The Power of Levers

“Success is actually a short race; a sprint (that is) fueled by discipline just long enough for habit to kick in and take over.”_Gary Keller

In our daily lives, some things don’t really matter. However, there are certain things that matter so much that they can make or break us in more ways than we think.

Today, we will have a look at one of those things of critical importance in our behaviours. 

If we act upon this simple truth, the rest of our lives shall be the best of our lives—no joke.

In case you are in a hurry to decipher what I want to write about, relax!

The central focus of my article here is: keystone habits. And to satisfy your curiosity, I will start with what the master of habit science, Charles Duhigg writes about in his best-selling book, ‘The Power of Habit,’ as follows:

“Keystone habits start a process that, over time, transforms everything. 

Keystone habits say that success doesn’t depend on getting every single thing right.

But instead relies on identifying a few key priorities and fashioning them into powerful levers.”

You see, a keystone habit is a single power habit that has the capacity to multiply in more than one area of our lives. 

For example, for many people exercise is a keystone habit that helps them think clearer, stay focused, eat smarter and sleep deeper. With one keystone habit thoroughly established, they find significant improvement in other key areas of their lives. 

Now, I implore you to figure-out the one key behaviour in your life with this kind of multiplying power. For you, it may be gratitude, prayer, quality sleep, morning meditation or daily planning. Whatever it is, just figure it out first.

Find Your Own Lever

To become the person we yearn to be, the kind of person who would naturally do what we can be proud of, the kind of person with the self-control to procrastinate less and act right for the most part of our day; the kind of person who can achieve anything he sets his minds to, a keystone habit is the one thing we cannot afford to be careless about because it is the subtle secret of many great people.  

Becoming the best version of ourselves is not as difficult as most people assume. But that is because they are not making use of the power of a good lever to help them live a better life. 

That is because they don’t really understand the power of keystone habits. Now that you know better, it is my hope that you will act far better than ever before.

You only need to find out what’s the right keystone habit for you. Again, it means a behavior that, once made into a habit, effortlessly puts other parts of your life in forward motion. Once you figure it out, and live by it every day, your life will never remain the same again. 

If you will make the strategic sacrifice to forge an impactful keystone habit in your life today, extra-ordinary results will appear in different areas of your life tomorrow.  

Keystone habits are the most powerful lever of self-discipline that is always at our disposal; they are the strongest behavioural foundation a human being can have.

Learn to Focus on the Hardest Thing First

“Intense concentration for hour after hour can bring out resources in people that they didn't know they had.”_Edwin Land

In this age of unlimited distractions, it is quite easy for anyone to spend a huge chunk of his or her days in sub-optimal engagements with little or no awareness. 

If we want to guard ourselves from that kind of limiting experience, we need to take a proactive step to save ourselves from the insidious pull of daily diversions. 

To achieve that, a simple strategy we can employ boils down to focusing on the hardest thing first, or as Brian Tracy would say, eating our ‘biggest frog first.’

And it means giving the best of our mental and physical energy to our biggest task of the day. After we accomplish that, we can then go a little easy on ourselves with how we apportion what’s left of our time, energy and attention to the rest of activities in the day.

Those preceding sentences align with the thinking of Steve Jobs who once hinted that if we adopt focus and simplicity on how we work, we can achieve something truly remarkable.

Simplicity and focus are all it takes to make the most our days. Complexity and distraction will always keep us away from performing at our dead-level best. 

We need to optimize our limited human resources by expending them on our most valuable priorities earlier in the day before the pull of distractions can get a chance to interfere with our personal effectiveness.

 

We need to eschew ‘busy being busy’ and instead be mono-maniacally focused on creating results that really matter.

Alas! It is amazing how effective one can be when he or she habitually focuses on the hardest thing first, everyday, before any distraction could ever get in the way.

Undoubtedly, it is much easier to do something great when interruptions don’t bid for our attention most of the time. The reason so few of us achieve what we are truly capable of is that we don’t adequately direct our focus; we rarely concentrate our mind on what really matters.

Finally, I challenge you—here and now— to start procrastinating on low value activities at the start of your days so can give maximum attention to the hardest things that can create breakthroughs in your life.

Trajectory: the Path We Are On

“A good life consists of more than simply the totality of enjoyable experiences. It must also have a meaningful pattern, a trajectory of growth.”_Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi

The totality of our life is the sum of all our daily choices; the aggregate of our past choices is the reality of the life we have today. 

If our current reality is awesome, then great. If not, we needn’t despair, because if we are alive and healthy, we still have incredible power to set a new sail for a better trajectory toward the kind of future that we may prefer.

Granted, we can’t go back to correct the past but we can start now and create an awesome reality for our future self.  

  

The essence of this article is to rekindle our inner spark and create a stronger awareness of our own innate power over the forces of unfriendly circumstances. 

In order words: to move from a lower ground to higher ground, we need to be keenly aware of the choices that can help or hinder our progress toward our preferred destination. 

Consequently, we need to make better choices, starting right now.

Set a New Sail Today

To be on a good trajectory, we need to set a better sail today. And that starts with reexamining our daily choices to make sure they are serving our best interest in the long run.  

Understand that small steps that we consistently take will create a radical difference in the end. This is essence of compounding power of a new decision.

Furthermore, the principle of compounding applies in many areas of our lives: health, fitness, personal development, productivity, business, and relationships. 

Therefore, making the right choice of action is something we should never take lightly because every single action has consequences on our future.  

In the long-run, cumulative discipline brings huge profits, both mental and monetary. And by the same token, cumulative indiscipline generates huge losses, both mental and monetary.  

The set of our sail makes all the difference both in our trajectory and eventual destination. What we sow is what we reap!

Finally, remember that, in the coming days, weeks and months, there are things we can do to make our lives worse or better. Let’s choose wisely as the American psychologist, Timothy Leary rightly stated: “Higher has always been the trajectory of intelligent evolution.”

Are You Resilient?

First, what is resilience?

From the lens of physics, resilience is simply the ability of an object to spring back quickly into form after being stretched, over-stretched or deformed.

By the same token, we can say it is the human’s ability to spring back into shape after encountering great difficulties, problems or setbacks.

You see, our sense of resilience remains unproven until we are put to the test, and we are tested by our Creator through adversities and trials just as we test and refine metals of gold through the fierce heat of the fire.  

Now I will share one simple idea on how we can increase our capacity to quickly spring back into shape whenever we are bent by the storms of life.

Detach Yourself from Your Difficulties

By this I mean during challenging moments, instead of beating yourself up and wallowing in self-pity, just choose to detach yourself from your struggles.

Instead of saying, ‘I am bad at this,’ say: ‘I am better than this.’

That slight twist can make all the difference on the instantaneous swing of mood and thus our ability to improve, going forward.

Engraving a negative notion into our core identity can fortify negative personal beliefs, which will in turn makes it pretty more unlikely for us to develop emotional strength during difficult times.

Remember this: highly resilient people are not those without difficulties but those who have conditioned their minds to find some benefit in every ugly situation. 

As a result, they tend to use those difficult situations as fuel to carry on, rather than reasons to throw in the towel. 

Now, I dare you to be more resilient whenever things get tough because in life we can’t always choose whether or not we will get knocked down but we can always choose how we will respond every time things fall apart.

Finally, know that true resilience has less to do with what happens to us but a lot to do with how we react to, and recover from whatever we might have to face in life.

Sure-fire Way to Make Your Lagging Intention Real

“Some of our best intentions fail because we don’t have a system of execution.”_Darren Hardy

Everything starts with a thought; the mind is the source of one’s desire to achieve something worthy. An idea happens first in the mind before it can be manifested in its tangible form.

While our desire to want something is a pretty good start; the real challenge lies in whether we take the necessary actions in pursuit of our goal. 

Taking immediate actions on our lofty intentions is necessary because our emotions and feeling don’t remain the same for long; the intensity of our positive desires tends to wane with the passage of time. 

Therefore, unless our mental desire is harmonized with a concrete plan of sustainable actions, it has little merit in a practical world of value. In other words, implementation of intention is the difference maker between reality and fantasy. 

Again, having a burning desire is a necessary first mental step to achievement of any kind but acting on a concrete plan towards its realization is an important practical step to real life outputs.

So, instead of relying on your desire to get you what you want; you need a concrete plan to design specific actions that you must take to make progress toward that desire. 

No matter what we think, desire, dream, want or intends; it is only through taking relevant actions consistently that our lofty aims get crystallized into beneficial, tangible results in the end.

Concrete Plan Insures an Intended Priority

To make real your desired goal, you need to establish a priority; this is the essence of having a concrete plan. 

Having a plan is a potent means to effortlessly maintain focus on what really matters amidst the barrage of thoughts and emergent activities that can throw us off course.  

So make a concrete plan by writing down what you want and the specific actions you need to take, at a specific time of the day, and even at a specific place most suitable for the tasks at hand. 

This is how to give physical life to an invisible intention. It is a simple tactic we can use to protect a cherished desire from an ocean of distractions that can kill it right off the bat.  

Lack of commitment to a concrete plan is the one reason why some of our good imaginations have been nothing more than mere fantasies; our once burning desires are now lagging because of this key reason.

Going forward, please put to use the words of Anthony Robbins, the author of ‘Unlimited Power’ who counsels us with regard to our intention as follows: 

“If you talk about it, it's a dream, if you envision it, it's possible but if you schedule it, it's real.”

Hope you get the message? 

Discipline of execution, which is a matter of acting upon a thoughtful plan, is the real power behind any form of success. 

In finality, we can have any good that we truly desire if we decide to crystallize our dream with a concrete plan, and taking the necessary daily actions to towards its attainment.