Thought for the Day!

Bad habits, good habits, they are all habits.

The way you manage your life, including the finite amount of time you are blessed with each day, is largely a matter of habit.

We are creatures of habit - that is the way we deal with life.

Our habits - or learned behaviors - are the bedrock that keeps us on track. But unfortunately, there are times when our learned behaviors are keeping us on the wrong tracks.

When you read about good ideas to manage your time better, or to help you set and achieve goals, or to positively advance your life, what do you do?

Do you read about them, think 'Good idea!' and forget all about them?

Do you halfheartedly put them into action for a day or two and then forgetfully revert back to your old behaviors? And end up saying that the new idea was good, but didn't work for you?

Or do you actively embrace the idea, put systems in place to make it work in your life, become an evangelist for it, and over time incorporate it into your daily living?

I doubt if the latter applies very often!

And the reason boils down to habit. It is more comfortable, more habitual, to keep on keeping on than to make the real effort required to bring about real change in your life.

It takes three to four weeks to really create a new habit in your life. And those 3-4 weeks are hard work.

First you have to be sure that you really want this new habit - and that you're prepared to ditch the old one.

Then you have to build it into your life. By this I mean that you have to be on the lookout for all of your other behaviors that work to reinforce the old bad habit and find ways to modify them to the advantage of the new.

If possible, try to document your new behavior - write an entry in your diary, or tick a box on a form to show you've completed it each day.

Ask people around you to keep on reminding you.

Most of all, reward yourself. The more beneficial you can make your new habit RIGHT NOW the deeper and faster it will bed into your life.

In a few short weeks you will have changed.

Your new behavior will no longer be something you are learning - it will be something that you rely on.

The process of actively managing your life - whether that is the time allocation part of it or any other part - will have begun.