My Own Daily Success Habits – Episode 055

Confession time: I’m super nosy.

I love to see what other people do with their days and weeks, especially those who are closer to the dream life I have for myself.

And though I strongly believe that you shouldn’t do something just because others are, I know the value of seeing what others are doing as a way to be inspired, to figure out how that might look for you, and how you could integrate it into your life.

So in this episode, I’m pulling back the curtain and letting you in on the success habits that I have cultivated and the ones that I’m currently working on adding to my life.

Sound good? Let’s jump in!

Show Links:

Show Takeaways:

Listen in to hear the habits I have established that are currently in what I call, “maintenance zone”.
Discover the habits that I want to cultivate this year, those habits that are in the “growth zone”.
Learn the action step that you can take today to help you move forward in your current and future habits today.

Rather skim before you listen? ⬇️

I am super nosy. I love to see what other people do with their days & weeks, especially those who are closer to the dream life I have for myself. And though I strongly believe that you shouldn’t do something just because others are, I know the value of seeing what others do as a way to be inspired to figure out how that can show up for you. So, in this episode, I pulling back the curtain and letting you in on the success habits that I have cultivated and the new ones I’m working on adding. Ready? Let’s dive in.

So, I have decided to begin pulling back the curtain and being totally transparent with different aspects of my business in what I am calling Behind The Scenes episodes of this podcast. While I’ve always shared openly about my own business and haven’t hidden anything, I know the value of intentionally taking a look at lessons as I am learning them so you learn them as well. And this is one of those episodes.

Why Daily Success Habits Matter

You are what you do every day. The things that are your habits are creating the results you are currently seeing in your life.

If you want to change your life & your business, change your habits.

I talked about choosing habits to cultivate in episode 054 but in this episode I really wanted to share with you what this has looked like for me, having been on a personal growth journey for several years now and growing my own business for over 3 years. I call these habits “success habits” because I feel that they are the foundation upon which I will be successful in reaching my goals.

Quick note on that: when I am talking about success, I am talking about my definition of success. I highly recommend that you do the same & define success for yourself as you are considering what your success habits will be. Nothing in here is a should or must or anything like that. These are what I do, and I highly recommend that you find habits that work for you.

Also, before I dive into these habits, I want to give you some insight into how I am presenting these. The first 6 are habits that I feel like are set or are in what I call the maintenance zone, meaning they run basically on autopilot at this point and just need small tweaks or changes to maintain them. They don’t take up a lot of energy or cognitive bandwidth, or call for lots of self-discipline. The next 5 are new habits I’ve been cultivating or what I call as being in the growth zone. The growth zone is my current focus and where most of my energy, bandwidth, time, and sometimes money are currently going. These are the habits that are requiring the most from me right now.

Okay, ready to dive in?

Set Habits or Habits in the Maintenance Zone:

Drinking water – This has been an ongoing ebb & flow but I feel like i’ve got this one down now. I used to drink soda, juice, anything but water growing up (or milk, milk is gross). I hadn’t developed that habit of reaching for water when I was thirsty for the first 26 or so years of my life. So since then I’ve been really conscious about drinking more water and reaching for water. This has looked lots of different ways over the past 8 years, but right now, I keep a water bottle with me at all times— it’s on my desk because I have to be drinking something while working—, and I have refillable glass water bottles filled and ready to go in the fridge. I try to drink 16-24 oz of water first thing and aim for 128oz, a full gallon of water, each day. If I start to get bored with regular water, I’ll switch things up with sparkling water or a bit of unsweetened flavoring, but for the most part, its just water at this point. When we go out to eat, I only order water (and if we are having dinner, sometimes a glass of wine) but always water. This is a success habit because I know that if I am not hydrated, everything else suffers. I feel like I’m in a fog, lethargic, and can’t properly focus. I want to be able to do all the things and be healthy, so this is a total flex success habit.

Gratitude Practice & Affirmations – I have had some form of this practice since October of 2017. It started with ten tiny things I was grateful for & 10 goals or dreams of mine. I’d write that every day. It now looks like 5 tiny gratitudes each morning (and throughout the day, I’m noticing things that I’m grateful for “that light stayed green, so grateful we haven’t gotten Covid, grateful to have access to healthcare to be able to get my tooth fixed – I had a crown break off”) and 5 affirmations. These basically look like goals I have as if they’ve already happened: “I’m a successful published author. I make $20,000 in my business every month. I have a lovely, competent personal assistant.” This is important to keep my goals top of mind and reminding myself what I’m working for from a place of gratitude & abundance.

Planning my day with coffee – Planning my day gives me so much joy & pairing my morning cup of coffee with it makes this one of my favorite parts of my day. It is literally the first thing I do every morning once I am up and about. I make myself a cup of coffee in my favorite Jonas Brothers mug and sit down with my planner to map out my day. This is a success habit because it begins my day with indulgence & intention. You know that whole start as you mean to go on saying. If I start from a place of feeling like a queen & looking at the next 12 hours or so with how can I make the most of it, I have a much better, more aligned day than if I just try to stumble my way through it.

Using a timer while I work – The number one comment I get when I ask someone why they aren’t utilizing their time wisely is that they don’t know how long things take. And I find that if I give myself 3 hours to do something, it will either take all three hours or even longer. So, I use a timer when I work. Sometimes, it’s just to measure where my time is going and how long something actually does take, and sometimes I use it to motivate myself to focus free of distractions using the Pomodoro technique. And this is a success habit for two reasons: 1) when you know how long something takes, you can plan better for realistic expectations. and 2) you get more done in the time you have available which means better results in the same or less time.

Plugging up electronics before bed – I cannot stand when I go to do something and I can’t because my phone or my iPad or my headphones aren’t charged. So, before I go to bed each night, I plug everything up. So in the morning it is fully charged. Seems simple, but having everything ready for you, eliminates the potential roadblocks and obstacles of not having enough battery when you are feeling inspired or have the time to knock out that post. Success habit: make sure your tools are ready for you & supporting you.

Listening to audio books in the car – Life-long learning is a huge value of mine. And I’ve had a book goal the past several years on top of everything else I’ve been doing. I want to spark new creative ideas and give myself the benefit of alternative perspectives, so reading regularly is important to me. And the easiest way for me to get more reading time, was to habit stack on my commute. Any time I’d leave the house to go anywhere by myself (this doesn’t work if my daughter is in the car), instead of turning on the radio or a playlist, I turn on Audible. This has assisted in my reading 25 books in 2019, 32 books in 2020, and 50 books in 2022.

New Habits or Habits in the Growth Zone:

Daily Movement – either relatively sedentary or push too hard to fast & give up. It has to look a certain way. I defined what I wanted the habit to do for me (give me the energy I wanted to do the things & maintain my health so I could be around for a really long time) and then determined what the habit needed to look like from that.

Puzzle &/or Creative time – this came from spending evenings in front of the tv or my phone screen and feeling like I was wasting hours. This is an example of an addition habit change. Because rather than trying to say, I’m not going to enjoy my tv show and instead just work on a puzzle or paint or whatever creative endeavor, I made it a habit stack. When I want to watch tv in the evening, I’ll work on my puzzle while I do that. I’ve made it easy by having a puzzle/project table in the middle of our living space, so it’s convenient.

Journaling – Every time I start a new program or mindset book, I feel like I start journaling again. Because self-awareness is key to basically any type of growth. But journaling without prompts doesn’t work for me, so I have 6 prompts that I answer every morning right now as a way to check in and ground myself, uncover my frustrations, & give myself the best chance to show up as the best version of myself each & every day.

Resetting my office & home before I go to sleep – I like a clean house. I like a tidy desk. But when i get into my creative flow and ideas are just coming, my desk gets to be quite a collection of notebooks, post-it notes, pens, and empty drink bottles. Likewise, my family lives in our home so it gets messy. I have a husband, a 5yo daughter, a dog and two cats. There are always dishes, toys, shoes, laundry, blankets, etc. out of place. By taking 5 minutes when I finish work each day to reset my desk, and 10-15 minutes at the end of the evening to reset the rest of the house, I wake up with my environment actually supporting me feeling how I wan to feel every day (organized & energized) rather than overwhelmed and irritated. Want more about how your physical environment affects your ability to reach your goals. Check out episode 053: Your Environment’s Effect on Achieving Your Goals

Consistent skin care – So on the surface, consistent skin care may look like a pretty vain habit to consider with this but this goes more than skin deep. Yes, that was a bad pun. Yes, I want to look youthful looking skin because I don’t want to look older than I actually am. A strong consideration since I have naturally grey hair— not I have some grey hairs, but my hair color overall is silvery grey. But it’s more than that too. I show up as a coach online on Zoom, on Instagram, on videos, and out in the real world too. And what I’ve found is that when I look good, I feel confident and like a total boss. So, I often wear makeup to look good (in my own opinion) and sometimes that can wreak havoc on my skin. And there are somedays where I don’t want to wear makeup and still want to look good. By prioritizing my skin care routine, I am creating a habit of taking care of myself and creating a way for me to show up more confidently. I’ve totally been the person that buys one skin care promise after another, shoving it to the back of the drawer after two weeks of inconsistent use, so this habit that I am cultivating is about flexing that consistency muscle and having radiant skin too.

Now, I hope that my talking about my success habits has sparked something for you. If you are still unsure about what habits to choose next, go give episode 054 a listen. If you are excited and ready to start cultivating a new success habit, but not sure how to go about that, go check out episode 003.

Action Step:

I always like to end each episode with an action step that you can take right now to help you move forward and begin to implement immediately. Here is your action step for this episode: List out what your current habits are— all of them. For each one, determine if it’s a positive habit (pushes you closer to your goals) or a negative one (makes it harder to each your goals). For every negative one, determine what a positive replacement or addition might be for that habit.

MENU

Categories

work with me

podcast episodes

top downloaded