Like Darren, I also believe that positive habits applied consistently will create a compound effect that will result in ultimate success. The problem is that it is very hard for most people to do a habit makeover and replace their negative habits with positive ones. Why? The following story shared by Darren in his book describes the reason.
A wise teacher was taking a stroll through the forest with a young pupil and stopped before a tiny tree.
“Pull up that sapling,” the teacher instructed his pupil, pointing to a sprout just coming up from the earth. The youngster pulled it up easily with his fingers. “Now pull up that one,” said the teacher, indicating a more established sapling that had grown to about knee high to the boy. With little effort, the lad yanked and the tree came up, roots and all. “And now, this one,” said the teacher, nodding toward a more well-developed evergreen that was as tall as the young pupil. With great effort, throwing all his weight and strength into the task, using sticks and stone he found to pry up the stubborn roots, the boy finally got the tree loose.
“Now,” the wise one said, “I’d like you to pull this one up.” The young boy followed the teacher’s gaze, which fell upon a mighty oak so tall the boy could scarcely see the top. Knowing the great struggle he’d just had pulling up the much smaller tree, he simply told his teacher, “I am sorry, but I can’t.”
“My son, you have just demonstrated the power that habits will have over your life!” the teacher exclaimed. “The older they are, the bigger they get, the deeper the roots grow, and the harder they are to uproot. Some get so big, with roots so deep, you might hesitate to even try.”
So the longer we stick with our bad habits, the harder it will be to do a habit makeover and replace the negative habits with positive ones.
According to Aristotle, “We are what we repeatedly do.” Our habits form over 90 percent of what we do throughout the day. From the way we wake up, eat our breakfast, go to work, interact with others, behave, spend money, use our spare time, and to the way we sleep, we follow our habits.
We develop our habits over time. For instance, back in 2000, few people used cell phones or e-mail, but now almost everyone uses them. We are so accustomed to cell phone, internet, and social media that we think that we cannot live without them! We did not develop the habit of using cell phone and internet daily overnight. It took place over time.
In the same way that we have developed our bad and negative habits, we can develop good and positive habits. However, by doing something only once, nothing will change. In order to create a new positive habit, you need a habit makeover. You need to be consistent in doing what needs to be done over and over. If you do not have consistency in action, you may not be able to achieve success consistently.
Often our bad and limiting habits prevent us from getting what we want in our life. Replacing such bad and limiting habits with good and positive ones is crucial to our success.
For many people, it takes about three weeks for the habit makeover to take place; that is, a new behavior to become routine or habit. To help you with the process of changing your habits, I developed The 21-day Habit Makeover Workbook. This workbook is a practical guide that helps you transform your bad and negative habits to good and positive ones. When you go through this workbook, follow the instructions, and implement them into your life on a consistent basis, you will be able to develop new and productive habits as smoothly as possible.
Bottom line, if you want to get what you want in your life and achieve ultimate success, don’t let negative habits take root in your life or they will become so hard to uproot. Create the lasting habits of success right now and root yourself in success forever. Get your copy of 21-day Habit Makeover Workbook today and start uprooting your bad habits and planting the good ones right away.
