Taking Action on Plans: What I have learnt from practising daily habits?
Last week, I shared on planning and how you must plan out your life if you are going to achieve anything in life. If you haven’t read that post, please read it here and promised to share some lessons on how to move beyond planning to action.
Our plans only become what we want them to be if we act on them. This post is the first in the series of posts I hope to share on taking action on our plans.
One of the most effective ways of learning and improving something is to practice it as a daily habit. Practising daily habits also enables us to act on our plans. Once we practice/do things on a daily basis, they become part of us even before we know it. What used to be a struggle to do now becomes a part of you and a part of your lifestyle to the extent that you start looking forward to doing it every single day.
John C. Maxwell says “You’ll never change your life until you change something you do daily. The secret of your success is found in your daily routine.”
One of the daily habits I have developed is the habit of taking a lunchtime walk. I do it to ensure that I keep fit, meditate and reflect on life but also freshen up. One of my current goals in life is to add fitness into my lifestyle. Practising this daily habit helps me do just that. I target to make 10,000 steps a day and the lunchtime walk contributes to more than half of these steps.
I am learning from this experience that for me to succeed at certain things, I must make them a daily habit. I have been reflecting on this experience and below are some of the lessons I have drawn from it.
- Yesterday’s success does not matter. For you to succeed again, you must do it again today.
Myles Munroe used to say, “The biggest obstacle to progress in life is your most recent success.”
Yes, you read that right. Your past success can become your biggest stumbling block. With daily habits, yesterday’s success and achievement does not matter. You have to pursue it and achieve it today. Then tomorrow the same procedure applies. Every day is different and requires its own successes and achievements so treat it as that.
- Use the excitement/thrill that comes from past success to get you moving again.
After doing the activity for 3–4 days, you start to feel like it’s boring or you don’t have the same enthusiasm like you had on the first day. You feel overwhelmed by the task. Each time I feel discouraged or overwhelmed by tasks, I remind myself how it felt yesterday when I finished the walk. I remind myself of the good idea that came up in my mind as I walked. I remind myself of all the benefits I will get from just that one walk. Once I get all these good ideas into my mind, I immediately get up and start walking. That’s how I am able to keep myself motivated even though I know I am probably going to be sweating in my office wear right after the walk.
- How to eat an elephant. Or How do you eat an elephant?
If you were given a full elephant to eat, that would be such an overwhelming task. However,
Desmond Tutu once wisely said: “there is only one way to eat an elephant: a bite at a time.”
What he meant by this is that everything in life that seems daunting, overwhelming, and even impossible can be accomplished gradually by taking on just a little at a time. If you’ve ever wanted to accomplish something major, you know that getting started can be a bit of a challenge. So whatever we want to achieve, I strongly believe that making them daily habits is one sure way in which we will be able to achieve them. It’s the small things/activities that we do on a daily basis that lead to the achievement of big goals.
- It’s all about consistency.
You must always show up. It does not matter how good or bad the day was. It does not matter how good or bad you feel. What matters is achieving your daily target. So, you have to force yourself to go. That’s how you get to fulfil your daily obligations. That’s how you get things done. And that’s how you ultimately achieve success.
Do you want to become successful at anything in your life? Ask yourself the following questions.
- What can I do on a daily basis to get me to where I want to be? How can I track/monitor it to ensure that I am achieving what I set out to achieve on daily basis?
2. How will I benefit from it?
3. How will I know I have achieved it?
4. And how does it lead me to the big goal?
