Goals

Nothing is Stronger than Habit

by

Have ever started a new project or activity full of excitement, only to find your enthusiasm shrinking over the coming days and weeks?

I think everyone who has lived a few years has probably had this experience. It’s a pretty common occurrence amongst us humans, record-setting track athlete Jim Ryun has some advice for us.

“Motivation gets you started; habit keeps you going.”

Achieving the things you really desire in life will usually take hard work. We don’t always feel inspired to keep at it, though.

Most people you and I know mess up at this point. When the emotional charge that accompanies the early stages of a new venture dies down, we give up. We lack the willpower to push through.

The old proverb that says anything worth having is worth working for is 100% true. If you want to reach your goals in life, you’ll have to put in real effort.

Jim Ryun knows quite a bit about hard work. He set world records, after all!

His recipe involves forming habits to keep moving forward after the motivation wears off.

Roman poet Ovid is quoted as saying “Nothing is stronger than habit.” Even motivation.

What’s all this boil down to? You have some challenging goals to accomplish, right? You know you’ve either already felt that initial excitement or you soon will. Begin immediately to form habits that will continue to propel you toward the finish line when the feelings cool down. Be purposeful about it.

You will find yourself to be more successful than you’ve been at any point in the past when you’ve allowed emotion (or the lack of them) to dictate your actions. And you’ll probably outperform most of your peers that are working on the same goals.

Sounds like a good plan to me.

WIGs and WAGs

by

The other day I listened to an interview with Stephen Covey, author of “Seven Habits of Highly Effective People” and “The Eighth Habit.” Lots of profound material was covered, but I want to share one comment that stuck out for me.

This is another acronym, like WAGs (Wild “A” Guesses) from the previous post. In fact, we’ll tie the two concepts together in a minute.

Covey spoke about setting and orienting yourself toward accomplishing WIGs, that is Wildly Important Goals. These are the most important objectives that you want to achieve in the various areas of your life. He teaches that if you don’t set WIGs, you will spend most of your time focusing time and energy doing less important things.

Having clearly defined goals helps direct action. You only have 24 hours in a day; why waste even one minute doing something that may be urgent, but not important. Leave “firefighting” in the past.

Here’s the connection, along with an application.

You will not be successful in reaching your WIGs if you settle for making WAGs.

You need to be knowledgeable (as well as constantly learning). You need to be specific. You need to be discriminating in what you choose to do along the path to the finish line. WAGs will not do the job.

While I’m on the subject of “Rubicon” (can you tell that I’m excited?), let me paraphrase a couple of the powerful one-liners that really made powerful statements during Episode 4 from this Sunday:

“I’d rather face the consequences of my action than my inaction.”

Quite a powerful statement. Are you action oriented, or passive? Are you a cause, or are you subordinate to the effects others produce?

“There’s no special sauce. Only data and decisions”

Reminds me of something I heard Jay Abraham say (again, paraphrased): “I don’t have thoughts. I have tests and results.”

Get out there and work! Analyze your results and adapt accordingly.

By all means, learn from others, model success whenever you can. But realize that there is no “special sauce.” Just don’t tell the gurus you heard that from me.

How about one from Episode 1:

“There’s always a why. You just don’t understand it.”

As marketers, as business people, it is important to figure out the “why” behind transactions and interactions. Why do people buy from you? Why don’t they? Don’t settle for a WAG, either!