Do habits matter in business? You bet they do.

Imagine for a moment doing only the things you need to do that will give get you or your business your goals.  Now look at your typical activities each day, each week, each month. How many of them align with the activities that will get you to your goals sooner rather than later….if at all?

The thing to do is to make a habit of the things that will get you to your goals in optimal time.

Whatever endeavour you go for in life requires practice in order to acquire a new skill, or to replace a behaviour that is no longer acceptable for you.  Obviously, the development of expertise for example, requires years of deliberate practice.

One has to learn from one’s experience and be capable of doing so. Just as experienced and novice car drivers see a totally different picture of what’s happening around them, so do experienced and novice business owners and professionals with different levels of appreciation of opportunity, risks and rewards. An experienced driver knows instinctively when to speed and when not to speed; whereas an inexperienced driver will risk their life if they speed. So too does an experienced professional or business manager know when to move in action and when their behavior could be ruinous.

The key to becoming a great person, and living a great life, is for you to develop the habits of success that lead inevitably to your achieving everything that is possible for you. Some great habits to consider:

1. MAKE A DECISION.

Decide clearly that you are going to begin acting in a specific way one-hundred percent of the time.  For example, if you decide to rise early and exercise each morning, set your clock for a specific time; when the alarm goes off, immediately get up, put on your exercise clothes, and begin your exercise session.

2. NEVER ALLOW AN EXCEPTION.

Do not make exceptions to your new habit pattern during the formative stages.  Don’t make excuses or rationalizations.  Don’t let yourself off the hook.  If you resolve to get up at six a.m. each morning, discipline yourself to get up at six a.m. every single morning until this becomes automatic.

3. TELL OTHERS.

Inform people around you that you are going to begin practicing a particular behavior.  It is amazing how much more disciplined and determined you will become when you know others are watching you to see if you have the willpower to follow through on your resolution.

4. VISUALIZE YOURSELF.

In your mind’s eye, see yourself performing or behaving in a particular situation.  The more often you visualize and imagine yourself acting as if you already have the new habit, the more rapidly this new behavior will be accepted by your subconscious mind and become automatic.

5. RESOLVE TO PERSIST.

Keep practicing the new behaviour until it is so automatic and easy that you actually feel uncomfortable when you do not do what you have decided to do.

6. REWARD YOURSELF.

Most important, give yourself a treat of some kind for practicing the new behaviour.  Each time you reward yourself; you reaffirm and reinforce the behaviour.  Soon you begin to associate, at an unconscious level, the pleasure of the reward with the behaviour.  You set up your own force field of positive consequences that you unconsciously look forward to as the result of engaging in the behaviour or habit that you have decided upon.

It is your business-building habits that need to be engaged. Look closely at successful people and their habits. Establish what they are doing and why. The aim is to try and learn something from their processes – their habits. Being taught to fish by an expert is likely to be far more rewarding than ogling the fish they have caught.

It is a characteristic of successful people that they learn to make effective decisions – lots of them.  So start practising!