Excellence with G.O.P.T.A.© Series: Part 52

By: Dr. Sanjay Kumar Agarwal, Sr. Associate Editor, ICN Group

(In the past article, we knew about the importance & benefits of regular tithing. Today, we will discuss about the importance of inculcating good habits.)

Inculcate good habits

Brian Tracy says, “good habits are hard to learn, but easy to live with. Bad habits, on the other hand, are easy to learn but hard to live with.”

If you are not satisfied with your current life state and want improvement, look at your habits & attitude. Your current scenario is the outcome of your habits & attitude.

Even small bad habits spoil your success party. Excessive gossiping, excessive television watching, criticising others, regularly eating junk food, low on punctuality, excessive spending, etc. are some of the bad habits, which need to be replaced by positive habits, which may take you closer to your goals.

You were not born with any sort of habits, whether good or bad. All the habits, you are having right now, have been learnt by you since childhood. To live a great successful life, you have to choose your habits. You have to inculcate the habits, which may take you closer to your goals in every walk of your life. Here the good news is that all the good habits are learnable with repeated practice and similarly, all the bad habits are un-learnable.

First you have to identify, which habits are dragging you downwards in your life. Apart from your own deep introspection, you can take help of your family members or well-wisher friends in identifying these. Second stage will be to inculcate positive habits to flush out these negative habits out of your system. You can also take help of your family members for keeping continuous watch on your progress.

Often people ask me, how long it will take to inculcate a new habit. It depends upon the nature of habit and the intensity of your desire to inculcate this habit. I decided (in fact desired) many times that I will lose weight by starting regular morning walks and exercises but failed. One fine morning, I got the news of death of one of my neighbours due to heart attack. It worked like a warning for me. I thought whether I am waiting for a warning signal from the doctor or I can follow the strict regime on my own. This inner drive was so intense that I did not leave my morning walk and exercising program. However, in general, it is said that development of any new habit requires at least 21 days. Steps in development of a new habit

1.Decide which habit you want to inculcate. Be specific.

2.Be regular at initial stage of habit forming. Do it persistently without any exception or relaxation. Make a chart and monitor your progress daily for the next 30 days.  

3.Share your resolve with a family member or friend so that he can monitor your actions.

4.Activate your sub-conscious mind by using auto suggestions and positive affirmations.

5.Set a reward for yourself for developing a good habit, whatever small it may be.

Don’t work upon several habits at a time

You should never expect overnight change in your overall personality. Don’t do a mistake of trying inculcating so many new habits simultaneously to avoid difficulties. Try working upon one or two habits at a time. After one month, when you are comfortable with these 2 habits, you can pick up 1 or 2 more habits, as previous months’ habits will no longer require much of your conscious attention. In this manner, it will take only 1 year to change yourself completely. It is not a bad bargain, if the bad habits inculcated since childhood are replaced with good habits over a period of one year.

Imagine, if you get Aladin’s Magical Lamp, which one habit you would like to change. Write down, which one habit can bring you most positive results in your life, whether in your career or relations or finance or health or your productivity.

Never expect an overnight change in your habits. After all, the bad habits have been accumulated over a period of long time since early childhood. It will take time to break the chain of bad habits and shifting to good habits. Starting is the key. Remember the visual example of tea cup. If you start pouring positivity, negativity will gradually flush out of your system. Most people set goals and start hoping that good habits would follow. It is not going to happen. You have to take pains of doing conscious efforts for changing the bad habit into a good one.

Mark Twain says, “habit is habit and not to be flung out of the window by any man, but coaxed downstairs a step at a time”.

Suppose, you want to start morning walk and your old habit is to wake up after 7 A.M. You have to consciously develop the habit of rising early. Initially, your comfort zone will not allow you to wake up early. Even after waking up, your body will urge not to go out for a walk. But you have to make the conscious effort to wake up early and go out for a walk. Even during walk, your body will want to move slowly but you have to apply your will power to check your speed so that you can obtain proper health benefits out of the morning walk. Remember, your will power and good habits move ahead hand in hand.

Inculcating new habits is like growing a Chinese bamboo tree. It takes about 5 years to grow. Initially, no progress is visible for about 5 years but once it grows out of the earth, suddenly it starts growing at a very fast pace. You have to nurture it and fertilise it for 5 years without seeing any results. When Chinese bamboo tree appears, it looks like overnight success but imagine, could it grow, if it is not nurtured over a period of 5 years without apparent results. Similarly, a farmer cannot see the crop at the time of sowing the seeds but still he sows the seeds, because he has a reasoned belief that if he follows the correct procedure, the crop is bound to come at the appropriate time.

(In the next article, we will discuss more about habits. I believe that you are enjoying the journey towards the future of your dreams with me. If yes, please stay tuned every Tuesday, Thursday & Saturday. Happy G.O.P.T.A.)

Dr. Sanjay Kumar Agarwal, Creator & copyright holder of the concept G.O.P.T.A.©  is an Author, Certified NLP Lifestyle Master Practitioner, Corporate Trainer & Motivational Speaker and recipient of Honorary Doctorate of Excellence (Management) by prestigious Young Scientist University, California, USA. He is Founder of ‘Read, Learn & Earn Movement’ and is popularly known among his fans & followers across the globe as ‘Time and Goal Guru’.

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