Why Creating Empowering Habits is Important
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“The common denominator of success — the secret of success of every man who has ever been successful — lies in the fact that he formed the habit of doing things that failures don’t like to do.” – Albert E.N. Gray from The Common Denominator of Success
The first time I read The Common Denominator of Success, I didn’t “get it”. It was a long time ago and I kinda shrugged it off, but I’ve recently came back to it and really taken it in after realizing the importance of creating empowering habits.
If you want to be as successful as the people you look up to, you’re going to have to develop habits that empower you as much as or more than their habits empower them.
If I were starting all over consciously pursuing personal growth again, I would make building empowering habits a top priority. To be more specific after I chose a goal that would impact me the most, I would immediately begin creating new habits that would empower me to achieve that goal. So putting a focus on habits would be step #2.
The experts recommend habits
I notice that the high quality, credible advice from the blogs, the books, the audio, the interviews, or straight from direct conversation with successful people usually comes with a habit attached.
- When first began taking piano lessons, the piano teacher advised me to get into the habit of practicing 30 minutes a day.
- When I hired a personal trainer, he wanted me to get into the habit of eating more empowering foods, and get into the habit working out.
- Spiritual growth books or videos they might recommended getting into the habit of meditating, or praying, or visualization
- If you want to be a writer, good writers will tell you to get into a habit of writing.
Many times they won’t come out and literally say the word “habit” but they’ll tell you do something daily or in some way consistently which points to a habit.
The successful athletes, musicians, singers, actors, and hosts you see on TV all have developed empowering habits. The successful writers, engineers, developers, business owners, professors all have developed empowering habits.
Personal Experience
When I first started getting into personal growth I didn’t know where to start so I tried a lot of stuff. I listened to everyone say “Take action!”. I read some different books and blogs. Listened to different personal development audio. Wrote in my journal a little. I started a personal growth blog, hired a personal trainer etc. Eventually I realized that I could keep taking action but none of it would make a lasting, long-term difference if I couldn’t be consistent with whatever I was trying.
Every time I started something I would do it for a little while, then fall off with it leaving me overwhelmed with a trail of unfinished projects and unconsciously reinforcing in my head “I don’t finish what I start”. I guess continuously trying stuff and not following through with it was a habit too! 
Since I fell off with that stuff, I shifted back to the old comfort zone where the old, disempowering habits were further enforced and overall frustrating the hell outta me.
Without knowing it, what I was really trying to do was develop a habit with the things I tried, but I didn’t know how to do that. I didn’t know about 30-day trials/challenges or starting small or focusing on the essential or accountability and support. Habits are how real growth happens.
Right now I’m close to the middle of my 2nd 30-day trial. For the first time since starting this blog, I feel like I’m where I’m supposed to be with it, and it’s all because I’m developing new habits that I have consciously chosen.
I started pursuing personal growth on August 22,2008. If I had done some small 30-day trial each month I would have done 13 trials and working on the 14th right now. I’m sure there would have been several empowering habits that stuck out of all that.
Think about how your life would be different if over this next year you developed even just 5 new empowering habits to keep for the long term.
It took about 13 months for it to really click for me. It doesn’t have to take you that long!
Related Articles
- Doing Your Best vs. Focusing On Less
- 30-Day Trial #2 Results
- 30-Day Trial #3 Revised
- 30-Day Trial #3 – Day 3
- Persistence Without Consistent Action = Long Road to Achievement
- Visualization – Day 1
- Visualization – Day 19
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Nice post Broderick. I’m continually trying to lose some habits and gain others. Love the challenge of improving myself!
Also, I wanted to say thanks for taking the time to comment on my article, Getting Over the Blogger’s 6 Month Itch.
I write most of my articles for myself but many of the things I’m struggling with are bothering other people too.
I knew that there would be a lot of other bloggers like me who flop between giving it their all and being on the verge of giving it up!
I’m happy to think that I may have helped give you the motivation to keep at it. Blogging can be a lonely business so it’s great to connect with some like-minded people.
Please swing by my blog from time to time to let me know how it’s going. If you know anyone who might enjoy reading my articles I’d appreciate it if you tell them Get In the Hot Spot.
Good luck with all your plans. I’ve checked out your blog and it’s looking good so far. Keep at it!
Best wishes,
Annabel
Yeah, I love reading articles/stories about persistence seeing as it has been such a huge part in the biggest successes I’ve had. I’ll check your blog out and I appreciate you stopping by Annabel.
This is wonderful advice! Creating a habit is the single best thing you can do to work towards bettering yourself or developing a skill.
Here are some suggestions for how to create empowering habits: http://socyberty.com/lifestyle-choices/achieve-your-goal/
Great article. I think it contains a very important and essential question that many “positive thinkers” and “well-being-gurus” do not answer:
Why should we develop more self-discipline ?
All of them answer the questions of how to realize what you want. But why should we be more disciplined? I guess it has something to do with the respect we should have for our own personality.
….perhaps we should comply with the principle of life that always wants to create things of beauty and growth…..
Self-discipline means mental growth.
http://www.haukeborow.org
Great article. Building successful habits are truly important. I started with 30 day trails but I found that making a lifestyle change works better for me. For example, I began waking up at 3 am recently in order to get more work done. Instead of trying it out just for a week, I found it was better to organize my life so that it was easy to make it a lifestyle. Seemed to work for me.
Thanks for great post:)-
@Ralph – That’s the reason I like the trial. Many of these things I want to try just to see how effective they are before re-routing my whole life to support it.
If I were absolutely positive the habits would empower me, then yes, changing the lifestyle would probably be much more effective. Shoot, I’m beginning to see that your lifestyle could be a block to being consistent with the 30-day trial as well, so I might end up taking your suggestion after all.
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