“A business executive’s habits are amongst the most important factors that determine whether he or she will be a success – or a failure” J. Paul Getty

What are habits?

Habits are repeated behaviours, thoughts and actions that are automatic. Habits are useful, if not essential to life: we simply wouldn’t be able to function without habits. From the moment you wake and throughout the day, our day is full of those automatic actions that move us smoothly through life.

Think of any action that we take, even the most mundane like brushing our teeth. Imagine if you had to think consciously about brushing your teeth every day – twice a day. Then getting dressed and tying your shoelaces. By the time you are ready for the office you would already be exhausted and we haven’t even mentioned all the habits of etiquette – the social glue that keeps society functioning.

We have survived as a species exactly because habits are automatic. In evolutionary terms, this leaves us free to concentrate on physical threats to our existence or opportunities to find food.
All well and good then. Habits keep us alive and help us to learn new important skills. Except, not all habits are useful.

Bad Habits

As we have already suggested, habits are automatic, meaning that you don’t need to think about them. If any habit results in negative results, it’s a bad habit.

What is a bad habit

A bad habit is any repeated thought or action that results undesirable outcomes. Bad habits can also be the language that you use. Thoughts, words and actions are all linked together. Words can influence your thoughts, which then influence your actions. So be very careful what you say, because habitual negative language, will affect your thinking. If the results in your life aren’t what you want, then examine the language that you use.
Other bad habits may be just mindless activity. Do you eat when you are not hungry, in front of the TV? This is just a mindless bad habit.

Breaking bad habits

Once you become aware of the bad habit, you have already begun the process of breaking that bad habit. You are now aware. It is no longer mindless. This is therefore the first thing you should focus on when trying to break a bad habit. Become aware of it. Eat thoughtfully. Ask yourself ‘Am I really hungry?’’Do I really like the taste of this food?’ ‘How does it make me feel?’ When you become mindful about your habits, those that don’t serve you are exposed for what they are. You will be surprised to find that you can then easily change those habits.

Small habits

To change a small habit, simply perform a new habit for 21 consecutive days. It should then be permanent.

Another way to change small habits is to use reminders and props. Say that, for instance, you are in the habit of misplacing your keys. You mindlessly place them down when you arrive home. How about if you actually designate a place for these keys to live. E.g. A small saucer or tray near the front door. This is where the keys live. Make an intention to decide a place where the keys will go. Then go and put the keys there now. Now write a little note for yourself to put the keys back every day. Put this note with the keys and take the note with you the next day. It won’t take long before you are habitually putting the keys back in their new home. Once it is a habit, you can forget the note. It will be automatic.

Large habits

Sometimes bad habits are just too large change in one go. Let’s use an example of over-eating. Perhaps after years of eating too much of the wrong foods, you find yourself a little over-weight. The first thing many people do is to try to change everything all at once – the crash diet. Diets don’t work for many reasons, but the main one is internal resistance to change. We are hard wired to resist change. Any change could be a threat to our existence. Your body is also physiologically designed to get you to eat. If you stop eating, many processes in your body switch on to avoid starvation. In short your body fights to get you to eat. There is only one winner in this battle.

What’s the answer then?

You can bypass your body’s in built drive to eat, by chunking down the habit to its smallest components. So in our overeating example, this large habit can be broken down into individual meals or snacks, or even parts of meals. In his book the Compound Effect, Darren Hardy talks about making the smallest of changes, to bypass our tendency to avoid change. Tiny changes go undetected by our subconscious mind. Minute changes to your eating habits will not threaten your existence.

So you can remove one sugary snack per week from our diet and this will not cause too much heartache. You could choose Monday morning as a snack free zone.

Now you might say to yourself, that such a small change and it will have no effect, so why bother? Well this is where the Compound Effect helps. Yes, removing one snack per week will have a negligible effect on your calorie intake, say 200 kcal. However, that is 10,400 kcal per year. If 3,500 kcal collates to one pound of fat, then this would equate to nearly 3 pounds lost over the year, with almost no effort.

And that is not all. Once you have this mini habit down, you could remove another snack per week. Then another and another.
If you have never tried this method, I can assure you that it gathers momentum. Slowly all manner of little habits will change. Within a year you will be transformed. I promise you.

By the way if you are looking to lose weight contact me and I will show you how I did it.

The post Habits appeared first on Mike Holden Sales.

How do you make real lasting change in your life?
Also, how do you make things happen out there, in the real world, things that you have in your head right now that you want to make real? How do you find out what you really want?
For over 20 years and a thousand books, I have searched for the answers. I’ve tried every method I could find, including hypnosis, affirmations, visualisation and ‘putting it out to the universe’. I also made picture boards and mind movies. I’ve study philosophy, psychology, pop science and self- help books. In the past I’ve joined esoteric groups, chanted and prayed for miracles. I’ve trained in life coaching, NLP and conventional training methods.

15 Seconds at a Time

I’ve condensed everything I’ve learned into my book Done. This is a practical guide on how you can achieve anything in your life. You will learn the art of setting the right goals for you. I will also show you how you can break even the most complex and long-term goals into minute manageable bite sized chunks, that can be done 15 seconds at a time. In this website I will show you how to maintain focus in an ever distracted world. I also teach you how to manage your time, so that those mundane day to day tasks, don’t detract you from your life’s purpose.

I will introduce you to a technique that revolutionised my life. Be sure to read about the The 15 Second Principle.
Before we get cracking, however, just small word of caution.

Start Small

When making changes, when you first start, dream big but start small. It should be known that you can scupper your chances of achievement or change, by trying to do too much at once; You can make really big progress by the habit of small incremental changes. Keep you eyes on the big prize, but be clear that is the small everyday action that will get you there.

Resistance

If you ever feel resistance with a goal, project or even a small task first, this is a sign that you need to break it down further into a smaller chunk. Sometimes you have to trust your instincts or intuition on this. This can be a major part of achievement, the fact that the little voice tells you that you need to do more work on defining your outcome. Your emotions and how you feel will tell you whether you are on to something.

The post Make Real Lasting Change appeared first on Mike Holden Sales.

How to Change your Life from Negative to Positive

One of the biggest challenges you might face is how to change your life from negative to positive. By that, it might mean the results you are getting in your life, but also your attitude to your life.

The Good News

It is difficult, but not impossible to change your life from positive to negative and in this chapter, I will show you how to start.
As with anything worthwhile, it is not an overnight thing. It is a process and you can begin to get some immediate results.
I fundamentally believe that anyone, no matter where they find themselves, can change their lives. You can do some very simple, but very important things every day. I will also reveal to you three secrets of suggestion that I learned in my Hypnotherapy training, which will help you to make long lasting change.
Firstly, though, it really starts with attitude.

Attitude

The Only Question to ask yourself, when beginning to change your life is – Can I change?
If you are reading this post because you are searching for the answer to this question, then you are already half way there. The fact that you are searching for the answer, means that you doubt that your current state is permanent.
You can change and you will change.



When first beginning the task of changing your life around, you will need to adopt new beliefs. I go into detail on how to change a belief in my book The Habits for Fat Loss
Here are some fundamental beliefs, which I have found useful.
My view of the world is not the world. Other people have different views of the world – and that is not the world either.
All my experience has a structure to it; therefore, I can hack into this to change my experience of something.
I just one person can do something, then anyone can do it.
The mind and the body are part of the same system.
People already have the resources they need, they just need help accessing them.
You are always communicating, even if you think you aren’t
Underlying all behaviour is a positive intent. Therefore, try to separate the behaviour from the person.
People are always making the best choices available to them
If what you are doing isn’t working out, do something else.
The quality of your life is only as good as the quality of your thoughts.
You don’t need to adopt the beliefs all in one go, just go one at a time. A tip for which one to internalise first, is the one that you really disagree with the most. Pick this one first.

The words you use

The second step to changing your life from negative to positive is to mind your language. I don’t mean cutting out the odd Industrial term here and there (I believe that these have a time and a place too). I mean the type of words you use, that force you into a negative state.

Outside influences

The next area for you to address are the outside influences, that are shaping your worldview. I talked about this back in the The Gateways to the Subconscious.
Doing this can have immediate effects on whether your life feels positive or negative. What you see, hear and read, absolutely effects your thinking. Have you ever listened to two people arguing and then felt argumentative after? Or what about if you hear someone laughing? You can’t help but smirk. We have an in built propensity to copy those we associate with. It’s perfectly natural and has helped human survival. But that doesn’t mean that you have to imbibe all the negativity the world has to offer, because you will. And just like the computer programming adage “Garbage in, garbage out”, the quality of your influences will shape the quality of your life.

TV/news/Media

I find Television very educating. Whenever someone turns on the set, I go into another room and read a book. – Groucho Marx

TV has a lot to answer for. As a qualified Hypnotherapist, I shudder at how this box in the corner of the room, can hypnotise people. From the advertisers, who use the power of suggestion to make you think you want their product, to the politicians who use fear to get you to vote for them, be very careful what you watch on this device. I will maybe devote a whole book to the dangers of TV, as there is not enough room here.
Start by questioning what you watch. Notice how you feel after watching a programme. Do you feel full of angst after watching a soap opera. Do you feel fearful after watching the news? Notice this. TV is doing this.

Print Media

Take an audit of your reading material. Is it positive or negative? Again, the proportion of this, will have a direct effect on how you view your own life. Does reading the magazine full of airbrushed models make you feel inadequate? Publishers design them to do so, so that you buy the products advertised in it.
You can easily assess whether what you read is wholesome or not by how you feel after. Do you feel uplifted after reading it? Optimistic?

Social media

Here is a tip for what to do if someone negative on social media is making you feel bad – delete them. Really, life is too short to read negative stuff. You don’t need to. I know it can be tempting, but it’s not doing you any favours. Ok, maybe deleting then is too harsh, why not just use the setting to hide them.

In defence of negative.

Now that we have gotten all negative on the negative, let’s just take a sense-check. Have you ever looked both ways, when crossing the road? Did you look again as you were crossing? Why so negative? Surely, the positive thing to do would be to blindly jump into the road and hope for the best. No? Course not?
Whilst moving your life from negative to positive, it’s crucial that you don’t become deluded. You should still take precautions and buy insurance. Are you going into a new business? Do your due diligence, test the market out.
Or what if you are starting a new exercise regime? Take care of yourself, the mind may be willing, but give your body time to adjust to new things.
When we talk about removing negatives, we are talking about all the unhealthy things that are holding you back.
As the old Arabian saying goes “Trust in Allah, but tie up your camel”.

The post How to Change your Life from Negative to Positive appeared first on Mike Holden Sales.

I love to change. As I am writing this now, I am remembering that it was about 16 years ago when I learned to touch-type. I read in a book, that if you wanted to be a successful salesperson, you should learn to touch-type. So I thought that would do for me then. So I went online and ordered a touch-typing course cd, then sat back in anticipation. (Yes, it was 2002 – there are probably online courses now).

I Perservered

A few days later, there was a thud on our front door welcome mat – a parcel. (Don’t you just love that sound?). The CD had arrived. I ripped open the padded envelope: yes, it was my touch-typing course. The course helped to instill the muscle memory in each finger, so that you could type using all fingers and thumbs without looking at the keyboard. It was tough, but I persevered. My fingers ached, especially the two pinkies, which weren’t used to doing anything. Now my right pinkie was in charge of the : and the ?. Eventually I mastered touch-typing. I haven’t had to re-learn it. I only learned it once. As they say, ‘It is just like riding a bike’. Why is this? I will explain shortly.

Why are we like we are?

Have you ever wondered why we are like we are? Between the mid 1800’s and the 1980s, common wisdom said that once our brains were developed, that was it. We were like we were and there was no changing. You were a – Night Owl, for example. Alternatively, you were a – XYZ (fill the gap).
Now, thankfully, science realises that the brain has plasticity. This means that we can and do change. But how can we change?

What Doesn’t Work

Firstly, let’s look at what doesn’t work. Sitting around doing nothing will obviously not result in any change. Also doing the same things that you’ve done before will also not result in any change. You’ve heard the saying that insanity is doing the same thing repeatedly and expecting the same results. This is very true. In this, I include reading self-development books and not following through on the actions. Also not following through on the initial motivation, you get at a seminar. For permanent change to happen we need to influence the part of the mind that will allow change to happen.

Where change happens.

We all know that the mind has different levels of consciousness. Very loosely, we can describe them as conscious and subconscious. It is the subconscious mind, which controls all of our bodily functions. The subconscious keeps us alive, without us having to think about it. It also holds our instincts, memories, beliefs and habits; in effect all our learned behaviours. It’s very effective too.

Skills

Practise a skill until it becomes ingrained and it becomes permanent.
So let’s go back to my touch-typing skill. I consciously decided to practise and learn it. The skill now resides in my subconscious mind. It is muscle memory. It is now permanent.
What are the ways in which we can learn or unlearn? How can we consciously influence the subconscious so that it will change?
There are several ways to influence the subconscious, I explain these in my book Subconscious: How to Make Personal Development Permanent.

The post How Does Change Happen appeared first on Mike Holden Sales.