Harvey, Jason - Achieve Anything In Just One Year - Be Inspired Daily to Live Your Dreams and Accomplish Your Goals

Your assignment today is to add this tactic to your list of remedies for anger. Give it a try if the opportunity presents itself sometime during the day. Just remember never to send that letter, because if you do, you’ll have a lot of cleaning up to do later. Hurt feelings take a very long time to mend.

DAY

241

“The first and most basic habit of a highly effective person in any environment is the habit of proactivity. Being proactive means that as human beings, we are responsible for our own lives. Our behavior is a function of our decisions, not our conditions. We can subordinate feelings to values. We have the initiative and the responsibility to make things happen.”

— Stephen R. Covey

We often talk about habits in a negative way. You want to get rid of a smoking habit; you need to change the habit of eating fast food for lunch every day; or you have a bad habit of biting your nails. For the next few days we’re going to turn that around and talk about forming good habits. These are routines you can sink into—even get stuck in—that will actually help you on the road to success rather than impede your progress.

The best place to start is with one of the biggest gurus of forming good habits, the author of The Seven Habits of Highly Effective People, Dr. Stephen R. Covey. He points out that the first and most basic habit of highly effective people is proactivity. He also says that it is true in any environment. So it doesn’t matter if you are a construction worker or an artist or a florist or an administrator. Action is the key.

One of the biggest issues anyone faces on the road to success is how they react to the conditions that surround them. Behavior is not a function of conditions. It’s a function of the decision you make every day to be proactive or not. Practice proactivity today. Take the initiative and be responsible for your own destiny. You are not a victim of circumstances. You hold the power to change your life through your actions.

DAY

242

“We first make our habits, and then our habits make us.”

— John Dryden

How do you form good habits? First of all, don’t complicate the task. It’s really not that hard. Just do it today, and then do it tomorrow, and then do it the next day. Don’t worry about the future. Just practice today. Pretty soon you will find you have strung a lot of todays together, and suddenly you’re forming a habit.

To build on Dr. Covey’s point in Day 241, proactivity is the first and most important habit for success—so get in gear. You can use that advice right now. Be proactive by starting another good habit. Make the habit first, and then the habit makes you.

Your assignment is to come up with a good habit you would like to form. Don’t think about this all day. You can probably come up with something in five or ten minutes. Do you want to incorporate meditation into your routine? Would you like to go for a daily walk? What about setting aside thirty minutes to read? Pick something now, and do it today. No excuses.

When you wake up tomorrow, resolve to do it again, and so on until it becomes a habit. You don’t have to think wishful thoughts anymore. Wistful phrases like “I wish I was in better shape” do not need to escape your lips. Make something (like exercise, for example) a habit starting today. In a few months your habit will make you. There is no doubt you will be in better shape if you proactively go after your goal each day.

DAY

243

“Stop the habit of wishful thinking and start the habit of thoughtful wishes.”

— Mary Martin

Wishes aren’t bad at all. However, wishful thinking is awful. It breeds inactivity. It sounds like you’ve already lost the game. Are you a wishful thinker? Do you catch yourself saying things like the following:

I sure wish I hadn’t gone to Whatever University. It wasn’t a very good school.

I wish I didn’t have so many commitments today. Oh well.

I wish I was smarter and better looking.

I wish I had a million dollars.

You can’t do anything with any of those kinds of statements. You don’t have a million dollars; you’re not Einstein; you created the schedule you’re stuck with today; and you already completed the degree at the school you didn’t like that much. Those things are over. You can’t change them. Move on to thoughtful wishes.

Thoughtful wishes are dreams that can actually come true. Start a list of thoughtful wishes today. The important thing to remember about a thoughtful wish is that it has to be attainable. You can’t talk about past regrets or completely ridiculous goals. Sit down and really think about this (hence the word thoughtful). Write down what you wish would come true in your life. Now, of those wishes, what do you have a shot at achieving? Highlight attainable wishes. Those are your thoughtful wishes. Pick one and pursue it.

DAY

244

“Live out of your imagination instead of out of your memory.”

— Fortune Cookie

Janis had an incredible imagination. She had dreams that were so full of color and beauty that others would be stunned to witness them. She wondered what it would be like to live her imagination out loud. It was a scary proposition. What if people thought she was weird? The ideas that sprang from her imagination were incredibly unique, and Janis knew it. What if the rest of the world didn’t like them?

There was one memory that held Janis back. In grade school she did let her imagination emerge into the real world. She drew a fantastic picture for a school project. It was beautiful and brilliant and uniquely her. But her fourth-grade teacher didn’t have much of an imagination. She couldn’t see the beauty in Janis’ work, and she chastised her for not “coloring in the lines.”

That one memory held Janis back for a long time. She was afraid of letting her brilliance emerge again. One day she decided to take a risk. She would not limit her imagination to her dream world. Her creativity was keeping her up nights, and she had to do something to share it with others. Janis started writing and illustrating a series of children’s books that night. She lived out of her imagination; she got her thoughts onto a page and dared to share them with the rest of the world. Within months, a major publisher accepted her first couple of books and gave her a hefty advance to produce more.

Janis finally had the nerve to live out of her imagination instead of her memory. Are you that brave?

DAY

245

“Long-range goals keep you from being frustrated by short-term failures.”

— James Cash Penney

It’s great to have long-term goals. They help you remember that there is a bigger picture. Life is a series of ups and downs, but the overall trend is what should really command your attention.

It probably doesn’t matter in the larger scheme of things if you flub a presentation at work. Is anyone going to remember that a year from now? Probably not. It’s not the end of the world if you got a rejection letter from a college you really wanted to attend. That is only one aspect of your life, and there are a lot of other options for you to get a great education. No matter what happens to you today in the negative column, things are bound to get better tomorrow. You just have to learn to ride out the storms and keep moving in the right direction.