Success Habits – Checklist and Resources

Success Habits – Conclusion

You have reached the end of this post series and have hopefully come away with not only tools to help you develop habits, but an actual plan-of-action that will guide you throughout the 30 day period that you need to begin habit development.

It is important to reiterate here that the thirty-day rule here is not set in stone. It is used a guideline because it is a happy medium between what science has found when it comes to creating new habits.

Some studies found that it can take as little as 18 days to form a new habit and others clocked it at just over 60 days. But regardless of which study you choose to believe, 30 days is a solid guideline for starting new habits.

Summarizing the Key Points

• The definition of success is more of a journey than a destination, with stops along the way that act as goals for you to shoot towards. You will be continuing the journey for the rest of your life, but there are stops along the way that are going to make your live so much better and give you the success that you want.
• Understand how the psychology of habitual actions works, as explained in Chapter Two, because then you will be able to look at your own goals and habits much more objectively.
• Use the YEAR-MONTH-DAY system of setting goals (if it helps you). You set a yearly goal and then break it down to what you need to accomplish each month to achieve it. Then you can develop daily habits that will move you towards that monthly goal every single day.
• Don’t try to get rid of bad habits. Your brain will think you are losing something and will fight against you. Instead, replace those bad habits with good ones so that you feel like you are gaining instead of losing.
• Identify your triggers for negative actions and create new triggers for positive actions. You can piggyback new habits onto old ones for easy triggers and you can create complementary habits that all kind of trigger each other so that you have a better chance of completing them each day.
• This program is designed to guide you for 30 days (and beyond to a certain extent) so that you can develop new habits. However, keep in mind that there is no scientific consensus on how long it takes to form a new habit and each person is different, as is each habit that people try to create.
• Your first five days are going to be the most difficult. Use the guide in Chapter Seven to help you through that period and remember that it is only five days and afterward, you will be headed for the downhill slope.
• Use the information provided in Chapter Eight to help you through the remaining 25 days of forming a new habit. There is expert advice, motivational quotes and much more included with that material.
• Use the checklist in Chapter Nine to evaluate your efforts and determine where you should go from there. You can begin working on new habits right away if you have been able to make the first ones stick.
• Read through the barriers to success that most people have to overcome and come up with strategies for combating each one in advance, so that when one does pop up, you will be able to slide over it easily and continue on the road to success.

Strategies to Take Away From This Book

So, what are the most important things that you should be taking away from this post that will stay with you the rest of your life and actually help you on the road to success? Without using the obvious answer of ‘everything’ there are a few things that are really important to remember.

First, you don’t have to use everything in post series, and you don’t have to use it exactly the way it is described. Everyone’s style is different and everything listed here may not work for you exactly the way it might work for us. A good example of this is with the goal system. Not everyone can make the YEAR-MONTH-DAY system work and some prefer the conventional LONG-TERM/SHORT-TERM style of goal setting and then work how to develop habits from those goals.

It is also important to remember that if you have never tried to develop these kinds of habits before, it is going to be a challenge and there are going to times that you fail. This is perfectly normal. Just remember, a failure only stays a failure if you don’t learn something from it.

Finally, just remember that you have the ability to be successful. You might think that you don’t have the educational background, the means, the determination, the opportunities, the friends or a million other resources that other successful people seem to have. But that doesn’t mean that you don’t have just as much chance of earning success as they did.

Just believe in yourself and start small. Every single successful person in this world, every single entrepreneur, celebrity, corporate bigshot and self-made millionaire began with the same journey that you are about to take right now; setting their first goals and developing solid habits that they did every day to achieve them.

You can do the same. All you need to do to be on your way to completing the journey is take the first step.

IMPORTANT: To help you further take action, print out a copy of the Checklist and Mindmap I provided. You’ll also find a Resource Cheat Sheet with valuable sites, posts and articles that I recommend you go through.

Success Habits – Checklist

Here is a step-by-step action plan that breaks down the steps from the eBook ‘Success Habits’ into easily perused and manageable tasks that will allow you to refer quickly to the part of the plan you are currently trying to review.

This action plan will allow you to look at the entire process outlined in the book objectively and see the “big picture” of how you are going to use the steps here to get the success that you have been dreaming of.

These action steps are very much simplified so feel free to refer back to the book when you need to if you aren’t sure what a particular concept is or what something means.

1. Understand what success is

• Know what your definition of success is
• Be able to identify successful habits
• Be able to identity destructive ones and weed them out.

2. Understand how actions become habitual

• Learn the psychology behind habit formation
• Look at your own habits and figure out how they formed
• Use this information to continue developing and changing habits
• Research information about habits online and become an expert

3. Develop strategies for making habits last for your lifetime
4. Understand what goals actually are

• Realize that your goal isn’t a final destination but a stop along the way
• Understand that it is the journey that is going to bring you happiness

5. Create a list of goals

• Start with making a list of goals for the next 12 months
• Specific
• Measurable
• Realistic enough to achieve in a 12 month period
• Now create a list of goals for one month based upon your 12-month goals
• Specific
• Measurable
• Can be achieved in a 30 day period
• Can be broken down into habits
• Now create your daily habits from the previous list
• Keep it simple and only work on 2-4 at a time
• Try to work on habits that complement each other

6. Work on changing your bad habits

• Identify habits that are destructive and keeping you from success
• Replace the bad habits with good ones

• Replace procrastination with scheduling
• Replace fast food with great-tasting healthy food
• Make your brain see a reward rather than a punishment
• Keep the following things in mind:
• Overcoming more bad habits makes you a stronger person
• Think of a way to make any negative habit a positive one
• Try your best every day
• Keep in mind that 30 days is only a guideline
• Be flexible when you are training new habits

7. Understand what triggers are and how they affect your habits

• Identify between good and bad triggers/habits
• Identify negative triggers and replace them with positive ones
• Create new positive triggers in order to prompt a good habit
• Understand the five main trigger techniques
• Scheduling – a trigger that happens at a certain time
• Pre-Action State – A state that reminds you to do an action
• Preceding Event – Something that happens that prompts an action
• Location – your current location reminding you to perform your habit
• Friends and Family – Other people that can prompt a behavior

8. Develop a new mindset

• Understand what a mindset is
• Identify what your current mindset state is
• Work to change your negative mindset into a positive one

9. Start the journey – 30 days to a new habit or group of habits

• Keep it simple – work on just a few habits at a time
• Your first five days are going to be extremely difficult
• Your remaining 25 days are going to be a little easier but still challenging.

10. Follow the guides in the book to take you through each day

• Most days you will perform your habits as well as you can
• The first few days you build up to completing them
• The last few days you take a couple of days off to evaluate

11. Beyond 30 Days

• Do a self-evaluation
• Repeat
• Determine your next step
• Reinforce

12. Overcome obstacles to success

• Identify obstacles
• Confidence
• Motivation
• Plan
• Naysayers
• Financial
• Health
• Circumstance
• Friends & family
• Overcome obstacles

Success Habits – Mind Map

Success Habits – Resources

There are a lot of resources out there that can expand your knowledge of success and teach you things that are not covered in the book. Everyone has their own unique perspective on success and you should read as much and as widely as possible if you want to give yourself the best chance of reaching your goals.

That’s why we have put together this resource guide, broken down into the different categories that you’ll want to study to be successful and populated with the best information on the internet about setting and reaching your goals and making your dreams come true.

The Psychology Behind Habitual Actions

If you want to read up more on some of the psychology behind how habits form, get broken and about habitual actions in general, here are some resources that will teach you some basics and more advanced information about the psychology behind habits.

Psychology Today

https://www.psychologytoday.com/basics/habit-formation

A plethora of articles and information on habits from the well-respected website Psychology Today.

The Power of Habit

http://www.npr.org/2012/03/05/147192599/habits-how-they-form-and-how-to-break-them

Some free information from Charles Duhigg’s New York Times bestselling book The Power of Habit, as published by National Public Radio (NPR). You may also want to check out the book itself. Here is an extract from that same book, from Mr. Duhigg’s website.

http://charlesduhigg.com/how-habits-work/

The Simple Psychology of Habits

http://psychologyofeating.com/simple-psychology-habits/

Although this is from a website that deals with overeating and other obesity-related habits, there is a great deal of good information in this article about habits in general. You can apply the information here to just about any habit that you can think of.

Setting Long and Short-Term Goals

Your next set of resources all have to do with setting goals – both the long-term and the short-term goals that will make you successful. Here are some great things to read up on.

Success Magazine

http://www.success.com/article/rohn-4-tips-for-setting-powerful-goals

Here are four great tips to get you important information on goals directly from the experts at Success Magazine.

Beginner’s Guide to Goal Setting

https://michaelhyatt.com/goal-setting.html

Motivational speaker and author Michael Hyatt has created a very useful beginner’s guide to goal setting, which introduces you to the basic concepts and helps you avoid pitfalls that many success-bound people can fall into.

How to Set Goals

https://www.psychologytoday.com/blog/notes-self/201308/how-set-goals

Psychology Today has published a comprehensive article on setting goals, including the difference between long-term and short-term and some pretty incredible tips that you might not have heard before.

Effective Goal Setting

https://www.stephencovey.com/effective-goal-setting.php

Stephen Covey, the well-known author of the bestseller ‘7 Habits of Highly Effective People’ has published a great article on his website about setting goals and achieving them.

Smart Goal Setting Examples

http://www.educational-business-articles.com/smart-goal-setting-examples/

Here are some goal setting examples for those who want a ready-made format to follow to get started setting and following goals right away.

Developing the Right Mindset

Next, here are some resources on developing the right mindset for success. Just as a knight straps on his armor and weapons before heading into the battle, the right mindset is going to be your preparatory step before you start working towards your goals. Here are some resources to help you do just that.

Lifehack

http://www.lifehack.org/articles/communication/straightforward-formula-for-living-your-success.html

http://www.lifehack.org/articles/communication/25-tricks-set-your-mindset-for-success.html

http://www.lifehack.org/449308/how-to-develop-a-mindset-for-success

Lifehack has created some great articles on developing the right mindset for success.

INC Magazine

http://www.inc.com/jessica-stillman/5-steps-to-get-the-right-mindset-for-success.html

INC Magazine has outlined five steps to a successful mindset that may help you understand how to develop the mindset you want and achieve that goal sooner than you thought you could.

Mindset Online

http://mindsetonline.com/changeyourmindset/firststeps/

Mindset Online has come up with one of the best step-by-step guides out there for creating the kind of mindset that you need for success. In addition to this information, the entire website is a treasure trove of good advice on how to develop the mindset that you want.

Replacing Bad Habits with Good Ones

One thing that you may have picked up from the book is that you cannot simply eliminate your bad habits. Your brain thinks that you are taking something away when you do that and fights with you when you try to eliminate a habit. That’s why you need to replace bad habits with good ones. Here are some great resources to help you with that.

Zen Habits

https://zenhabits.net/the-7-keys-to-turning-bad-habits-into-good-habits/

Zen Habits has a great list of seven keys that you can do to change your bad habits into good ones, along with some really terrific examples.

Psych Central

https://psychcentral.com/lib/7-steps-to-changing-a-bad-habit/

Psych Central also has a list of seven things that you can do to change your bad habits into good ones, based upon the science behind habitual actions.

Time Magazine

http://time.com/3593367/change-bad-habits/

Time Magazine published a great article on changing your habits, and it outlines some of the most important things to remember when it comes to creating new habits and stopping the bad or destructive ones that are keeping you from success.

James Clear

http://jamesclear.com/how-to-break-a-bad-habit

Author James Clear published a step-by-step approach to swapping the bad for the good one his website. It has some really valuable information in there.

Greatlist

http://greatist.com/health/hack-your-brain-turn-bad-habits-good-ones

Finally, Greatlist published a bunch of ways that you can “hack” your brain to change a bad habit into a positive one.

Overcoming Obstacles that Stand in Your Way

Finally, here are some resources on overcoming obstacles. As you strive towards you success you are certain to encounter obstacles and barriers that may prevent you from moving forward. These resources may give you some strategies to overcoming them.

Entrepreneur.com

https://www.entrepreneur.com/topic/overcoming-obstacles

A great guide from one of the best resources on the web for those who want to become an entrepreneur on how to overcome obstacles – from Entrepreneur.com.

Inc.com

http://www.inc.com/kevin-daum/4-tips-for-overcoming-obstacles.html

Four tips from the well-respected business website Inc.com to help you get past any obstacles that are blocking your path to success and avoid getting caught up in them.

Psychology Today

https://www.psychologytoday.com/blog/pieces-mind/201605/overcoming-obstacles

Psychology Today’s take on overcoming obstacles, which are based upon the science surrounding goals, habits and the barriers that our own minds can sometimes put up to keep us from achieving our goals.

Maria Shriver

http://mariashriver.com/blog/2011/10/six-tips-overcoming-any-obstacle-your-life/

Maria Shriver has written this guide to overcome any obstacle that you face in your life, no matter what it is and no matter how difficult it seems to be. This is a great resource for those who face unusual obstacles.

Good Reads

http://www.goodreads.com/quotes/tag/overcoming-obstacles

Finally, here are some great quotes on overcoming obstacles that will give you wisdom and motivation when you face something that you think you can’t get past.