One New Habit Can Change Your Life

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Sounds ridiculous. How can one new habit completely change your life?

One of the self-made millionaires in my Rich Habits Study, who at the time of our interview was worth $17 million dollars, explained to me how one new habit transformed him almost overnight into a money-making machine.

Here’s his story.

He was struggling in his business and out of sheer disgust he decided to adopt one new habit of reading every day for a month. He said he had always hated reading to learn, so he set the bar low – 10 minutes of reading to learn every day in one area – selling.

On the first day he forced himself to a small desk in the basement of his home. It was more a picnic table than a desk. He pulled out a book on cold-calling and began reading. For the first few days, he absolutely hated it. But he kept at it.

After those dreadful first few days passed, the habit slowly began to form. On the fifth day, he read for 20 minutes. On the tenth day, thirty minutes.

By the end of the month he moved on to another book and was reading for over an hour a day. He documented many of the ideas he picked up from his reading in a notebook and began experimenting with some of those ideas in his business. Some of the ideas paid off and for the first time in his life his sales started to grow.

As the month came to an end, he felt compelled to attend a seminar on selling. He liked the seminar and then signed up for another one. Soon, he was attending one seminar a month. He filled his notebook with more selling ideas from the seminars and experimented with those ideas. Sales continued to grow.

He continued to read to learn and attend seminars over the years. And his sales continued to grow and grow and grow. And each year his business grew bigger and bigger and bigger.

After ten years, he realized he was a millionaire. After twenty years, a multi-millionaire. After forty years he was worth $17 million and sitting in front of me, a self-made millionaire, answering my questions. The self-made millionaire sitting in front of me during my study was a very different man than the man he used to be, the man who struggled in his business.

That one small habit change, reading just 10 minutes a day, had a domino effect on his life. It helped him form other habits, seemingly unrelated to his new reading habit: daily exercise, eating right, no more sitting on the couch watching TV at night along with many other habit changes. All contributing to his evolution into a self-made millionaire.

Our ritual behaviors are interconnected because all ritual behaviors are habits and all habits are controlled by the same parts of the brain. When you change just one habit, it bleeds out, affecting other habits.

The key to massive change is not massive change. It is small change. Small changes to our behaviors ripple through our brain and foster other small changes. Eventually, all of those small changes add up to massive change. All it takes is one habit.

Drag yourself to your one new small habit and stick to it for thirty days. You will hate it in the beginning. But, in time, you will love the effect that one small habit change has on your life and that one small habit change will spread like a virus, affecting other behaviors in a positive way and transforming your life.

 

 

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Thomas C. Corley About Thomas C. Corley

Tom Corley is a bestselling author, speaker, and media contributor for Business Insider, CNBC and a few other national media outlets.

His Rich Habits research has been read, viewed or heard by over 50 million people in 25 countries around the world.

Besides being an author, Tom is also a CPA, CFP, holds a master’s degree in taxation and is President of Cerefice and Company, a CPA firm in New Jersey.
 
Phone Number: 732-382-3800 Ext. 103.
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Comments

  1. How will that change your life? It will help you get a great start to your day, and finish your day by preparing for the next day. It ll help you firmly root the productive habits you want to firm in your everyday life. It ll help you focus on what s important, not just what comes up. It ll help you make sure you get done all the things you really want to make sure gets done everyday. And that can mean a lot.

  2. Agreed with this one! There’s a reason why “read books and keep learning” is the most repeated lesson on my blog, and it’s this. You will find more and more opportunities in life… IF you KNOW about them and you LEARNED how to USE them.

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