Get Into the Habit of Success

By Ray Bertani

Many years ago, very early on in my people management career, I was conducting a performance review on a young employee who was working part time while going to University. Although his performance was adequate, it most definitely was not stellar. During our conversation I asked him why he didn't perform up to his obvious capabilities. I'll never forget the reason he gave me for not giving 100% effort while at work. He said, "this is just a temporary job for me, I'm not going to be here for very long, so why knock myself out." He was right...he wasn't there very long.

This person, as educated as he was, missed a very simple and important point. Repeated actions become habits, habits become character and your character follows you wherever you go. By giving less than his best, he was creating a habit of mediocrity that would follow him throughout his life and on into his chosen profession.

It has always amazed me how many people believe that they can turn habits on and off like light switches. How many people work at less than their best while at work and then complain that they can't seem to get the results that they desire in other areas of their lives. The fact of the matter is that we are defined by our habits. If you make a habit of not giving 100%, that habit will follow you wherever you go and in every context of your life. If your unorganized at work...your probably unorganized at home. If you procrastinate at home...you probably do so at work too. Habits rarely change from one context to another.

Search your past for examples of when you began to create a habit that doesn't serve you today. Whether it was doing less than your best at school, skipping practices to go hang out with your friends, waiting until the last minute to begin a project, not following through on commitments or just spending your spare time lying on the couch watching TV instead of doing something productive. How many of those habits are still with you today? How many have impacted you in a negative way? How many continue to impact you in a negative way? Most importantly, why do you continue to repeat such habits?

The answer is "secondary gain." Even the most harmful of habits hold a benefit that keeps us repeating the patterns that we so want to escape. If we look into our self destructive habits and behaviours we can usually find some sort of secondary gain that we derive from the habit. Secondary gain is something of value that the behaviour satisfies. Take smoking for example, I think we can all agree that smoking is bad for you, even the smokers among us will agree to that. People smoke not because they don't believe that the habit is harmful but because it provides them with some sort of gain, usually a feeling of some sort...secondary gain. If there were no gain or benefit derived from the behaviour, we wouldn't do it. Being a former smoker, I know that for me smoking was a way of dealing with every day stress and providing much needed quiet time and down time. Inevitably every attempt at quitting failed once I was faced with a stressful situation and/or gave in to the feelings of monotony and boredom.

The same is true for all habits, limiting decisions and behaviours. Once you can identify the secondary gain derived from the behaviour you can loosen the power it has on you by finding alternative ways to achieve the gain in a more positive and healthy manner. This must be done prior to letting go of the unwanted behaviour or habit. If this is not done, even if you are successful in quitting the habit or behaviour, it is often replaced by an equally harmful behaviour. One of the biggest complaints given by people who have quit smoking is that they have significant weight gain as a result of quitting. The reason for this is because the lack of a positive alternative to smoking has resulted in the unconscious mind providing something to fill the void created by not smoking, in this case food. Unless you consciously and deliberately replace the unwanted behaviour with a more positive behaviour, you risk replacing one unwanted behaviour or habit with another.

Secondary gain is prevalent in every aspect of our lives. The child that acts out is doing so because of the secondary gain that it provides. The employee who constantly resists management authority does so because it provides secondary gain. The supervisor or manager who bullies his staff does so because to satisfy a need for a specific secondary gain. The student who is constantly failing to hand in his homework on time is doing so to derive secondary gain. The trick is to find out what that secondary gain is so that we can provide that without the unwanted behaviour.

A good rule of thumb is to provide three alternative ways to satisfy the secondary gain that the habit provides. If you can get the gain, you don't need the habit.

The good news is that it is never too late to erase bad habits and build good ones, it just takes conscious commitment. More importantly, it takes consistent and purposeful action. Start by targeting a simple habit, for example, watching too much television, find the secondary gains that habit satisfies, find three alternative behaviours or habits that satisfy that secondary gain, replace the original habit with one or all three of the alternatives, sustain it for a 30 day period at minimum and create a new habit. Once you have tackled a couple of easier ones, start to tackle progressively more difficult and important ones until you have replaced all your limiting habits with empowering ones.

I will leave you with one of my all time favorite quotes.

"We are what we repeatedly do. Excellence, then, is not an act, but a habit." Aristotle

Ray Bertani is a corporate trainer, public speaker and personal development coach. He is the founder of Cura Solutions, a leadership and personal development firm dedicated to adding significant and lasting value to each and every one of its clients. Ray's first book entitled "Breaking The Deal" renegotiating your deal with life, is due to be completed by Winter of 2010.

Cura Solutions is based in the Metro Vancouver area and serves clients all through Canada. Ray can be reached by email at ray@curasolutions.ca or by phone at 604-802-4490 begin_of_the_skype_highlighting 604-802-4490 end_of_the_skype_highlighting. To learn more about Cura Solutions, visit thier website at www.curasolutions.ca

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