Develop the Habits to Create Opportunity Luck, Achieve Consistent Success, and Build Wealth
How would you like to add 20 or more years to your life expectancy? How about never having to worry about heart disease? Or, how about reducing your risk of cancer by as much as 50%? Sounds too good to be true, doesn’t it? It’s not. The latest science on longevity very likely discovered the secret to the Fountain of Youth. Not only that, they have found that just by slightly altering your habits, behaviors and lifestyle, you can eliminate chronic disease and cancer. [Read more…]
Probably the most significant take away from the book How to Win Friends and Influence People was the insight that we are consumed with ourselves and that if you want to win new friends and influence others, focus on their needs, wants and their lives.
In my Rich Habits study this doctrine of me, me, me played out in a number of different ways:
It’s clear that we are obsessed with our own lives. When anyone comes along and focuses their attention on what’s important to us, we melt like butter on a hot stove. The key to building strong, long-lasting relationships is to fight the urge to talk about yourself and your life and, instead, to focus your conversation around the lives of the relationships you want to grow. When you make this relationship-building doctrine a daily habit you will win over almost anybody in life. In the success game, relationships play a critical role in opening doors that would otherwise be closed. If you want to win that game you need to play by the rules.
Mistakes are beautiful things. They not only teach you what not to do, they also help point you in the right direction. Mistakes are so critical to your success that they should be documented and studied.
There’s a tool I use to do just that. I call it my Mistake Binder. The Mistake Binder is a running list of every mistake I’ve made since I started it back in 2013. Each mistake is documented on one page. You want to document four things on that one page:
The goal is to fill your Mistake Binder with page after page of mistakes that you’ve made. Every other week spend a few minutes reviewing your Mistake Binder. This helps make the learning stick and will also keep the mistakes in your working memory, acting like a radar system, alerting you when you are about to repeat a mistake. The Mistake Binder will take the taboo out of making mistakes and will change your negative perception regarding mistakes. You’ll soon find yourself embracing mistakes and the lessons they teach.
We all have habits we are unaware of. Sometimes these habits are good and sometimes they are bad. One bad habit that 90% of the poor people in my study had was not taking responsibility for the circumstance of their lives. In short, they blamed everyone but themselves for their financial circumstances.
There are plenty of people who have this Poor Habit of making excuses. You see them all around you. They blame traffic for getting into work late. They blame their boss or “politics” for not getting the promotion. They blame the economy for their financial problems.
When you make a habit of blaming others or outside forces for things that go wrong in your life, you essentially give up control of your life. You become a blamethrower. And it doesn’t take long for those around you, especially bosses and supervisors, to label you as a person who cannot be trusted with responsibility. When you blame others or outside forces when things do not go your way, you are essentially saying to supervisors, clients, customers or anyone else who relies on you – “don’t’ trust me with responsibility“.
Blamethrowers do not get raises and promotions and they are the first ones to be fired by their company, clients or customers. Let everyone you know see you, instead, as someone who throws themselves on the sword when things go wrong. Taking individual responsibility for everything that happens in your life, even bad things, helps you regain psychological control of your life. People around you will respect you for it. They will see that you as a person who can be trusted with responsibility. Stop being a blamethrower and start making a habit of taking responsibility for things that go wrong.
In a study published in the British Journal of Psychology, evolutionary psychologists Satoshi Kanazawa of the London School of Economics and Norman Li of Singapore Management University found that individuals who were focused on some long-term objective (dreams/goals) had higher IQs and were happier than those not pursuing a dream or long-term goals. Brookings Institute researcher Carol Graham concluded from this research that the pursuit of dreams and goals is directly correlated to intelligence and happiness.
Pursuing dreams or goals gives your life meaning and fulfillment and this translates into higher IQs and happiness.
Happiness is very subjective. What makes me “happy” might not make you “happy”. Also, how I define happiness may be different than how you define happiness. Happiness, therefore, is a very difficult topic for anyone to tackle. One of the many data points I gathered as part of my my five-year study on the habits of the rich and poor included happiness. I believe I have cracked the code on exactly what happiness is, how to produce it and how to maintain a constant, happy state of mind.
Happiness is really two things:
Short-term happiness is the result of short-term gratification, pleasure, rewards, events, social interactions and any number of experiences in our lives that give us an immediate, albeit, temporary boost in dopamine and serotonin (happiness neurotransmitters). This type of happiness is fleeting. It is also the type of happiness most pursue and accept as the definition of happiness.
Long-term happiness is the result of fulfillment. This type of happiness is only achieved through the pursuit of things that are fulfilling. Examples include:
If you are sincerely interested in finding happiness, you must pursue things that create a feeling of fulfillment. Fulfillment does not rely on a temporary daily fix of dopamine and serotonin. Fulfillment is the only meaningful definition of happiness because it creates a constant state of happiness, rather than the short-lived one most individuals are mistakenly pursuing. You can only find true happiness by pursuing a life of fulfillment.
Your brain takes in 11 million bits of information per second. Unfortunately, the brain can only process 40 bits of information per second. Which 40 bits does it choose to accept?
The answer to that question dictates the type of life you create. Will that 40 bits be negative information or positive information? Will it be tied to some dreams or goals you are pursuing? Will it be tied to some long-held beliefs embedded deep in your subconscious? Will it take in information tied to your passions?
The 40 bits of information that flow into your brain will be dictated primarily by two things:
Those 40 bits that your brain accepts, pull or push you in certain directions. If you have a positive mental outlook, your brain will accept information that reinforces your positivity. If you are pursuing some passion, dream or goals tied to your passions and dreams, your brain will accept information that it perceives as critical to pursuing your passions, realizing your dreams or achieving your goals.
There are thousands of neuro-receptors on each brain cell in your body. Each neuro-receptor is like a lock. It can only be opened by a specific key, or neurotransmitter. Your mental outlook, and those things that are occupying your mind, cause your brain cells to release certain neurotransmitters. Those neurotransmitters are instinctively drawn to specific neuro-receptors. When they find the right neuro-receptor, that is when brain cells begin talking to one another. What conversation they have depends on your mental outlook and on those things you are focused on.
When you have a positive mental outlook, the conversation will be about how to maintain your optimism, happiness, enthusiasm, confidence or any other positive thought. Your brain will look for things in your environment, those 40 bits of information, that will perpetuate your positive mental outlook.
If you are pursuing a passion, dreams or goals, the conversation will be about how to pursue, realize and achieve those passions, dreams or goals. The 40 bits of information allowed in could be information that leads to aha moments, like-minded people that will help you with your passions, dreams or goals or any information that will advance you in your passions, dreams or goals.
Thoughts are catalysts for creating your reality. They create the neuro-chemical reactions that help you build the life of your dreams. Make sure those thoughts are positive and directed towards pursuing some passion, dream or goal.
When you have a positive mental outlook you automatically flood the brain with serotonin and dopamine, two neuro-chemicals that cause brain cells to create new connections (synapses) with other brain cells within the brain. When you’re happy, your brain literally grows.
When you have a negative mental outlook serotonin and dopamine levels in the brain drop, reducing the number of synapses within the brain. When you are unhappy or depressed, brain cells that no longer connect with other brain cells die. Your brain literally shrinks.
Happiness, therefore is the fountain of youth for the brain. That is why it is so important to forge habits that increase happiness and reduce unhappiness. What habits increase happiness?
You know happiness when you feel it. It’s a neurologically-based chemical effect driven primarily by a neurotransmitter known as dopamine. When neurons release dopamine we get the sensation of happiness.
Thanks to recent advances in the study of happiness we now know that 60% of happiness is dictated by our DNA and circumstances – things outside our control. That’s the bad news. The good news, however, is that the remaining 40% of happiness is dictated by things completely within our control – activities. So, what activities increase happiness?
I was in the gym the other day and overheard the following exchange between a woman and a man:
Woman to Man: “Did you run today?”
Man to Woman: “Not yet. When I’m done lifting I’m going for a run.”
Woman to Man: “You are so disciplined. I wish I had your motivation.”
Man to Woman: “It’s just a habit. No discipline or motivation. Just a habit.”
That one exchange best summarizes the real power of habits. They remove the need for motivation and discipline (willpower). If you have to rely on motivation or willpower to engage in good behavior, like exercise, you won’t engage in that good behavior for long. It will be short-lived. Motivation and discipline works for only a short period of time. Eventually the motivation and willpower will fade and you will stop engaging in the new behavior. When that good behavior, however, becomes a habit, it transforms the behavior from temporary to permanent and makes motivation or discipline irrelevant.
For the man in the gym, he was just engaging in habitual behavior – exercise. He was not particularly motivated or disciplined. That’s the miracle of habits. They give the perception to others that you are highly motivated or disciplined, but in actuality habits remove the need for motivation and discipline.
