Over the years, as a business coach, I’ve developed a fascination with business owners’ and entrepreneurs’ personal performance and how habit change can dramatically help you achieve the results you want.
It started when I noticed I could be working with one business owner in his or her business, doing very similar things with another business owner in another business, and getting very different results.
I learned that most business problems are personal problems in disguise.
In this article, I share some insights into the process of installing the habits of elite performers and achieving the results you want.
It’s Your Daily Habits and Routines
To help me better help my clients, I became obsessed with understanding what the elite performers in life do. After years of observation and study, I discovered something very key. What makes a legend isn’t their natural talent. What makes a legend or hero, a legend or a hero is their daily habits or their daily routines.
When you look at a Picasso, a Beethoven, a Mandela, a Federer, a Jobs or a Branson. When you look at the best of the best, what gets said is that these people were gifted. And that’s the myth that society and the media sell to us.
Actually, what made the great ones, the great ones was what they did every day. In other words, their daily habits.
In fact, the most conclusive research I’ve found is that up to 60% of the activities we do every day, that we think are conscious decisions, are actually habits! We are run more by our habits than what we think is free will and our decisions.
Elite performers do not have some magical DNA that’s different to the rest of us. They just have world-class habits. Therefore, to have a world-class life, you have to install world-class habits.
If you look at your health right now, if you look at your happiness yesterday, if you look at your work performance. If you look at your financial performance. If you look at your love life, I will predict that well over 60% of your success or weakness in those areas doesn’t come down to the world around you, your excuses, or your circumstances. It comes down to our habits. Change your habits, you change your results.
The Habit Installation Process
The most up to date research by UCL (University College London) confirms that it takes approximately 66 days of practicing a skill to get you wired into the point of what they call automaticity.
As humans we have the gift of neuroplasticity. This is the ability of the human brain to adapt and to grow and to forge new neural pathways.
There are three stages, each of around 22 days each.
The first stage you will see is destruction. This is where you tear down your old habits and start the process of replacing and wiring in new ones. Letting go of old routines. Destroying old mindsets. Old belief systems, old practices, old habits. This the death of the old neural pathways.
The second stage is called installation. You’re installing the new neural architecture of the habit. You’re not at the point of automaticity around the new routine but you’re destroying old patterns. You’re in new territory and there will be quite a lot of confusion and exhaustion.
The third stage is called integration. Your hard work begins to pay off. It starts getting easier. Your job now is to see it through another 22 days to get it to the point of automaticity. This is where it is easier to the new habit than not to do the new habit.
The #1 Reason New Habits Fail
Most people face the challenge of not giving a new habit enough time when they want to implement it.
They stick with the new habit for a week or two, but they don’t give it enough time for the neural pathways to form and reach a point where it becomes automatic.
You can install world-class habits. You can build willpower. Give it enough time for your natural genius to take effect.
So, let’s say getting up early, all say getting up and working out every day, let’s say writing in a journal, let’s say pushing better quality work, let’s say it’s building to the point of automaticity, a pre-sleep ritual. Practice the skill for 66 days until it becomes easier to do the new skill than not to do the new skill.
Process versus Perfectionism
One of the things that sets us up as human beings to fail is being addicted to perfection. We don’t permit ourselves to stumble if we make a mistake or miss a day following through on installing a new habit. We don’t feel we are deserving of success.
We are not only as human beings afraid of failure, fearful of ridicule, fearful of change, and afraid of disappointment. We’re also scared deep inside of success. Because if we are successful, we might be different. If we are successful, we might have to leave the people we love. If we are successful, we will stand out versus fit in, and the world doesn’t like it when we stand out.
So often, we develop an exterior of perfectionism. And then, if we stumble or miss the programme one day or don’t follow through in some way, we give up instead of continuing.
One of the most important things to remember is the character trait of relentlessness. You want to be one of those rare air souls. To have the results only 5% of the population has, you have to be willing to do what 95% of the population is unwilling to do.
Most people, well-intentioned, good hearted, they retreat and wave the white flag of surrender around habit installation the first moment they hit a wall.
You want to go over the wall, under the wall, round the wall, through wall. You want to be one of those people who are absolutely relentless.
Also, remember: a failure is only a failure if you see it as a failure… A bad day for the ego is a great day for the soul.
Love the Process
Think about process, not perfectionism.
It reminds me of the story I heard about Kobe Bryant. He said, “I fell in love with the process”. That allowed him to do an early morning workout, then one with the team at 11:00am, another in the afternoon, and another in the evening. He said by doing four workouts a day, day after day, over the weeks and quarters and years and decades, he developed a giant competitive advantage that was so huge in terms of his skill level, his ability to see where the ball was going and read the court, his ability in the clutch moments, under intense pressure to make the game-winning shot because he’d practiced it thousands of times in practice. He fell in love with the process, and because he fell in love with the process, it was all fun for him.
The key point I’m offering here is this idea of falling in love the process. Learn to love the process. Don’t be so addicted to the rewards that you’ll receive when you’ve installed the new habits. Love the process. Learn from it.
Conclusion
When you’re in this process of installing the routines and rituals, or new skills, you are learning the great virtues of the best human beings:
- Focus
- Excellence
- Persistence
- Patience
Stay with your habit. Don’t give up. No one will believe in you until you believe in you. Once you believe in you, isn’t it interesting. Everyone around you starts believing in you.
If you would like some help changing your habits and changing your results, book 15 minutes to talk about coaching here at TimeWithShane.com.
