3 Steps to Success

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In just a few weeks, all of us will participate in a common yet slightly damaging social ritual… the New Year’s resolution.

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Why is it damaging? Because for almost all of us, it introduces a precedent of failure at the beginning of the new year in either a personal or professional area of growth. This non-ideal beginning to the year can affect our success from that point onward, well into the rest of the year. Now, the practice of setting resolutions is not hurtful in itself but how we go about it reinforces the frustrating and unproductive ways that we go about introducing change, improvement, innovation and meaningful growth into our lives.

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This is most often because we’re just not focused, strategic and realistic enough about how we introduce positive change into our lives (change happens all the time so it’s up to us to use it as a positive force for success). I’m convinced most of this is due to the fact that we just forget how we learn anything at all; good or bad, significant or trivial. You see, ever since we were little, all of us have learned things through one of three distinct ways: Impact, Discovery and Spaced-repetition. Examples of each are:

Impact- Getting a speeding ticket and then driving slower for at least a few months. Having a heart-attack and then changing our diet/exercise level.

Discovery: Experiencing the grandeur of nature (ocean, mountains, stars, beautiful people, etc) and then having a more balanced view of life. Hearing a very inspirational speaker and then being more productive and kind to others.

Spaced-repetition: Learning our multiplication tables, a foreign language or any athletic feat. This is also the method that advertisers use for us to remember commercial jingles and songs on the radio.

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Of the three ways, impact and discovery are definitely the more powerful and memorable but they’re also the most difficult to produce or schedule to happen. These both require a unique combination of specific circumstances to align for the spontaneous learning to take place. So of the three, only spaced-repetition is the one we can control on any given day and thus leverage to our advantage.

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In leveraging spaced-repetition to our personal growth, it’s important to remember that statistics on behavioral learning will tell you that if someone can do something for twenty-one days straight, then that action will become a habit. This also works for avoiding an action for the same amount of time (although I think it takes just a tad longer to undo life-long habits than it is to build new ones). So in essence, if we can do something for three weeks straight, we can add new habits to our lives. With that being said, it’s completely up to us to decide on the most helpful, strategic and successful elements to add to our lives through spaced repetition.

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>>So spend ten minutes right now to list three things in your professional life and three things in your personal life that you would like to see happen in the next year.

>>Now pick one from each list and think of a daily action that will help get you there.

>>Do that action for the next twenty-one days and you’ve got yourself a new successful habit! (I would recommend picking something that you can do first thing in the morning to increase the likelihood of your accomplishing it on a daily basis)

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An example:

3 professional goals:

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3 personal goals:

1. a) Spend ten minutes every morning reading at least one industry journal’s front-page story (websites make this so easy to do!)

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