Simple Trick to Massive Improvement

In this week's Moving Forward Monday, we tackle the mountain we all want to summit… self-improvement. Because as John Rohn observed “Your life doesn't get better by chance. Your life only gets better by change.” And so we examine a simple trick to climbing that mountain with contributions from Darren Hardy.

We are hard-wired to resist change. Our brains’ threat v. reward system creates the desire to avoid risk and minimize change. This week we’ll focus on a simple method to take control of your brain and regain the master position (versus the subservient position). First, it's important to know that much of what we do on a daily basis happens without our even thinking about it… driving a car, or brushing our teeth, or opening a refrigerator. These are habits we form; short cuts to save mental energy that we create through repeated behavior. It's kind of like a well-worn path across the field - if you drive your car over the same path through the field every day, that track will get deeper more cleared and easier to drive down, and over time the rest of the field might get overgrown on either side, but the tracks will stay clear. The neural pathways in our brain work the same way - the more we drive down one particular path, the easier it becomes.

However, these well-worn tracks don’t just grow back or change direction overnight, so changing a habit or embedding a new behavior takes effort and focused attention. This can feel psychologically uncomfortable and be quite literally painful to override your well-worn habits, so here's a Simple Trick to Massive Self-Improvement... a way to hack your brain’s natural tendency to do nothing or stay stuck in a status quo (where it is much more comfy).

First, think big think about the person you want to become. The life you want to lead. And the contributions you want to make to the world and those in your world. But then make a plan to act small. Big achievements, grand missions, massive change and transformation come from the iterative small seemingly insignificant improvements that then compound over time.

Let’s illustrate how simple and profound this can be. How much do you want to improve in a certain area or skill? 50%? How about 100%? Or 500% Why not go for a 1000%? Whoa!!! How hard do you think it would be for you to improve a thousand percent in any area of your life? To be a thousand times or a thousand percent better parent or 1000% better husband or wife or 1000% better leader or 1000% smarter investor business builder or wealth creator? Imagine how dramatically different your life and lifestyle would be if you were 1000% better than you are right now. You probably think that it must mean that you have to study practice and sacrifice immensely and make a radical commitment. Nope. Here's all it takes:

You just have to improve 1/10 of 1% each workday (that's only 0.001%). That’s only reading 10 pages of a book dedicated to the improvement in a particular skill area and then applying it, or spending 30 minutes listening to an audio dedicated to that skill area. It’s really that simple! But then why doesn’t everyone do it? That’s simple too. As Jim Rohn says “What’s easy to do is also easy not to do.”

Too often people feel like they must make demonstrable progress within a short period of time, but what ends up happening is that they take on too much change and their brain fights them. BJ Fogg of Stanford University proved that if you want to teach 60 year olds to stop smoking by using a new app on their phone, it won't work those because those are two new behaviors. You have to pick just one behavioral modification and have it change at a time.

So this week pick just 1 habit that you want to break, change or create, and seriously commit to taking 1 simple step towards it each day this month. If you focus on 1 habit each month, you'll be able to put all your energy on creating that one important habit, you have a much higher chance of success. And if you start today, by the end of then you could have 9 or 10 habits that will have a huge impact. And over the course of 3 years, you could literally change your life forever.

Fishbowl Members - ask us about the Goal Setting for Success workshop that will give you more tools to climb that mountain!

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#Motivation #MovingForward #DarrenHardy #Success