Habits are a powerful part of our life. Without habits, we likely couldn’t cope with the complexity of our lives, yet, not all of our habits serve us well.
As you grow as a leader, it is ideal that you think about your habits, so that you can replace bad habits with ones that will help you both professionally and personally. This exercise can help you to understand which behaviors are seriously hurting your career and life.
List your bad habits
Everyone has them, and you are no different, so think long and hard about those behaviors that tend to anger or offend people or that consistently cause you trouble. Write everything down (e.g., you frequently interrupt others or you tend to wait until the last minute to complete tasks.)
Think about how those habits hurt you
Write down specific examples of how your bad habits have kept you from reaching your goals, have caused conflict with others, or made you miss opportunities. For example, you were late to an important meeting and missed critical information.
List a more positive habit to replace each negative one
To break bad habits, you need to establish new, positive ones. So think about actions you can take to begin eliminating those bad habits that hold you back. For example, if you regularly interrupt people, and action would be to count to five when you think a person has finished speaking before you say anything.
It can take weeks or even months to develop new habits, and you will have to work hard to integrate them into your daily interactions with others. Changes don’t happen overnight, so stick to it.
As a leader the need for you to think about your habits is even greater than for everyone else. Why? Because your habits may impact others in subtle (or not-so-subtle) ways. Taking the time to do this mental exercise, then taking action, is a powerful way to grow and improve your performance.
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