The first 30 years of our life form our habits – the next 30 years those habits form us – the good, the bad and the ugly
What is stopping us to shape more productive habits and to prevent bad habits taking hold and dictating and shaping our life
Nothing really, maybe just a habit of being unaware/slack
I have always wandered why I am someone that likes to pack in a lot and keep things moving along. According to my mum this started at birth – she said there was little labour with me – before she knew it I had popped out!
It seems that habits can start that early!
Some questions:
- Do you have goals?
- Have you written your goals down for 2012?
- Do you read these goals at least weekly?
- Daily?
I recently was asked to present a goal setting session to 60 young professionals. In researching for this presentation, I found successful people have some interesting habits.
Millionaires read their goals around 3 times a day,
Billionaires read their goals around 20 times a day.
Richard Branson reads his goals around 20 times a day.
Many of us would have heard of the famous Harvard Business School study on goal setting conducted between 1979 and 1989. Graduates of the MBA program were asked “Have you set clear written goals for your future and made plans to accomplish them?”
The results of that question were:
- Only 3% had written goals and plans
- 13% had goals but not in writing
and
- 84% had no specific goals at all
TEN years later Harvard interviewed the members of that class again and found:
1. The 13% who had goals but not in writing were earning on average twice as much as the 84% of those who had no goals at all
2. The 3% who had clear, written goals were earning on average 10 times as much as the other 97% of graduates all together.
The only difference between the groups was the clarity of their goals and if their goals were written
It’s scary that even with consistent powerful research like this most of us don’t have the time to reflect, write and respond. Reflect on what you want out of life, write these goals down and read regularly.
Have you heard of the Reticular Activating System or “RAS” function in the brain?
The RAS is the part of your brain decides which bits of information get in and which are ignored. Since we are exposed to literally billions of bits of information every minute, the RAS functions as an “editor” to sort through all of that information.
Goals are thus powerful ways that can either help or hinder our goals. One minor problem, you need to have clear (preferably written) goals
Writing goals AND regularly reading them is money for jam, dreams for jam
