Why habits are important
When I work with my clients one of the things we explore early on is their habits.
Our habits have the power to make us or break us.
Our life is a sum of what we do every day.
Motivation gets us started but it’s those positive daily habits that ultimately get us the results we desire.
After years of working with people on becoming the best versions of themselves, I can confidently say that creating positive, daily habits that serve you will get you from where you are now to where you want to be.
Whereas, negative daily habits that don’t support you will take you further and further away and eventually rob you of your goals.
Habits that prevent us from achieving success
As a self-development coach here are some things that I see coming up time and time again with my clients.
Do you recognise these?
1. Wasting your time comparing yourself to others, instead of focussing on yourself.
As well as being SERIOUSLY distracting, comparison can leave you feeling inferior and inadequate if done in the wrong way. ‘Wait, there’s a right way?’. If you have a goal, finding someone else who already has what you want and using them as inspiration is great. This is completely different to spending hours aimlessly scrolling and looking at other people and beating yourself up for not being where they are. You can read more about how to overcome toxic comparison here.
Let’s be honest though, you have a finite amount of time and energy every day and the only way to move forwards is by spending that time and energy on YOU and your life. A great starting point is to take notice of how you are spending your time. How much of your precious time and energy are you spending on looking at what others are doing and how much on taking action towards your goal? You might just be surprised…
2. Being scared to make a mistake or get something wrong so you stay safe by doing nothing.
The quest for perfection can be paralysing. You can either be productive or perfect- you can’t be both. You need to find a way of getting comfortable with failing. After all, if you’re not failing at anything, it just shows you’re not trying enough stuff! Learning to fail forwards and fail fast will enable you to take the learns, tweak your approach and go again until you get the result you want. Staying safe and playing safe will not.
3. Needing help, but not wanting to ask for it so struggling alone and not moving forwards.
There’s no shame in the support game. Learning from someone who is a few steps ahead of you can save you YEARS of trial and error. Partnering with a self-development coach and accessing their proven frameworks and support tools and benefitting from the years of training and research that they’ve undertaken in personal development can seriously accelerate your progress. Want to read more about the benefits of coaching? you can here.
4. Procrastinating instead of acting.
This comes in so many forms but the main type of procrastination I see with the women I coach is them spending time digging up little pebbles instead of moving big rocks. It’s easy to fool yourself that you’re being productive but shuffling about doing back office tasks and avoiding the stuff that’s going to move you forward won’t get you those results, I’m afraid. Often the things that move the needle are the things that are outside of your comfort zone, feel hard to do and have an element of risk associated with them. Naturally, our brain's job is to keep us safe so it tries to trick us into thinking that it’s ok to avoid these things. My job as a coach is to check and challenge my clients and make sure that they ARE doing the things that will move them forwards. Accountability plays a very powerful part in the coaching process.
5. Focussing on what you CAN’T do instead of what you CAN.
This is another extremely negative habit that I see a lot. Often, I ask my newer clients what they can do to help them move towards their goals and they come back with a big long list of what they can’t do without even realising they are doing it. Keeping the focus on what IS possible, what time you DO have, what money you CAN afford to spend, what resources you DO have, and who CAN help you is key to achieving goals. Eventually, through practice and heightened awareness, my clients learn how to shift their focus to the positive automatically by learning to catch themselves when they slip onto negative thought patterns and reframe negative and disempowering thoughts with thoughts that empower them to get the results they want.
So there you go, 5 bad habits that are getting in the way of your goals!
Now it’s time for some honesty! Are these habits holding YOU back? If so, are you prepared to let them cost you your goals? Or, do you want to do something about it and make the progress you want?
Addressing bad habits with Self-development Coaching
If today is the day that you decide that you’re going to kick these bad habits to the kerb you can kickstart your progress by booking a completely free, no-obligation 30-minute call with me to discuss how I can help you - just click here.
We will chat about what you want to achieve in your life and how I can help you if we work together. Whether that’s a complete career change, improving your confidence in your existing job, turning a hobby into a side business, improving your work/life balance or something completely different, if something is stopping you from feeling happy, I can help.
You will have the opportunity to ask any questions to help you decide whether you want to go ahead with my support.
Whether we work together after the call or not, you’ll feel so much better afterwards and will have a couple of practical ideas to take away.
Easy! Here’s that link again.
Looking forward to chatting with you,
Leanne x