yourself first have been most endearingly encapsulated in George S. Clason’s classic book, The Richest Man in Babylon. I’d consider ten percent a minimum number to aspire to, and if you can do more, so much the better. The money should be set aside to purchase assets that will appreciate in value over time, so you can’t count savings towards a new car or a holiday as part of the ten percent.
10. I will control my thoughts and emotions each and every day. This is similar to the eighth habit listed above, but comes at it from the opposite perspective. In this instance, the habit means don’t indulge negative, destructive or detrimental thoughts. As James Allen argues in As a Man Thinketh, bad thoughts create bad decisions that result in bad consequences.
Thomas Corley’s ten habits resonate with me. That’s not to say that I practice all of them all of the time, but I do see the benefits of each of them and I do think that I put myself into a better place to the extent that I do adopt them. I would also add one more to the list. The item I would add is to cultivate a sense of the sacred every day. This can be done as simply as mindful breathing, through meditation, participation in organised religion or simply an appreciation of nature. I believe that combining this trait with the others on the list and cultivating the habits every day can help build a strong and successful life.
