What if you could change one aspect of your life in one month?  I mean, what if you could real­ly revamp this skill or char­ac­ter­is­tic?  Would you do it?

Habits

Let’s talk about habits.  What behav­iors would we need to learn and prac­tice every day in order to make them a part of our lives? Habit for­ma­tion is an every day activ­i­ty, and can be accom­plished and adopt­ed per­ma­nent­ly if we were to repeat the process for 30 straight days.

“Behav­ior can become habit­u­al through rep­e­ti­tion.”

Have you noticed Arnold Schwarzeneg­ger’s body when he’s not work­ing out?  If he had stopped train­ing the day after he was crowned Mr. Uni­verse what would have hap­pened to his chis­eled abs?

“The mind is mal­leable, much like mus­cle, but greater in strength and pow­er.”

Reach­ing a goal is only the begin­ning and you should nev­er take a break from build­ing your brand.  The great thing is that once you have devel­oped the dis­ci­pline, cer­tain behav­iors will become sec­ond nature.

Learn­ing is an every day activ­i­ty and I encour­age you to set time aside each day to hone in on your skills.

Be the Sharpest Hoe in the Shed

Sharp­en your tools.  Pick 1–3 tools you use most often and know you can and should strength­en in order to get ahead in life.  I use words, project man­age­ment soft­ware and Excel.  I spend 1–2 hours per day watch­ing videos, read­ing arti­cles and books on these three top­ics.  I man­age a lot of dif­fer­ent con­tent, so I set time aside to learn new words.  I man­age a com­mu­ni­ca­tion’s agency so every day I keep up on what’s trend­ing in the mar­ket­ing and web- devel­op­ment com­mu­ni­ty.

I sharp­en the tools I need dai­ly in order to be the best mar­ket­ing pro­fes­sion­al I can be.  I com­mu­ni­cate in Excel.  I don’t only love it, but I actu­al­ly need it in order to do my job.  If you’ve ever worked with Excel, you’d know that there are so many cool things you can do with it and that with a lit­tle prac­tice, you can learn to do some pret­ty amaz­ing stuff.

All of these skills were self-taught.  I took a cou­ple of cours­es in web devel­op­ing, but found that I learned bet­ter on my own through the many free resources avail­able. You can, too.

Glance at the Rearview Mir­ror

Let’s dis­cuss the past for a brief moment.  We all have a nasty scar or two.  But with time, the right meth­ods and nour­ish­ment, we can soft­en their size and appear­ance and even­tu­al­ly learn to live with them.  They may nev­er ful­ly dis­ap­pear, spe­cial­ly the real­ly awful ones, and if we search care­ful­ly, we will man­age to spot them.  We allow them to destroy us only when we con­tin­ue to breathe life into them.  Suf­fer­ing is part of life.  I have yet to meet some­one who has had a life free of chal­lenges.

“Cir­cum­stances do not make the man, they reveal him.”  James Allen

I believe that in order to change some­thing, we need to have a clear path­way to fol­low. I think it’s impor­tant to draw a map and include inevitable dis­trac­tions.  This time, I’m not refer­ring to out­side influ­ences, I am talk­ing about our thoughts, those nasty thoughts that creep up when we fall off course.

We need to wage a war against thoughts that cause great harm to us and to those around us.  In our map, we should list out the meth­ods we will take when we find our­selves lost.  Here’s what I do, and I promise it works:

Start list­ing in your mind, all the things you are grate­ful for. Go on and on and on and on.  Don’t gen­er­al­ize.  Don’t say, I’m grate­ful for my health and stop there.  Real­ly think about every aspect of health from the tip of your head down to your toes, and don’t for­get to give thanks for a healthy mind.  There are many peo­ple who suf­fer great­ly from men­tal ill­ness.  Your mood will change and you will find your­self able and will­ing to con­tin­ue on course.

“Grat­i­tude has got to be the most pow­er­ful word in the dic­tio­nary.”

Learn about who you are and why you do the things that you do.  Embrace your soli­tude.  Don’t think of being alone as being lone­ly, the two are asym­met­ri­cal­ly opposed. In such a fast-paced world, sat­u­rat­ed with work, respon­si­bil­i­ty and chat­ter, we tend to for­get to set time aside to be alone.

Do you know who you are?  You are the most impor­tant per­son in your world.  You need to pri­or­i­tize you.  I don’t care if you have 2 jobs and 5 kids.  Sure­ly you have 10 min­utes a day to check-in with your­self.  How can you begin to take con­trol of your life, see your past as valu­able lessons, and take respon­si­bil­i­ty for your actions today if you do not know who you are or why you respond to cir­cum­stances the way that you do.

Glance at your rearview mir­ror, but only for a brief moment.  Imag­ine what would hap­pen if you kept dri­ving while look­ing in the rearview mir­ror?  You will sure­ly crash.  Same with the past, if you stay there too long, you will always live in the past.  You will find your­self com­plain­ing and blam­ing oth­ers for your mishaps.

Think about it for a brief moment.  How often do you find your­self blam­ing oth­ers for your mis­for­tunes?  You’re over­weight because you don’t have time to work­out.  You can’t afford a gym mem­ber­ship or organ­ic foods.

Real­ly?  If you can walk you can stay in shape.  And the last time I checked, in this coun­try, roads are free and in North­ern Cal­i­for­nia, we have a pletho­ra of space for you to walk, skip and run for free.

Habit For­ma­tion

So we’ve talked about habit for­ma­tion.  We know that habits are not eas­i­ly formed, but once formed they become a part of who we are.  We know that in order to get ahead as par­ents, spous­es, man­agers, stu­dents, etc., we need to sharp­en our tools.

As par­ents you know that you can always do more.  Take a work­shop on how to lis­ten bet­ter, if this is an area you can improve on.  Go for a qui­et walk with your child and have a con­ver­sa­tion about where she is.

On this thir­ty day jour­ney, pick one skill that you’d real­ly like to sharp­en.  Once you have mas­tered this skill, move on to the next one on the list and so on.  Suc­cess is a journey–an on-going process.  We don’t just stop when we get there, we have to keep inno­vat­ing and grow­ing.  But I promise, you will turn your life around.  One skill at a time.  One pound at a time.  One class at a time.  One day at a time.  You will become that per­son you secret­ly dream of being.  But you have to decide now; now is a good time to set sail.  Start small; start right where you are.

As always, thank you so much for stop­ping by.  Please remem­ber to share my thoughts with any­one who might find them help­ful.  I write for you; this is my small attempt to cre­ate a rip­ple.

“A sim­ple act of car­ing cre­ates and end­less rip­ple.”