EXECUTION

Having chosen to be high functioning, decided the habits, incorporating them into your life is the major part, however it’s often not easy. It’s like having bought a new vitamin, and you have the supplement lounging in your room or the refrigerator and kept away from the area where you down your first drink or food in the morning.  The chances of you remembering are minimal so that’s not going to work. In the Self-Help world, there is an expression, SHELF HELP. You can buy all the books, courses and DVDs you want but if they sit on your shelf and you never open them, they cannot help you. 

I encourage you to analyze how your lifestyle works.  For instance you need to know if you can exercise in evening and still sleep comfortably at night or whether you need to get to it in the morning.  We also need to know if there is a supplement that you should be taking, whether you should read at night or meditate in the morning to calm the mind. All of these things are about executing the habits. Common sense functionality plays a huge role in this process and two points, about the success of executing the habits, readily comes to mind: Repetition and Rationale.

“Repetition reduces resistance,” Sam Crowley says. Do not underestimate the power of repetition. It takes time to create a new habit and repetition is the key, that’s because repeated behaviors imprint these patterns onto our neural pathways. According to Wood and Neal, (2007)  “As behaviors are repeated in a consistent context, there is an incremental increase in the link between the context and the action. This increases the automaticity of the behavior in that context.” Highly functioning people don’t get where they are by accident, it takes an average of 66 days for you to form a habit. Habits “are behaviors which are performed automatically because they have frequently been performed in the past.”  So, the basic key to forming a new habit is to keep at it. It is also important not to feel disheartened if or when you fall off the wagon.   There is not so much a significant effect on the overall formation of the habit when you miss a day so it better not to throw in the towel and pick up from where you left off. The strength that drives your repetition, however, is fueled by your rationale. There has to be a solid reason WHY you’d rather walk past that bottle of wine even when you thirst for it to take a cup of water instead.

Repetition also helps with learning. There is a quote that goes thus, “Repetition is the mother of learning, the father of action, which makes it the architect of accomplishment.” Think back to when you first drove a car or ride a bicycle; you first needed to learn the basic skills, after which it was all about practice and more practice to gain confidence and to improve your skill. One major reason for repetition is learning, aiding quick and easy recall. Knowledge learned but unable to be recalled when needed is as good as being ignorant of it in the first place. I’ll be sincere with you here; you may have to read that book again, listen to that podcast again. I sometimes go through a book twice, I listen to the audiobook and also get the hard copy for note taking. Repeated reading (or listening) strengthens your ability to retain the information and make use of it so you will be able to communicate such knowledge to others more effectively.

The rationale is the reason for a decision or course of action. It tells of the ‘WHY’ behind your action.  Let me cite an example of what your rationale cannot be, “I want to lose weight.” A rationale is “I need to lose weight so that I can…” The ultimate result is about what you can do when you reach the goal, which is what we call the first result: You are healthier, you have lowered blood pressure, and you’ve stopped your wheezing. Your headaches or migraines have subsided, same with your cholesterol; you can now reduce your medication and save more money which you can now use to travel or do something else other than being tied to a pill. You have improved your joint mobility; now you can play a sport you love or play with your grandchildren or take up something you’ve always wanted to learn. You now have abated mental fogginess, you’re sharper with better mental clarity, and it’s now easier to learn something new, it’s easier to read which makes it easier to learn. All these are first results. That you are slim and look amazing in your clothing are secondary results.

You will find that if you’ve lost weight and got healthier, you will be more productive in work and making more money; you can travel or do things you haven’t been able to do or pay off your debts that have been causing you so much stress. Being skinny is not a WHY and not a result that will get you through life in a healthier manner. It’s usually a short-term fix for an event; such a reason is usually short-lived. Your rationale is so important in getting you to the result that grants you your desires.

Common Sense, Uncommon Results. That is what we are looking to accomplish.   Will Power will only get you so far, then you better have a plan!