384 | Changing Habits One Tool You Can Use

If you want to be a leader that evolves and grows consistently, you must have the right habits. Habits are essential to many things in life. Look at a person’s habits, and it will tell you a lot about that person. This video is about how to change your habits. I am going to give you my favorite tool for changing habits and tracking your progress. It is old school, but I have been using it for three years now. Discover how to change your weaknesses now.

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Changing Habits One Tool You Can Use: The Transcript

Have you wondered about how to change your habits? Changing habits can be hard and if you aren’t prepared for it, it really can you know, wreck habit on what you’re doing day in and day out maybe even wreck your confidence of what you’re doing and who you’re becoming.

One of the tools I use is really fantastic I’m gonna get to, and tell you all about it um, hint it’s right behind me, but I wanna talk about habits in general. You know I really believe that our habits shape who we are, who we are becoming, and it really does help reinforce all of the things around us. Let’s take a habit like flossing your teeth.

Now I know many of you floss every day. Some of you do it because you love it. Some of you do it because you know its good for you. Some of you do it because someone told you to. Maybe it was your dentist, but you probably floss every day don’t you? Well, obviously I know some of you don’t floss every day. I happen to floss two or three times a day because of the way my teeth are designed, and the way they’re really close together and I have to. Otherwise, it’s just not pretty. So I floss every day and it’s become a habit and it’s become something I do over and over and over. Don’t even think about it.

Now, what are you doing day in and day out to serve your growth for your business? Serve your growth as a leader. Those habits define you every time you do them, and you probably don’t even think about them now they’ve probably become just a natural part of who you are, but habits, when you’re trying to change habits, are really difficult. A lot of studies show that it takes 21 days. Some more recent studies show it’s 63 days. Doesn’t matter how long it is, you’ve got to be intentional about your habits. I haven’t even introduced myself.

My name is Gene Hammett, I help visionary leaders become the leaders they really wanna be, I really help them grow their company in a way that makes sense for them through leadership and culture that’s intentional. Now, that’s a lead into what I’m just talking about, your habits. If you’re intentional about what you want to do, who you want to be, you can create habits to support that, and in fact, I would actually say that habits are just as important as the goals you may be setting this time of year.

I’ve been looking at where I’m taking my business I’ve been looking back and I’ve been creating content around that, you have some new videos coming out from me soon around this. But, very specifically, these ones about habits. So, if you know the habits to go after a goal, you can be intentional. Behind me is the tool I was mentioning earlier, its one of the things I really really love. This is a calendar, this is old school this is actually on my wall in my office. Right?

My office is right behind me if you see there’s the bookshelf that’s normally in my videos. There’s the light that goes with that. It’s the ring light. Um, this is the 2018 calendar, and so what I’m showing you up here, is I think you’re seeing January. So January is when I was very intentional about the habits in my life. This is my habit tracker if you will. But the “X” represents the workouts and also eating so you can see in January I did a really good job of staying on plan, to eating right and to work out. I had a really specific goal.

Now, those “X”‘s were really important to me now, the green triangle on the side was the activity I did to grow my business and so, if I did two hours during that day, I got a little triangle, and so I could see the progress. I can see the days I took off. I can see the days that I started skipping.

Now, the other blue triangle is actually my Brazilian Jiu-Jitsu, because that’s one of the things I do, um, consistently. I was pretty consistent here but I’m gonna be honest with ya, I’m gonna go down here and show you some of the months I wasn’t so consistent. A lot of my speaking gigs are on here so I was in Canada here, and I was in Vegas here. This is Canada, this is in Antwerp, um but I got less consistent with what I was doing in April. I got even less consistent in May. And then something happened over here in September.

I wanted to finish the year strong I added a new habit over here. On the 24 of August, I added meditation to my daily habits. And so you can see every day that I meditated what happened, and then I started working out more and more and you can see what’s going on here but this is the tracker I use. So what are yyou using to track your habits? What are you using to reinforce the goals that you’re going, to really remind yourself looking back how consistent were you?.

If you wanna create a habit, you’ve got to track it. And so if you like this tool then great. If you wanna use another tool, fantastic. Uh, I’m gonna show you I love this tool so much, I’m gonna pick up the one from 2017 cause I kept it, ill end up getting another one in a couple of days for 2019. But this calendar is something I love. And in fact, if you wanna get one cause I’ve had a lot of people ask me where I get these calendars, then you’re gonna go to neuyear.com but that’s a little bit hard because he spells it a little bit differently.

I reached out to Jesse Phillips and um he’s gonna make a special deal for you guys so if you go into the um genehammet.com/calendar and ill put the link on my website too so you can go find it, uh there’s a special deal in there so if you just go to uh get the calendar. I got the one where its laminate um so I can actually erase these off but I have different colored markers and I mark down the habits that are happening day in and day out.

So this video is about you improving your habits about changing your habits about you tracking them, being intentional to them so that you can have what you want you can be who you want. So it is about the activity but its also about the becoming of that leader that you want to be. You’ve gotta be willing to change who you are right now to be able to receive a bigger goal for 2019. So, that’s my take here. Again, that link is genehammett.com/calendar it’s very directly into the new year calendar which is a special wall calendar looks like this. And um, that’s my take today so if you wanna change your habits this is the tool that I use.

You can use it too just go to genehammett.com/calendar Alright, signing off here. Hopefully, you’ll change your habits, let me know what your changing and I’d love to play along with you. Talk to you soon. As always lead with courage and I’ll see you next time.

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