Your Habits

Commentary

We preach the importance of dreaming big here at BASE by Pros. Your ability to dream big is crucial to create the direction you wish to go. However, where dreams and goals fail is the next step – creating new habits to get you to stay on track. This week’s focus is the importance of doing an inventory of your habits. The video and article below show some habits you might want to take up. One that stands out the most for athletes is sleep! It is important to set priorities to get more sleep over anything else. When does this habit change? The night before! I am convinced that our society views “rest” as a bad four letter word, when in fact biblically and scientifically it’s proven that rest is a cornerstone for growth and success.

I am challenging myself to change one bad habit this Christmas season. It’s to get to bed one hour earlier than I usually do and wake up an hour earlier. What will be yours?

Dream Big,

~ Brent Lillibridge

Lesson

Charles Duhigg, the author of The Power of Habit and an expert on behavioral psychology, suggests that most people fail to adopt new habits because they do not understand the structure of habits. All habits can be broken down into three basic components:

1. The Cue or Trigger: This is the part of the habit loop where you are triggered to take some sort of action through a cue in your internal or external environment.
2. The Action: Good or bad, this is the part of the habit loop where you actually take action on the habit you want to adopt or drop.
3. The Reward: This is the part of the habit loop where your brain receives a reward for taking the desired activity.

In his book, Atomic Habits, Habits Academy Creator James Clear shares his five-step strategy to building new habits:

1. Start with an incredibly small habit.
2. Increase your habit in very small ways.
3. As you build up, break habits into chunks.
4. When you slip, get back on track quickly.
5. Be patient. Stick to a pace you can sustain.

Final Thoughts

7 Daily Habits Extremely Successful People Swear By

“Excellence is an art won by training and habituation. We do not act rightly because we have virtue or excellence, but we rather have those because we have acted rightly. We are what we repeatedly do. Excellence, then, is not an act but a habit.”
~ Aristotle

Your Turn

1. Name a habit influencing your life in a positive way.
2. Name a habit influencing your life in a negative way.
3. Name a date you are willing to commit to to eliminate this negative habit.
4. Name a positive habit that will replace your negative habit.
5. Name three key actions and their frequency that you’re willing to commit to in an effort to create your new positive habit.