TRYON Edwards once said: “Thoughts lead on to purposes; purposes go forth in action; actions form habits; habits decide character; and character fixes our destiny.”
Brian Tracy firmly believes that almost everything you are or will be will be determined by your thoughts, feelings and behaviours. Fully 95 per cent of everything you think, feel and do will be determined by your habits. The key to becoming a great person, and living a great life, is for you to develop the habits of success that lead inevitably to your achieving everything that is possible for you.
Fortunately, Tracy posits that all habits are learned, and are, therefore, learnable. “If you have bad habits, or if you have not yet developed the habits that you need to become everything that you are capable of becoming, you can develop these habits by a systematic process of practice and repetition.” Good habits are hard to learn, but easy to live with. Bad habits, on the other hand, are easy to learn but hard to live with. In either case, once you have developed a habit, it becomes automatic and easy.
Where habits come from
A habit has been defined as “a conditioned response to stimuli,” but where do they originate? A habit is developed as the result of your responding in a particular way to a particular stimulus, often starting early in life. It is very much like driving down the road and taking one direction or another. Whichever direction you go largely determines where you end up.
Behavioural psychologists refer to “operant conditioning” to describe how people learn certain automatic behaviours. They sometimes refer to the “SBC Model” of new habit pattern formation. These three letters stand for “Stimulus-Behaviour-Consequences.” First, something happens in your life that stimulates a thought or feeling. Second, in response, you behave a particular way. Third, as a result, you experience a certain consequence. If you repeat this process often enough, you develop a new habit.
As simple as ABC
There is another model of habit pattern development called the “ABC Model.” These three letters stand for Antecedents-Behaviours-Consequences. What psychologists have discovered is that the antecedents—what has happened in the past—stimulate only 15 per cent of your behaviours. Fully 85 per cent of your behaviours are motivated by what you expect to happen in the future, by the anticipated consequences.
Expectations theory
There is a large block of work in psychology called “expectations theory.” The conclusions they have reached are that people are motivated to act in a particular way by what they expect to happen more than any other factor or influence. In other words, you do the things you do because of the consequences you feel you will experience as a result. Expectations Theory explains small things, like what you do and say in a social situation, and large matters, such as capital movements in the international financial markets.
Tracy believes that you can actually manufacture your own expectations. You can develop the habit of expecting good things to happen, no matter how they may appear at the moment. Your expectations then influence your attitudes and the way you treat other people. Your attitudes, expectations and behaviours will then have an inordinate influence on the way things actually work out. In effect, you can control much of your own future by expecting things to happen in a positive way.
Unfortunately, negative expectations also become self-fulfilling prophecies. If you expect something to turn out poorly, this will affect your attitude and behaviour. Your negative attitude then increases the likelihood that you will experience the negative consequences that you anticipated. If you repeat this often enough, you will develop a negative and pessimistic attitude. This way of thinking will become a habit.
New habit pattern development
How long does it take to develop a new habit? The time period can be any length from a single second to several years. The speed of new habit pattern development is largely determined by the intensity of the emotion that accompanies the decision to begin acting in a particular way.
Psychologists refer to a concept known as “significant emotional experience,” or a “SEE.” Any experience of intense joy or pain, combined with a behaviour, can create a habitual behaviour pattern that may endure for the rest of a person’s life.
For example, putting your hand on a hot stove or touching a live electrical wire will give you an intense and immediate pain or shock. The experience may only take a split second. But for the rest of your life, you will have developed the habit of not putting your hand on hot stoves, or touching live electrical wires. The habit will have been formed instantly, and endure permanently.
According to the experts, it takes about 21 days to form a habit pattern of medium complexity. By this, we mean simple habits such as getting up earlier at a specific hour, exercising each morning before you start out, listening to audio programs in your car, going to bed at a certain hour, being punctual for appointments, planning every day in advance, starting with your most important tasks each day, or completing your tasks before you start something else. These are habits of medium complexity that can be quite easily developed in 14-21 days through practice and repetition.
How do you develop a new habit? Over the years, a simple, powerful, proven methodology has been determined for new habit development. You can use it to develop any habit that you desire. Over time, you will find it easier to develop the habits that you want to incorporate into your personality.
Here is the rule in developing new habits: be patient with yourself. It has taken you an entire lifetime to become the person you are. It is not possible for you to change everything overnight. You should therefore select a single habit that you feel can be more helpful to you at the moment than any other particular habit. Write it down and create a positive affirmation, combined with a visual image, of yourself acting exactly as if you already had that new habit.
Permanent fixtures of your mind
As it happens, old habits do not die. They do not disappear. When you stop practicing them, and instead discipline yourself to behave in a new way, they become weak and withdraw into your subconscious mind. Your new habits may override and replace the old habits, but you never eliminate them completely. They stay below the surface, waiting to reemerge at a later time, when the stimulus that originally created them is repeated.
For example, when you were young, you learned how to ride a bicycle. Eventually you began driving a car. Many years, even decades later, you can get onto a bicycle and within a few seconds, you can be riding with the same balance and skill that you had programmed into your subconscious mind as a child.
Being and becoming
You are unique in the entire world. There never has been, nor will there ever be, anyone just like you. And what makes you different and special is your mind. It is your ability to think, to decide and to act.
The sum total of your thinking and experiences in your past is contained in your actions of today, in your habitual ways of reacting and responding to other people. It is only your actions that tell who you are and what you have become. The good news is that you are not just a human being. You are a “human becomingness.” You are in a continual state of growth and evolution, shedding old ideas and habits and developing new ones. It does not matter where you are coming from; all that really matters is where you are going. And where you are going is only limited by your own imagination.
BY CAPT SAM ADDAIH (RTD)
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