Michal Stawicki's Blog, page 10

Eighty Seventh Income Report – June 2020 ($4.287.93)

Are you curious about a 3-month delay? I explained it in my first income report.

[image error]I set a couple of goals for June 2020: to work on my Resurrecting Books business and to grow my presence at the Polish market. None of them went very well, but I neglected business development more than being active in Poland.

Book Sales

That was a bummer. I sold eight copies shy of 700 in June. That was the worst month since February 2019. I was partly responsible because I did nothing in months to promote my own books. I even stopped most of my Amazon ads since during the lockdown everything was so unpredictable.

At least my customers’ sales didn’t decrease so much.

Polish Market

I was diligently formatting and scheduling posts for my Polish blog. At the end of June, I had posts queued for publishing almost till the end of September.

I publish a blog post twice a week on that blog. It’s much easier than publishing three times a month on my English blog. First, because I basically reused 100% of my Polish Quora content, but skipping the external editing was a huge factor too. In Polish, I can honestly say if what I’ve written was good or not. Also, I can find and correct any typos and mistakes on the fly.

I also reached to a few podcast hosts but I got only crickets as an answer. Apart from cranking out posts, I also created the page for media on my Polish website.

At least, I was doing something consistently with this goal. Resurrecting Books was a different story.

Resurrecting Books

I did very little to move the needle forward. Yes, of course I dealt with my customers and onboard new prospects, but I was supposed to work on the business. In that regard I only drafted a customer service process and shared it with my onboarding specialist.

Well, I also did something in the marketing area: I gave a podcast interview focused on the ads and my business and asked for an introduction to an author with 10 books.

Still, I was very disappointed with myself.

First Resurrecting Books Team Meeting

In the last week of June, there was a Business on Purpose virtual summit and I got four of my team members online: my son, dad, sister and Nicole from States. After the summit, we spent 30 minutes together. My family introduced themselves to Nicole and vice versa. I shared Resurrecting Books values with everybody for the first time ever. That was a great time.

Experiment in Canada

One of fellow Canadian authors recently published a new book. I accidentally saw it on FB. I got the idea to try to advertise his old book in Canadian store. The book was great and it had got ratings. I thought it will be a smashing success.

Well, it wasn’t. I was able to sell only a couple of copies despite getting well over 300 clicks. This experiment only confirmed what I found repeatedly working with books: the most important element of the advertising process is a book description.

My friend’s book’s was quite terrible. The cover and title captured attention of readers on Amazon, but the experience on his actual book page repelled them.

If you want to advertise your book, you’d better make sure your book description is great!

Tiny Habits

I did one more thing with my Polish blog: I translated the Tiny Habits training into Polish and led several of my subscribers through one-week training, twice.

I picked three new habits for myself each time. I don’t know about my subscribers, but I learned a lot

Best LIFE-ing Book Review

[image error]Best LIFE-ing is a good book. The most significant is the memoir aspect of the book. Personally, I found little help with attraction, but I read Julia’s story with an utter fascination.

OK, let’s start from:

CONS
Shallow How-To Sections

This is the only con I found in this book, but it’s quite debilitating nonetheless. Many advice resembles the standard self-help clichés: discover your beliefs, change your beliefs, change your thoughts, and so on.

I would rather simplify it further, get rid of how to parts entirely, or expand it into the part equal to the memoir sections.

PROS
1. Authentic.

“When my level of “miserable” was no longer bearable, I went ‘all in’ on improving my life. I was sick of feeling like shit, being the victim and complaining about everything I didn’t have. To be completely honest, I didn’t even really believe I could break free from my negative habits.”

Can you relate to the above quote? If you are more on the “ordinary” spectrum of the population, you definitely can. And this is the power of this book.

Julia doesn’t pretend to be a superhuman from a shiny Instagram feed. She is very vulnerable and reveals plenty of mistakes she committed. And she committed a load of them and they weren’t small.

She was a mess. Her life was a mess.

Which is what makes the whole story even more powerful! I was never as stupid as Julia. I never passed out after alcohol or drugs. So, if she could do it, why not me?

2. Inspiring.

Julia’s story is relatable, that’s why it is so inspiring. I couldn’t have identified myself with a Superman in a shiny armor who never made a mistake. A loser with crappy self-talk? Yeah, it sounds more like me!

Julia went through some trauma in childhood and made plenty of wrong choices. It also sounds more like the “ordinary” spectrum of the population. Yet, she didn’t stay there. She was able to turn around her life and this is really inspiring.

We need role models who stumble and fail, just like us.

3. Common life pieces.

There is so many elements in Julia’s life story that are common nowadays: neglecting her health, dedicating zero time for reflection, chasing entertainment to numb the existential vacuum, quiet desperation. All of that, and ignoring the advice of wiser than her on top.

Emotional turmoil. We are SO hopeless about managing our emotions!

Poor parent-children relationship lying at the core of many other problems. It’s so common and come from the same reasons as in Julie’s story – parents are so exhausted by the daily grind that they have very little time and attention for their kids. Kids are left on their own and they draw faulty conclusions learning life from celebrity figures (shiny Instagram posts!) and other kids as lost as they are.

4. Uncommon pieces.

Julia has an incredible mentor in her life. Bernard has never given up on her despite her obvious flaws and idiotic decisions.

When Julia put herself together from pieces after her father’s death, she had a supportive partner.

Such good luck is not the fate of many. Yet, there is always something good in each story. Those good pieces can be your stepping stones.

5. Working on yourself.

Sometimes, to move ahead, you need to cut off old bonds. You need to stop attaching yourself to someone else instead of paving your own path.

If this attachment to a person is your choice, that’s OK too. Viktor Frankl, the author of “Man’s Search for Meaning” said that one of the sources of purposefulness in life is love. There were a zillion of incredible stories in the history of humankind with the sacrifice for others at the center.

But if you stay with someone because you are afraid you will never be good enough for someone else, it will never make a good story.

Julia moved forward, and she did that with a gracious style. It was so different than the arrogant “ditch the losers” self-help cliché.

6. Self-help advice.

Hey, the how-to sections after each chapter weren’t very strong. Still, there were some gems hidden there. An idea to write down 210 reasons for your goals/dreams?! C’mon! I need to test that one!

And I learned the most from Julia’s story:

“You are as worthy as you think.”

“Sometimes you need a really good fail to see where you stand.”

“Whether out loud or in my head, I couldn’t admit my carelessness. My pride and ego was much too large.”

“Always measure it based off how you feel after doing it, not before.”

Summary

Do you need to read another self-help book, with the tips you already know by heart to improve your life? Not necessarily.

Could you use a pinch of inspiration in your everyday struggle? Who couldn’t?!

And you can find a lot of inspiration from this straightforward story of a gal who is not so different than you.

I always say that the best teacher is someone who is just a few steps ahead of you. So, if you have a million followers on social media, go and grab the latest Anthony Robbins’ book.

But if you struggle with self-esteem, drugs, health issues, alcohol, traumatic childhood, or with your weight, you’d better read Best LIFE-ing.

You can relate to this story so much better. And it has a happy ending. Which may be yours, if you follow Julia’s steps.

The post Best LIFE-ing Book Review appeared first on ExpandBeyondYourself.

How to Turn Anything into a Habit?

Anything? No can do. Not without some additional conditions. For example, if you want to make space trips a habit the only way to do it nowadays is to do those trips in your imagination.

And it applies to zillion other activities. Some things are just flatly impossible (yet) or much harder than others.

But here is how you can do most “things” a habit:

1. Write it down.

Writing things down processes information through the prefrontal cortex, the part of your brain responsible for conscious thinking. If you write something down, it means you will take the thought through the thinking process. If you don’t, you have not such a guarantee.

2. Start small.

BJ Fogg, a brilliant behavior design scientist, recommends to start from something that can be done in 30 seconds, and it is easy. 30 seconds of burpees hardly qualifies here.

Why starting small is so important? Because then you can sustain your new habit. And a habit which can’t be sustained, is not really a habit.

You can maintain a habit of running 100 yards and then scale it up to running marathons. It doesn’t work the other way.

Repeating a new behavior is a matter of motivation and skill (difficulty level). We are absolutely, totally, completely, and utterly hopeless in managing our motivation. It is SO much easier to manage the level of difficulty.

Thus, start small!

3. Repeat, repeat, repeat.

A daily habit is superior to the bi-daily habit by an order of magnitude. Your brain creates the habit loop by scanning the environment and your actions. If you repeat your habit in the same place and time every day, it is easy for your brain to recognize what’s the cue and what’s the routine.

If you do it every second day or once a week, it’s much harder. If you can stuff multiple repetitions into one day, it makes it super easy for your brain to recognize and save the habit.

4. Track.

The easiest way of tracking

is just marking off if you have done or not your habit. It may be more elaborate, for example, I keep a writing log and note down when, what, where, and in which language I wrote, plus, I register the numbers of words I wrote.

However, don’t overdo. Your tracking should be always easier than the habit in itself.

Why tracking works? Again, it engages your conscious mind, so the tumultuous process of creating a new habit is not entirely in hands of your emotional subconscious mind. And it tells the subconscious mind that this activity is actually important. Tracking instills some subconscious routines around the habit which makes it stickier.

The additional benefit of tracking is that it feeds your motivation in an actually manageable way (in opposite to trying peep-talk yourself). You see your progress and it motivates you.

5. Adjust.

In 2006, I started a habit of doing a series of consecutive pushups as my daily workout. This habit morphed more times than I care to count.

I moved it around in my schedule till I discovered the perfect time for it: mornings.

For years, I trained pushups beyond my limit; each time I tried to beat the previous record. Then, around 120 consecutive pushups, the habit was taking too much of my time. So, I started doing harder variations: diamond pushups, leg-elevated pushups, one-hand pushups…

I scaled the habit up. For a few years, I was doing a few series of pushups a day.

I scaled the habit down. I injured my shoulders. When my right shoulder hurt, I did pushups only on the left arm. When both shoulders hurt, I finally resigned from beating records every time.

Nowadays, I do only 12 pushups a day. But I still have a morning workout and I do different bodyweight exercises – squats, sit-ups, lungs, or burpees.

My habit changed multiple times, but it always has been serving the underlying principle: to be more active.

I did pushups to become stronger and healthier. My current morning workout serves the same purpose. In the end, I realized I didn’t start a pushups habit; I started a workout habit.

So, stick to your habit, but don’t be rigid. Life goes on. Circumstances change. Adapt.

Habits, like most successful endeavors in life, come down to two simple rules: get started and keep going.

Points #1 and #1 help you to get started. Points #3-#5 keep you going.

If you break a streak, you can always go back to the first two points and start again. Nobody is invincible.

My friends nicknamed me Mr. Consistency, yet I still broke my writing streak a couple of times in the last seven years. I broke every daily habit (and I have dozens of them) at least several times.

“Fall seven times, stand up eight.” — Japanese Proverb

You don’t need to be perfect. Just stand up after every fall.

The post How to Turn Anything into a Habit? appeared first on ExpandBeyondYourself.

Eighty Sixth Income Report – May 2020 ($4,200.68)

Are you curious about a 3-month delay? I explained it in my first income report.

[image error]May 2020 was the most productive month since January. I put myself together a bit with the help of my friends and mastermind. My church community reactivated and I had the pillar of consistency back in my life. And alleviation of the lockdown didn’t hurt one bit too.

Poland

I took care of my Polish blog. Finally, finally!, I created a sidebar to it and started lining up the content. First, I shamelessly filled the holes in the past schedule. Then, I formatted the posts drafts copied by my sister from Quora, made sure they look OK, and scheduled them for the future. At the end of May, I had posts scheduled till the beginning of July.

I secured a podcast interview on another big Polish podcast. This encouraged me and inspired me to reach out to a few more podcast hosts. To no avail, but at least I took action.

Tiny Habits

After the podcast interview, I got more than a dozen subscribers to my Polish email list. I pondered what to do with them and decided that getting them through the Tiny Habits course would be the best thing I could do to facilitate a transformative experience for them.

I reached out to those new subscribers and asked them for permission. I got more than a dozen yesses. So, I started to prepare for that. My son helped me to translate the Tiny Habits materials from English to Polish. His translation was so funny! It reminded the Google Translate output. I dedicated about a couple of hours to make this material sound like proper Polish.

Then, I translated the Tiny Habits email sequence and started organizing the sequence in my new email management system.

Bird Send

I also finally took action on migrating my email list from Aweber to BirdSend. Even though Bird Send did the migration for me, it took me several hours of work because I needed to make an inventory of my all sign-up forms and pages. During the last 7 years, I created the whole maze of them and never had a need to put them all in one sheet.

In the middle of May, I had all my subscribers in the Bird Send system, but I still used Aweber to notify my list about the book giveaway I participated in. I only managed to start using the system at the end of the month. And it was not without adventures…

Email Blooper

At the end of May, I wanted to send that notification about the Tiny Habits course to my new Polish subscribers. I struggled with the Bird Send interface which was new to me. I had to confirm my sender email address in the middle of the process, since it was the first email sent from that address.

And I didn’t notice that the filtering I did at the beginning of the process was gone. I sent an email in Polish to everyone:

-my Polish subscribers,

-my English subscribers,

-my past prospects for Resurrecting Books service,

-my current Resurrecting Books customers…

Everyone!

Gosh!!

I kind of managed to send another broadcast with an English explanation of my mistake. About half of my list got it before my email account was locked. Too many people marked my Polish message as spam. *facepalm*

However, there is always a grain of good in bad. I got a few dozen emails back from my subscribers, mostly asking WTF. Some of them even painstakingly translated my message and asked to be put into the Tiny Habits training

The Slight Edge Report Year Eight

[image error]A summary of the whole year is always a big task, even more so, when it was a year like the last one. I’ll try not to drop any ball.

CAREER
Business

Revenue of Resurrecting Books grew by 82% in the last year! I couldn’t believe my eyes when I calculated this number. The average from the last 12 months was higher than the highest value from the previous 12 months! In fact, the monthly revenue was lower than the max revenue in the previous year only three times.

My book sales remained stable. They increased by about 5%, which is a good result in the competitive book market. Quite a lot of this impressive result I credit to the new book, 99 Habit Success Stories, launched at the end of November. We (I co-authored the book) sold almost 1,000 copies in the first month.

The growth of my business didn’t happen in a void. My expenses increased too. But more about it in the Finance part of this report.

Day Job

Working only quarter-time was a huge blessing. It brought more balance into my life. Despite chasing so many opportunities (book writing, book marketing, coaching, speaking, and running my own business) I work relatively few hours -30-50 a week, depending on the week. I can dedicate more time to my spiritual practices, my family, health (I sleep longer!).

Since my wife is forcing me to stick to the day job, I tried to find new responsibilities in the organization, more in line with my newfound side hustle experience. I was denuded of those hopes by the highers that be in the HR department.

Great! The most taxing thing in wearing many hats is the distraction of the mind. Since that happened, I separated myself from my day job completely. I’m doing only the minimum required and I’m looking forward to the moment when my wife will finally realize that my business creates a totally different lifestyle possible for us.

Speaker

I didn’t exactly see that coming. I was interviewed on podcasts multiple times this year. What is more, I rarely looked for an opportunity to be interviewed, people were looking for me, not the other way around.

And I got paid for one gig! Bellevue University hired me to talk about a personal mission statement to their clients’ employees. It took me about a split second to confirm I’m interested

The System Is Unforgiving Book Review

[image error]First of all, this book reads awesomely well. I couldn’t put it down despite its flaws. In fact, those flaws made “The System Is Unforgiving” so enjoyable.

 

So, traditionally, let’s start the review with

CONS
1. The Bragging Style.

Half into the book I was sick of Allen stroking his ego. It seemed like he couldn’t let the chapter go without articulating how smart, hardworking, and cunning he was.

That was a bit unnerving, but definitely not enough to put the book down. I was sick of this style, yet I still wolfed the book in no time.

2. Repetitiveness.

I guess the editor dropped a ball here. For example, when it comes to the events during the Guantanamo assignment, the narration was going in circles at least three times.

I needed to read three times how inept and stupid (comparing to Allen; see: the bragging style) his Senior Chief Petty Officer was. How despicable were the Executive Officer and the Admin Officer. How smart Allen was to work the system and get access to the Commanding Officer and the Staff Jude Advocate in advance.

Gosh! It was enough to say it once. Seriously.

3. Moral Blindness.

Allen described at least a few times how he did something ethically questioning.

The best example was how he wrote horrible, and false, evaluations for his subordinate in the Philippines. Allen had a bunch of great excuses, which didn’t change the fact what he did, was simply wrong.

4. The System Is Forgiving.

I don’t exactly agree with the whole premise of the book; you’ll find more on that in my summary.

Yes, it’s true that one mistake can be fatal. But it doesn’t have to be. Even Allen himself admitted to multiple mistakes and still, he was able to navigate the system.

I suppose, the title Know the System and Your Life Will Get Easier wasn’t so catchy

8 Different Triggers that Start the Habit Loop

Anything and everything can start the habit loop. Seriously. Whatever your brain can process can be your habit trigger.

Emotional State

Quite often, an emotional state can be a trigger for your habit. Compulsive obsessive eaters? Alcoholics?

They don’t eat because they are hungry or drink because they are thirsty. They escape from some emotional states into those unhealthy habits.

Before my transformation, a mix of boredom and existential void always triggered escapism habits in me. I read fiction in excess, watched TV, or played computer games. The specific habit was different, depending on the context. If I had a fiction book handy, I read. If I was at home and my wife or kids watched something, it was easy to join them.

Time

Morning. Evening. Lunchtime. 3 pm. Each of those points can be a trigger for a specific habit.

Place

At home. At the office. On the commute. You may have different sets of habits depending on where you are.

Time & Place

Usually, the specific hour is not a trigger (unless you set an alarm for that specific hour). But in the context of place, it becomes such.

For example, if I’m waiting for a train to work on a train platform, it’s my trigger to meditate. But when I’m waiting for a train back home, it’s not.

So my meditation trigger is: morning + a train platform.

You may get a snack on a way to the office, but not on a way back. You may drink tea at your home in the afternoon, but if you are at work at that time, you don’t.

Other People

For example, your wife says something that will always have you erupting in anger.

Visual Cues

This one is huge. Visual cues can remind you about the habit. You brush your teeth in the morning, but if you misplaced your toothbrush and it’s not visible in the cup on the bathroom shelf, you simply forgot about brushing.

Visual cues can be subconscious, you don’t even register something in your view, but it activates your habit (the example above describes it aptly). But they are very handy when you try to develop a habit.

Do you want to read more? Put a book on the bedside cabinet.

Do you want to drink a glass of water first thing in the morning? Put an empty mug on a bathroom shelf.

Do you want to write thank-you notes? Put a pen on your desk.

Sensual Cues

Every sense can serve as a trigger. A sound, a smell, a taste…

I created a “work playlist” for myself. I always plug earphones and start this playlist when I write and very often, when I work, just to separate myself from the external world.

It really works for me as a focusing tool. I cannot get distracted when I listen to it. Funny enough, I can relax and catch a nap, but distraction seems impossible when I’m listening to it.

Other Habits

This is another excellent tool for habit development. When one habit ends, it can be a trigger for another habit.

This is why morning rituals are so popular and so absurdly easy to develop. The whole ritual is based on the most reliable habit in our life – waking up in the morning. Usually, we already have some kind of morning ritual anyway, we go to a toilet or to the kitchen to start a coffee machine, or we take off pajamas and put clothes on.

Any of the above can be your trigger for other triggers. I used the waking up moment to start repeating my personal mission statement.

My lifelong morning habit was to go to the bathroom right away. I used this habit, to build my workout habit. Later, I used the end of my morning workout as a trigger to gulp a glass of water. Next, I used the habit of drinking a glass of water as a trigger to weigh myself.

It’s super easy to develop a new habit when its trigger is an existing established habit.

Everything can be a trigger for your habits. Time & place, visual cues, and other habits are the best triggers to pick if you want to consciously work on new good habits.

The post 8 Different Triggers that Start the Habit Loop appeared first on ExpandBeyondYourself.

Eighty Fifth Income Report – April 2020 ($2,861.8)

Are you curious about a 3-month delay? I explained it in my first income report.

The beginning of April 2020 was exactly the same mess as the end of March. To be exact, I was a mess.

Hijacked Schedule

I let my wife hijack my schedule. She never really wrapped her head around the concept that I’m really working when I’m closed in my home office. In truth, I let her hijack my schedule. I didn’t feel like working anyway. I spent quite a lot of my time following the news, analyzing coronavirus statistics, and engaging in Twitter political wars.

My wife’s favorite pastime is watching movies with me. So, we watched a movie practically every evening. Sometimes, a couple of movies or more (on Sundays). It was still better than stupid Twitter wars, which seriously clouded my judgment.

Hijacked Mind

Garbage in, garbage out. Also, you are the average of the five people you spend the most time with, even if those people are Twitter trolls. My productivity and peace of mind went down the sinkhole because I allowed random people to invade my mind.

I was able to convert some of it into positives. This is how I started recording the corona videos – one day I wrote a whole article-rant about how to do read the statistics using your brainpower, not opinions on the Internet. I also wrote several answers about the coronavirus situation on Quora, both in Polish and English.

Yet, it wasn’t enough.

Day Job

I worked from home and I didn’t work many hours. Still, three days in the week I worked were hampering the little momentum I got. My day job was a distraction. My mental energy was so low that whenever I had to dedicate some brainpower to my day job I had very little energy left for my own endeavors.

However, it was a conversation with my supervisor which started the process of recuperation. We admitted to each other that we have troubles to put ourselves together. We jumped on the phone and discussed it in length.

My supervisor had much less trouble with productivity, she was crushing it in the job. Yet, she was a complete mess outside of work hours. You already know my mental state from this and the previous report.

But the most enlightening was the reflection after our conversation. We concluded that our old survival mechanisms kicked in in the new situation. We fell back to our default coping mechanisms.

Our survival wasn’t threatened, but we felt like it was. You surely remember the first weeks of the lockdown; nobody was sure of anything. We both knew better, but we couldn’t help ourselves.

To make it even more fun, both of us weren’t really afraid of anything: getting the virus, death, or poverty. We had it figured out. Yet, we lived in the state of constant anxiety and our brains went back to our past and obsolete survival mechanisms.

So, I had this conversation on the 6th of April. The same week, I discussed this mental fog state with my mastermind and one of my accountability partners.

I discovered that everybody was affected by this syndrome to some degree. It wasn’t something wrong with me. It was universal. It was like a magical poisonous cloud of anxiety covering the whole world.

This realization alone helped me to put myself together. I also named the source of the problem in my case – Twitter wars – and promised my accountability partner to stay out of that.

It helped like waving a magic wand. I keep track of my work hours. I worked barely over 3 hours a day in the second week of April and almost twice as many hours in the 3rd week.

A Ridiculous Corpo Story

After the conversation with my supervisor, I offered to GIVE our team SOME time. Since we knew everybody deals with anxiety, I offered my help to go through this struggle. My crazy supervisor encouraged me and she even forwarded my email to the whole company.

And here comes the story straight from Dilbert: The head of the HR department researched me, find out I have no coaching credentials from established entities and did what every venerable head of corporation HR department would have done: she named me a fraud and banned any help from me to the team.

Till that moment, I had stayed in my day job because my wife insisted on it. So, I tried to find a new place for me in the organization, the one that would utilize my talents better. I hoped to provide some training and coaching within the organization.

The HR lady cured me of those illusions. That event convinced me that I will quit this job at the very moment my wife allows me. Which is just a matter of time and money.

It was very liberating. I dealt with the corpo world’s idiocy for all too long. At that moment I separated my future from working for someone else. Forever.

 

Well, it separated me from my day job solely in my head. But it was liberating enough

The Ride of A Lifetime Book Review

I usually start my reviews from the CONs, but there is little to be choosy about here.

[image error]

The only drawback is there are not a lot of business lessons in the book. It’s a great read, but I have only 11 highlights and notes. So, I didn’t learn a lot.

Oh, and despite all the challenges, the whole story felt a bit lukewarm. Maybe Mr. Iger always calls every a**hole a “strong personality”, or maybe he is just nice to the core? Well, it didn’t feel very authentic.

On the other hand, maybe life in the 0.01% earners in the world is so nice, how would I know?

PROS
1. Great Read.

“The Ride of a Lifetime” reads amazingly well. I wolfed it.

It reads like a fast-paced thriller, but a one that actually happened and described from the first-person perspective.

My guess is Mr. Inger had a world-class ghostwriter

Bible Lessons About How to Build Good Habits

The Bible is a spiritual scripture, so it’s not the greatest “how-to” manual. It has quite a lot to say about “why,” but it’s quite thin on how to. However, a diligent reader can read between the lines. And I already possessed a wide knowledge of habits, so it was easy for me to pick up some nuggets.

Start Small

Sirach 19: 1b

One who makes light of small matters will gradually sink.

Sirach 11: 32a

A hearthful of glowing coals starts from a single spark.

Luke 16:10

Anyone who is trustworthy in little things is trustworthy in great; anyone who is dishonest in little things is dishonest in great.

When it comes to biology, an activity of reading books for five hours a day or drinking a glass of water first thing in the morning are habits. If they are repeatable in similar circumstances, they are stored in your brain in a habit loop. It’s not the size of a habit that matters. It’s consistency.

Starting small is easy. By starting small you can learn the skill of creating new habits. You don’t start a fire from a firestorm. You start it from a single spark.

Never ever discount small habits! They are the fabric of your life and make you who you are. They are extremely important!

Start small and scale it up (trustworthy in great things).

Building Habits Takes Some Effort

1 Corinthians 6: 12

‘For me everything is permissible’; maybe, but not everything does good. True, for me everything is permissible, but I am determined not to be dominated by anything.

John 12: 25

Anyone who loves his life loses it; anyone who hates his life in this world will keep it for eternal life.

Take a look at this chart:

[image error]

(The Slight Edge chart)

“What’s uncomfortable early, becomes comfortable later:” this is a statement which aptly describes building good habits. Yes, you can modify your good habits to make them easier. Yes, you can engineer your environment to support you.

Nope, they will never be as comfy as bad habits. You don’t get a shot of dopamine when you clean your room. You don’t get this yummy taste in your mouth when you fast for hours.

You must exercise some self-discipline at the beginning to reap the fruits later.

Oh, and there is an additional lesson in “I am determined not to be dominated by anything.” Good habits can be dangerous too; in two ways:

-they put you on autopilot and you stop growing; this danger is real, but less damaging.

-you take excessive pride in your habits; which will make you an arrogant ass*ole in human interactions. And when you unavoidably fail, your self-image can take a devastating blow.

Perseverance, Consistency

Proverbs 23: 16

For though the upright falls seven times, he gets up again; the wicked are the ones who stumble in adversity.

2 Corinthians 12: 9c

(…) for power is at full stretch in weakness.

James 1: 12

Blessed is anyone who perseveres when trials come. Such a person is of proven worth and will win the prize of life, the crown that the Lord has promised to those who love him.

If nothing else, take this lesson to your heart: habits are ALL about consistency. So, not only you need to go out of your comfort zone, you need to do it again and again. Regularly.

Failure is included in the experience of building habits. This is also out of our comfort zone: to consciously decide to sacrifice our ego. If you start building good habits, you must fail. It’s part of the process. Even if you are amazingly consistent (which trait is rarer than being handsome, self-disciplined, intelligent, or ANY other; consistency is the rhodium among character traits), you will fail at one time or another.

My friends nicknamed me Mr. Consistency. Since the 23rd September of 2013, I wrote every day… but twice. Nobody is perfect in this world.

Usually, you will fail the most at the beginning. But this is where power is at full stretch. You burn out the flaws of your ego. You emerge stronger from this experience. You learn that it’s OK, as long as you learn from experience.

Action

James 2: 20

Fool! Would you not like to know that faith without deeds is useless?

Habits are all about action. It’s fine and good to prepare, plan, study and visualize. But without action, the consistent action, it is all in vain. Do your habit. Build a streak. You will learn by action, not by theorizing.

Accountability

Matthew 18: 20

For where two or three meet in my name, I am there among them.

There are better quotes in the Bible about this which literally talk about accountability. I just had no time to dig them out.

Nonetheless, I think this is a great illustration of the concept. When two or three people gather and they have the same agenda, miracles happen. There are not anymore a few puny people, there is a spark of divine power among them.

There were zillion studies done about accountability. It works because we are relational creatures. Invite one person to your habit-building quest, whether a friend, a coach, or a mentor and your chances for success will skyrocket.

Isolation is the enemy of excellence. Accountability is its ally.

Compounding

Mt 25:29

For to everyone who has will be given more, and he will have more than enough; but anyone who has not, will be deprived even of what he has.

Galatians 6: 9

And let us never slacken in doing good; for if we do not give up, we shall have our harvest in due time.

Look at The Slight Edge chart again:

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Habits compound. That’s their nature. That’s their reward.

In fact, the true reward is in who you will become with your good habits. This is the true secret of good habits. You will have your harvest not because you will have your habits. That’s only the cause, the prerequisite.

You will have your harvest because of who you will become – a person worthy of the reward. That’s the ultimate effect of good habits.

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