Business Is A Tough Gig
Break A Bad Habit. With A Good Habit.
One of the hardest things in life is to break a habit.
With the sole judge of whether it’s a bad habit being no one other than yourself.
You’re the only one who can. And will. Decide. If a habit is bad. Or not.
People associate bad habits with things they do that impair their life. Like smoking. Drinking too much alcohol. Overeating. Too little exercise. Gambling. Spending too much money. Not saving enough money.
But all habits are relative.
Kerry Packer, Australia’s richest man before he died, was a gambler. And quite an astute one. But his losses didn’t affect his life. He was so rich, losing $1 Million in a night was nothing to the billion dollars he was said to be worth.
Overeating to an anorexic is different to overeating for the world’s fattest person.
A person who smokes one cigarette every night after dinner. And thinks that’s too much. Would be considered a non-smoker compared to someone who is a chain smoker.
We are the only ones who can make a judgement about whether a habit is bad for us. Or not.
But whatever it is that you’re doing. That you want to stop doing. The reality is that you cannot break a bad habit. Without replacing it with a good habit.
We need more than sheer willpower to create a change in our behaviour that we can easily embrace. It’s so much better if we can create an aura of curiosity about what we will do next. And find joy in making the change.
If you want to stop smoking. You won’t. Until you replace that habit with another that gives you the same pleasure in your mouth that smoking does.
Some people replace smoking with chewing gum. Or sipping something every time they feel the urge to puff on a cigarette. Or chewing on a pencil. Or taking a deep breath. All this involves the sensory areas of the mouth.
People who run a business are full of bad habits. Which is why so many businesses don’t thrive.
I’m a gal who liked to carry things around in my head. Which is abnormal for me. Because I’m a stickler for documentation in so many parts of my business, The Fitz Like A Glove™ Ironing Board Cover And Other Goodies.
And if I did write something down, it was on scraps of paper. That would float around my office. Being moved from one pile to another.
Because for some reason I hated keeping a diary. Not even a to do list.
I knew this could be a recipe for disaster. In a small business, something forgotten could be so important as to be a short term calamity.
I decided one day the scraps of paper had to go. And bought a diary.
But I hated this diary. I bought it at the newsagency in my closest rural town. It was cheap. The paper was cheap. I didn’t like the look of it. I didn’t like the feel of the paper.
So I went back to writing things down on scraps of paper. But this time put them in a self seal bag so they would all be in one place.
I hated the look of that on my desk.
On a trip into Sydney, which is a 3–1/2 hour drive, I stopped by a stationery store. And purchased what was, for me, a beautiful diary. The paper was soft and mellow. I loved the way it was laid out. The cover was a soft leather rather than cardboard. Or vinyl. The pages were stitched rather than glued. It had pockets for extra papers. A ribbon marker.
I was Goldilocks finding the right bed.
And I’ve been using that diary ever since. Ordered every year by my newsagent. Just for me.
I write everything in it. And it’s been a life saver on many an occasion when I have truly forgotten something. Only to see it written down in my diary. Because things that I need to do on a regular basis are written into every month as soon as I get the diary.
I’ve now become such a ninja when it comes to writing things down in one place that I’ve started a new book. Which is also beautiful. With soft mellow paper that’s easy to write on. And this is my running list of things I want/need/have to do. Ideas for blog posts. Target markets I want to reach. Ideas that just pop into my head.
By stopping my bad habit of writing things down that I need to do on scraps of paper. And replacing it with writing them down in a beautiful — very important to me — diary, my business runs better.
People have interesting ways to give up bad habits. What’s right for them. Could be wrong for you. But I love how a friend tackled her coffee habit.
A friend felt she drank too much coffee during the day. And wanted to stop. But what was she going to replace her coffee with? She was entrenched in the habit of sipping from a cup all day long. So she replaced her coffee with organic tea. Not only did she fall in love with this tea. But found joy in drinking it. And has become a connoisseur of — organic tea. As someone would become a connoisseur of fine wine.
And she’s gone a step further. She has different pots. And cups. For her different types of tea.
There is happiness in replacing a bad habit. With a good habit. The trick is to find the source of contentment that allows the change to thrive.
~Carol Jones, Ironing Diva❤
Life Behind The Scenes With The Ironing Diva are my stories about how my partner, Victor Pleshev, and I created a new life out of the ashes of Australia’s ‘recession we had to have’. How did we design 8 products? And get them to market? How did we build a worldwide business from broke? How did we carve out a rural lifestyle that is the envy of our friends? And our customers? How did we create a beautiful hectare of garden out of a barren paddock sitting atop an infertile rock shelf? It wasn’t easy. But this is the business and the lifestyle that we built from scratch. The Fitz Like A Glove™ Ironing Board Cover And Other Goodies.
