Habits – direct way to success
Habits are fine tools to accelerate your way to success. Also, getting a habit is easy, if it’s done using some important principles.
Visualize that we want to take exercise every morning. At the beginning we feel giant enthusiasm, so, we easily wake up and start taking exercise by power of our will. We have great results for several days or a couple of weeks. Later the enthusiasm vanishes. After it happens we start to lie for ourselves: “I’ll sleep today a bit longer, because I will need all my strength today. I will take double exercise tomorrow”. Finally, determination is gone and nothing is changed.
Now, let’s look to other example – many of us are so habituated to brush our teeth just before going to bed, that we can do it without any efforts despite of huge fatigue. It’s the difference between “doing everyday” and a habit. This article is about the power of habits and their development.
How to develop a habit
Below is a list of things, which are necessary to acquire habits.
- Write down advantages of having concrete habit. Have that list nearby. It allows to get a burst of motivation. Also, if the habit doesn’t have advantages why to bother developing it?
- Before starting a habit, decide what reward you are going to get if you succeed. The reward should be additional motivation for doing things. The reward cannot be directly connected with the habit. For example, a habit to wake up every day at the same hour. A reward – having more time is a wrong one. It’s not the reward, but a result of having developed the habit. It makes us think about it as a natural thing and natural things don’t motivate us.
- Specific time. It can be time, place or any other factor, which is specific. The most important part is that factor would happen only once throughout the day. For example, getting out of bed, 18:00 (specific time), dinner, having a bath and so on.
- Proceed at least for 30 days. Psychological literature states that biologically humans need 21 day to acquire a habit. Well, for me it’s too short period, that’s why I offer 30 days, which is mostly recommended in popular blogs of personal development.
- If you want to have a habit which occurs 3-6 times a week, than I suggest to make it everyday habit. It’s hard to do something every two or three days, because there isn’t permanence. But if you choose the right trigger, like the end or beginning of workday, than everything will work just fine.
- If you failed even for one day, you must start from 0. If you want to develop a habit, you must do it every time a trigger occurs without any breaks for 30 days.
- Temporality. A mind that we must do something every day for all our life takes away our motivation. For example, it’s hard to start getting up early everyday if you think, that it’s the way it is going to be for your whole life. A solution is very simple – have a habit for only 30 days. Later look at the results, if you like them than decide to proceed with it again for 30 days. After that you can evaluate results again and so on. Also, the longer you proceed with the habit, the harder it will be to break it. So, I doubt that staying with the habit for 90 days, you will want to stop.
It’s just 7 simples steps – everything is simple and effective. Don’t know where to start? Well, the next paragraph contains some ideas, how to use this weapon to change your life to the better side.
Habit examples
- Read for an hour every day;
- Quit smoking, drinking coffee, eat junk food or drop other addictions;
- Start taking exercise;
- Complete one task every day. Later you can use this habit for rare tasks. For example, writing blog entries twice a week. It’s an infrequent habit, that’s why it’s hard to develop. But using one task habit, you can assign to write an entry for any day of week. So, every time it can be a different day.
- Talk to stranger every day;
- Stop watching TV. If you are afraid of not seeing something important, than you can record them. If after 30 days you think that you’ve lost something, than you will have an opportunity to catch up.
- Write an article or a book chapter;
- Wake up every morning at the same hour;
- Learn 3 new words everyday;
- Stop reading forums;
- Massage your partner every evening;
- Write a diary entry;
- Make 20 sale calls.
How to retain habits
Let’s imagine, that we have a habit of taking exercise every day. It’s hard to retain habits on a vacation or business trip. Often we don’t have time or facilities. It’s nothing to worry about. After getting back to familiar environment, you’ll still have the habit. Knowing this fact makes clear why drug-addicts is suggested to change environment. New environment means new habits. Also, habits can be effective in several places at once. For example, I spend 3 days in one city and 4 in the other, but it hasn’t any impact on my habits. They are valid on both environments. You must develop a habit on every different environment.
The longer you retain a habit, the easier to stay with it. Image that you take exercise for 23 days. It’s hard to stop now, when you know how much is already done and that a reward is so near.
Conclusion
You can break your head to a stone, but drop by drop slashes the stone. It’s the same with habits – after developing them they always pull you to success.
Think up or choose from the list, what are you going to do every day, pick up the time, write down advantages, decide about a reward and start developing!
October 11, 2009
· 
Povilas Panavas · 
No Comments
Tags: advice, habits, success · Posted in: Personal Development
The importance of action
The only thing that pushes us further is action. Action, action and one more time action. So, today I’ll tell you how it is important to perform something.
Don’t stick in stage of planning
You can plan how you’ll accomplish your business idea many days. You can write, paint, draw diagrams, which looks like pieces of art. But the only thing which gets you closer to your goal is performing an action. Only act gives us some tangible result.
It’s better to start act than to be in a planning phase. Why? Firstly, you hardly can create a perfect plan. There always happens to be some inaccuracies and errors. Sometimes unexpected things happen and change your life and, of course, your schemes. However, you can’t take back the time you’ve spend planning. Secondly, the faster you start to perform concrete steps towards your goal, the faster you get feedback. Suddenly you’ll see that one thing or another must be done in different way or, that some things cannot be accomplished at all. The gained experience helps to upgrade plan and its execution.
Of course, I don’t deny benefit, which is provided by having a step by step plan and prioritization. But we can reach our goals only through performing actions. Actually, performing an action it the last thing in hierarchy of success, which comes after things like attitude, goals, strategies and other things. But only action gives as tangible result.
Experiment
If you think that you can become a person which perfectly masters his time or always sets and reaches goals by just reading a book or article, then I have bad news for you – life doesn’t work like that. The way to success is paved by mistakes and failures, because it makes us stronger and smarter. Try out things about which you’ve read and adjust them. One size doesn’t fit all. Also, information which isn’t used doesn’t provide any benefits, so why to bother gathering it? And the last thing about not using your gained knowledge is that the less you use it the higher probability to forget.
Now, let’s imagine, that a man created a manual how to achieve success. You’ve read it and applied, and now you’re a successful person. How would feel knowing that your success belongs to somebody else? That actually, you’ve achieved nothing? It would look like repeating brainless steps – no befit or fun. The worst thing is that there would be no failures, difficult situations and others things, which are necessary for personal development and further success.
You don’t need the newest mobile phone
Often people say or think that if they had a better program, faster internet, the newest mobile phone, when they would be more productive and more successful. And while they don’t have it, they can’t even take garbage out, because they don’t have an appliance, which would remind them, that they need to do it. Also, they would like to have a device, which wouldn’t let them to forget to make a reminder for taking garbage out 
But let’s take a close look to an article “Five best note taking tools” from a popular site lifehacker.com. The second place belongs to paper and a pen. The readers of the website are more productive and educated than an average person, but still insists that the simplest tool is the best.
So, the need for the newest technology is just another way for procrastination. Paper and a pen is all you need to get started. I agree that a smart phone could help you to remember things and to plan work day more effectively. However, it’s not a reason to postpone performing actions.
Conclusion
Despite the fact, that action takes the last place in hierarchy of success after things like attitude, problems approaching method, goals, strategy and other, but only it gives us concrete result, which takes us nearer to success. That’s why don’t stuck doing all other things, but performing actions. Without them even the perfect plan or the best attitude wouldn’t get you closer to success even by an eyelash.
September 26, 2009
· Povilas Panavas · No Comments
Tags: action, motivation, planning, procrastination, success · Posted in: Personal Development
Become your own ideal
What man would you like to be? Are you far away from becoming him? It’s clear that if you act as your ideal, then you are him. It’s as simple as it looks. In this article I present personal development by using your own created ideal.
Firstly – image of your ideal
If you want to use this method, you must describe the perfect you. Take a sheet of paper and write down who you want to be.
Describe, how your ideal takes decisions, how he acts under pressure, what his character is. Define the ideal so particularly that you could determine how he would act in one or other situation.
Act as your ideal
Don’t know what decision to make? It’s not a problem at all, because you know what your ideal would do. But maybe even he can not help you to decide, then at least search for solution as he would do: no crying or moaning, but deciding by counting all pluses and minuses and understanding that you can not influence all of the external factors, for example, the rain.
First example
I would like to illustrate this with a very simple example. Imagine, that you are in your kitchen and have just dropped a greasy morsel of meat on the floor. Now you are able to do the following things:
a) to pretend that it hasn’t happened and leave the meat on the floor;
b) to take and bin the meat, but leave the dirt on the floor;
c) to kick the meat under the fridge, and clean the floor with your slipper;
d) to bin the meat and do proper cleaning of the floor.
My ideal would choose d, what about yours?
It’s a very simple situation, but perfectly shows how having the ideal allows to take decisions easily. As I have written, every fortune starts with a simple and small step.
Second example
Now let’s visualize something more complicated. It’s a deep night, you’re going home and suddenly you see that three men are trying to take a girl away against her will. They are about 50 meters away and don’t see you. You can choose one of the following:
a) to pretend, that you don’t see anything suspicious (anyway it’s not my business);
b) to call the police and leave;
c) to attack one against three – I’m relative of Chuck Norris, so I’ll beat them easily even if they have guns ;
d) to call the police and try to make them to take note of your presence. That would create time for a girl to escape.
What your ideal would do this time? Mine would choose c, but until I haven’t required skills or gun, I would be forced to choose d. I’m quick and fast, at the worst case scenario I would win some time for the police to come.
It’s very simple to use these decision making principles in every day life. Do your ideal checks email every five minutes? Does he every free moment at work goes to facebook? Or maybe firstly accomplishes his tasks and later does important things? Does your ideal watch TV every day? Act as your ideal and become like him.
The ideal isn’t perfect
Firstly, I believe that all of you agree that the perfect human doesn’t exist. Also, we don’t need viceless people. You don’t need to be always the first, the right one, the best and so on. What is really important that you enjoy everyday life, get experience and learn from mistakes. Don’t forget to stop and smell roses, don’t run through your life as its purpose would be to finish it as fast as you can without noticing anything.
Who doesn’t lose, doesn’t win. It’s that simple. Do you think that successful people achieved their happiness with the first try? No, they are the people, who don’t stop after every failure, but continue until become winners.
Therefore, don’t imagine ideal as a perfect man. Often despite a lot of efforts we fail, but actually it’s a step forward. Every failure makes as stronger and smarter. So, don’t give up and you’ll get your fortune.
September 17, 2009
· Povilas Panavas · No Comments
Tags: advice, decision, motivation, success · Posted in: Personal Development
How to overcome stress II
It’s the second part of article “How to overcome stress”. The first one can be found here.
Laugh
It’s a quite universal drug, curing many diseases like anger, irritation, and of course, stress. Also, it’s a perfect way to start a day. Every morning we can relax and laugh by reading humour webpage.
There are many sources of laugh: hilarious friends, comedies, humour broadcasting or, as mentioned above, funny webpages. Choose what you like and use it steadily.
Sport
While being under stress human body uses more resources than usually. While taking exercise human system uses more resources too. What does it mean? Well, that body uses double amount of usual resources. But after working out is finished, blood is saturated with endorphins, which works like narcotics. It makes us feel calm and happy, and that way stress is reduced.
Moreover, physical load is a great means to remove obsessions from your head. After spending two hours playing basketball, you really don’t think, how bad it is, that today you were late almost an entire minute to your workplace
And thirdly, the body of man, who constantly takes exercise, is more prepared to work under stress and has a better immune system. Have in mind, that immune system takes the most important part in staying healthy.
Imagination
Sport helps to remove obsessions from your head, but it’s possible to do it directly. Brain is filtering every peace of information it gets by using images, which are stored in our heads. Imagine beautiful and white clouds, which are slowly moving through sky, really really slowly. One cloud is like a smile. And it seems, that he is smiling to you. Later, you see small children jumping from one cloud to another. They are very very happy and smiling to you. If you were reading carefully and really imagining, then you should have felt that this visualization have more or less impact to your mood.
We can use this knowledge to reduce stress by changing one image by other. After tension starts to rise, visualize that you are in a desert island, there isn’t any problems, just many beautiful palm trees. The sea is lightly blue and calm. But don’t forget to solve the problem after coming back from that dream.
Breathing exercises
Breathing reflects our inner state. And by using various exercises we make an impact to our psychological and physical state.
There exists many breathing exercises: relaxing, phrenic, thoracic and other.
Yet I’ve tried only one. According to my experience, it’s very helpful to fight first wave of stress, when body is mobilized for steady responses to outside stimulus. But it isn’t effective against long time enduring tension. This exercise allows to calm and act on right decisions while being under high pressure.
That’s how you do it:
- Make yourself comfortable, straight your back that air could easily flow into your lunges;
- Take a very deep breath;
- Breathe out every peace of air;
- Hold your breath as long as you can. But not longer than needed to correctly complete the next step;
- Slowly breathe in through your nose. Feel how oxygen is filling your lunges by going trough your nostrils;
- Repeat 2-5 steps until you’ll calm down.
It works because of the following three reasons: firstly, human system is saturated with oxygen, which is vitally important for our bodies. Secondly, while making breathing exercise we concentrate on our inner processes. It makes our minds to leave the problem and calm down, because we don’t focus on the problem anymore. And thirdly, for some biological reasons human system emits endorphins when our lunges are totally empty. As I described above, endorphin is hormone of happiness and joy, and that’s why it takes and important part in relieving stress.
Repetition
This is a method which not only suppresses tension, but also enables to totally eliminate it from situations of the same kind .
Many humans are afraid of public speaking. After getting to the stage, they start to feel lots of stress symptoms, for example increased beating of heart, faster breathing and so on. But I believe you agree with the idea that if a man did it the thousandth time, when there would be no thrill. And the same thing is true for any other repeated situation, which causes irrational fears.
Why does it work? Because stress is caused by the failure of a human or animal to respond appropriately to emotional or physical threats to the organism, whether actual or imagined. When situation is repeated many times, it becomes familiar to us. So, we become relaxed, because we know what and how to do.
Other methods
If you know any not mentioned ways to overcome stress, please leave their description as a comment.
September 12, 2009
· Povilas Panavas · No Comments
Tags: advice, fear · Posted in: Personal Development
How to overcome stress I
Article presents methods to reduce stress. I want to emphasize, that it’s more important to find solutions to the problems than to suppress tension, which comes from stress. On the second thought, before taking any actions, it’s worth to calm down and have a “fresh” head, which can provide us with right decisions.
The length of article exceeded 1000, so I divided it into two parts. Next part is available here.
What is stress?
Stress is a biological term which refers to the consequences of the failure of a human or animal to respond appropriately to emotional or physical threats to the organism, whether actual or imagined. The tension also can be evoked by negative factors, injuries, continuous rush and so on.
Stress or just a nervous tension plays an important role in our lives. It mobilizes energy of our body and prepares muscles for sudden responses. It’s a pity, that nowadays we normally don’t need to run from a big, white and angry bear. We simply need to beat some kind of every day problems and tension makes it even harder. While being under stress, brain cannot function under high level processing, because control of body is transmitted to more primitive brains, which can respond faster, but usually inadequate in these days world.
Human system isn’t supposed to be in the maximal level of mobilization for a long time. After some time form of stress changes. You could say that it becomes more gentle: there comes laziness, gloomy mood, no appetite, hardness to sleep.
Stress by itself is a defensive state of body for protecting us from difficulties. Small amount of stress allows us to work more efficient and faster. So, only continuous stress is a problem.
Sleep
Sleep is one of the two described methods, which is used before facing stressful situations. According to researches, a human having good sleep can solve problems more effectively. It means that he overcomes stress faster. Remember, that a short period of stress is beneficial, and only the long one becomes problem.
Also, individuals having a good rest have higher level of energy and more powerful immunity system. It makes human energy last longer even while being effected by physiological changes, caused by tension.
Thirdly, humans having enough sleep always are at a better mood, which reduces probability that the problem will cause stress for your body.
Usually, grown up individual needs 7-8 hours sleep. But it depends from environment, where you sleep. Light and noise increase the need for hours of sleep.
Friends and familiar objects
Recently, I listened to audio program of the famous psychoneuroimmunologist, named Nick Hall. There is described very interesting experiment about how stress affects monkeys. Stress level was measured by physiological factors, for example, how much more erythrocytes are in blood.
The monkey was closed in the cage, which was connected to electricity. After current was on, the level of stress was measured. It was assessed that if there was one more money in the den, which was well known by the tested one, than the level of stress reduces. If there is 12 monkeys familiar to the tested one, than level of stress was quite low in comparison with the original one. The most important factor is the familiarity of the monkeys, otherwise stress doesn’t get lower. Also, it works with familiar things.
I believe that it is why it works: while being in stress we encounter various fears, which forces us to search for safety. What is safety? It’s familiar places and conditions. Well, the conclusion is quite clear – you need to wrap up yourself with familiar things. Put photographs and symbols in your workplace. Often meet friends, even better to meet with many friends at once, because according to research, the more is better.
Other methods
Descriptions of alternative methods you can find in the next part of article, which is placed here.
September 8, 2009
· Povilas Panavas · No Comments
Tags: advice, fear · Posted in: Personal Development