9 Steps To Build Successful Habits That Lasts For Life-Time

Our habits shape our mindset and our life. Though we admit, developing successful habits isn’t always easy.

Depending on whether they are healthy habits or bad habits, habits determine if we’re going to be happy or unhappy. Healthy or unhealthy. Tired or well-rested. Strong or weak. The power of habits is far-reaching.

Habits shape our attitudes, actions, and decision-making abilities. And they affect every aspect of our lives.

But before we can build good habits, we need to understand what habits are and how they’re formed. We also need to know what mistakes we should avoid in the process.

Let’s take a look at the art of building successful habits, including the science behind them and how you can set yourself up to successfully form new, better ones today.

#1. 90% of Our Behavior is Habitual.

Psychologists tell us that up to 90% of our behavior is habitual. Ninety percent! From the time you get up in the morning until the time you retire at night, there are hundreds of things you do the same way every day.

These include the way you shower, dress, eat breakfast, read the newspaper, brush your teeth, drive to work, organize your desk, shop at the supermarket, and clean your house.

Over the years, you have developed a set of firmly entrenched habits that determine how well every area of your life works, from your job and your income to your health and your relationships.

The good news is that habits help free up your mind while your body is on automatic.

This allows you to plan your day while you are in the shower and talk to your fellow passengers while you are driving your car.

The bad news is that you can become locked into unconscious self-defeating behavior patterns that inhibit your growth and limit your success. 

Whatever habits you currently have established are producing your current level of results.

More than likely, if you want to create higher levels of success, you are going to need to drop some of your habits (not returning phone calls, staying up too late watching television, making sarcastic comments, eating fast food every day, smoking, being late for appointments, spending more than you earn)

And replace them with more productive and successful habits (returning phone calls within 24 hours, getting 8 hours of sleep each day, reading for an hour a day, exercising four times a week, eating healthy food, being on time, and saving 10% of your income).

#2. Good Habits or Bad Always Deliver Results.

Your habits determine your outcomes. Successful people don’t just drift to the top. Getting there requires focused action, personal discipline, and lots of energy every day to make things happen. 

The habits you develop from this day forward will ultimately determine how your future unfolds.

One of the problems for people with poor habits is that the results of their bad habits usually don’t show up until much later in life.

When you develop a chronic bad habit, life will eventually give you consequences. You may not like the consequences, but life will still deliver them.

The fact is, if you keep on doing things a certain way, you will always get a predictable result.

Negative habits breed negative consequences. Positive habits create positivity in life along with favorable consequences.

#3. Take Action to Develop Successful Habits Now.

There are two action steps for changing your habits:

The first step is to make a list of all the bad habits that keep you unproductive or that might negatively impact your future. 

Ask others to help you objectively identify what they believe are your limiting habits. Look for patterns.

Also review the list of the most common unsuccessful habits below:

• Procrastinating.
• Paying bills at the last minute.
• Not delivering on promised documents and services in a timely way.
• Letting receivables get overdue.
• Arriving late for meetings and appointments.
• Forgetting someone’s name within seconds of being introduced.
• Talking over others’ comments, instead of listening.
• Answering the telephone during family time or spouse time.
• Handling the mail more than once.
• Working late.
• Choosing work over time with your children.
• Having fast-food meals more than 2 days a week

#4. Identify Negative Habits And Replace Them With Positive Habits.

Once you have identified your negative habits, the second step is to choose a better, more productive success habits and develop systems that will help support them.

For example, if your goal is to get to the gym every morning, one system you might put in place is to go to bed 1 hour earlier and set your alarm ahead.

If you’re in sales, you might develop a checklist of activities so that all prospects receive the same series of communications.

Maybe you want to get in the habit of completing your work by close of business Friday, so you’re free to spend weekends with your spouse and children.

That’s an excellent habit, but what specifically will you do to adopt that new habit? What activities will you engage in?

How will you stay motivated?

Will you develop a checklist of what must be accomplished by Friday afternoon to keep you on track?

Will you spend less time chatting with coworkers at the water cooler?

E-mail people their promised documents as you are talking on the phone with them?

Take shorter lunches?

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#5. What Could You Achieve if You Took on Four New Successful Habits a Year?

If you use these strategies to develop just four new successful habits a year, 5 years from now you’ll have 20 new good habits that could bring you all the money you want, the wonderful loving relationships you desire, a healthier, more energized body, plus all sorts of new opportunities. 

Start by listing four new habits you would like to establish in the next year.

Work on one new habit every quarter. If you work diligently on building one new habit every 13 weeks, you won’t overwhelm yourself with an unrealistic list of New Year’s resolutions.

And research now shows that if you repeat a behavior for 13 weeks—whether it is meditating for 20 minutes a day, flossing your teeth, reviewing your goals, or writing thank-you letters to your clients—it will be yours for life.

By systematically adding one behavior at a time, you can dramatically improve your overall lifestyle.

Here are a couple of hints for making sure you follow through on your commitment to your new habit. Put up signs to remind you to follow through on the new behavior.

When I learned that even a little dehydration can decrease your mental acuity by as much as 30%, I decided to develop the habit that all of the health practitioners had been advising—drink ten 8-ounce glasses of water a day.

I put signs that said “Drink water!” on my phone, my office door, my bathroom mirror, and my kitchen refrigerator. I also had my secretary remind me every hour.

Another powerful technique is to partner up with someone, keep score, and hold each other accountable.

Check in with each other at least once a week to make sure you are staying on track.

Perhaps the most powerful way to stay on track is to follow the “no exceptions rule,” which is explained in the next point below.

#6. The “No-Exceptions Rule” To Build Successful Habits.

Successful people adhere to the “no exceptions rule” when it comes to their daily disciplines. Once you make a 100% commitment to something, there are no exceptions. It’s a done deal. Nonnegotiable. Case closed! 

Over and out. If I make a 100% commitment to monogamy, that is it. I never have to think about it again.

There are no exceptions no matter what the circumstances.

It ends the discussion, closes that door, permits no other possibility.

I don’t have to wrestle with that decision every day. It’s already been made. The die has been cast.

All the bridges are burned. It makes life easier and simpler and keeps me on focus.

It frees up tons of energy that would otherwise be spent internally debating the topic over and over and over, because all the energy I expend on internal conflict is unavailable to use for creating outer achievement.

If you make the 100% commitment to exercise every day for 30 minutes, no matter what, then it is settled. You simply just do it.

It doesn’t matter if you are traveling, if you have a 7:00 AM television interview, if it’s raining outside, if you went to bed late last night, if your schedule is full, or if you simply don’t feel like it. You just do it anyway. It’s like brushing your teeth before you go to bed. You always do it, no matter what.

If you find yourself in bed and you have forgotten, you get out of bed and brush them. It doesn’t matter how tired you are or how late it is. You just do it.

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#7. Always Fulfil Your Commitment.

One of my highest priorities is health and fitness. At 40 years old, I takes supplements, eat healthy foods, and—oh yes I allow myself a bowl of ice cream once every month. 

Once on my birthday, my closest friends, and family members came to visit me.

Dessert was the standard birthday cake and ice cream. Only one problem, though—I already had ice cream 2 days back.

To convince me to eat ice cream on special occasion of my birthday, all my family members and friends started convincing me.

But even with all of that loving persuasion, I stood firm on my commitment and declined the ice cream. 

I knew if I broke my commitment this one time, it would be that much easier to break it the next time I was offered ice cream.

It would be easier to rationalize, justify, and explain away my commitment.

I knew that a 100% commitment is actually easier to keep, and I was unwilling to undermine my 3 years of success for other people’s approval.

They all learned a lot about true self-discipline and building successful habits that day.

#8. No Matter What.

Dr. Wayne Dyer, internationally renowned motivational speaker and host of the PBS show The Power of Intention, is also highly committed to his health and fitness. 

I learned this art of keeping commitments to build good habits by reading his articles.

For 22 years, Wayne ran every day for a minimum of 8 miles—every day without fail!

Wayne has been known to run up and down hotel stairwells and hallways during freezing weather in New York—and even up and down airplane aisles during international flights.

Whether your discipline is to read for an hour, practice the piano 5 days a week, make two sales calls every day, learn a new language, practice typing, hit 200 golf balls, do 50 sit-ups, run 6 miles, meditate, pray, read the Bible, spend 60 quality minutes with your kids—or whatever else you need to do to achieve your goals—commit 100% to those daily disciplines that will get you there.

#9. One Final Reason 100% is So Important.

This powerful 100% commitment also figures critically in other important areas—for instance, the workplace.

Consider what a commitment to just 99.9% quality would mean in the following work situations. It would mean

• One hour of unsafe drinking water every month.
• Two unsafe landings at O’Hare International Airport each day.
• 16,000 lost pieces of mail per hour.
• 20,000 incorrectly filled drug prescriptions every year.
• 500 incorrect surgical operations performed each week.
• 50 newborn babies dropped at birth by doctors every day.
• 22,000 checks deducted from the wrong account each hour.
• Your heart failing to beat 32,000 times each year!

Can you see why 100% is such an important percentage to build successful habits?

Just think how much better your life and the whole world would work if you were committed to 100% excellence in everything you do.