7 Steps to Developing the Habits of Success

Don’t make exceptions to your new habit pattern during the formative stages. Don’t make excuses or rationalizations. Don’t let yourself off the hook. If you resolve to get up at 6 a.m. each day, discipline yourself to get up at 6 a.m. every single day until it becomes automatic.

Inform people around you that you’re going to begin practicing a spe­cific behavior. It’s amazing how much more disciplined and determined you’ll become when you know others are watching you to see if you have the willpower to follow through on your resolution.

In your mind’s eye, see yourself performing the desired behavior. The more often you visualize yourself acting as if you already had the new habit, the more rapidly this new behavior will be accepted by your sub­conscious mind and become automatic.

Repeat the affirmation over and over to yourself. This repetition dra­matically increases the speed at which you develop the new habit. For example, you can say something like, “I get up and get going immedi­ately at six each morning!” Repeat these words right before you fall asleep. Most mornings you’ll automatically wake up minutes before the alarm clock goes off, and soon you’ll need no alarm clock at all.

Keep practicing the new behavior until it’s so automatic and easy that you actually feel uncomfortable when you don’t do it.

Most important, give yourself a treat of some kind for practicing the new behavior. Each time you reward yourself, you reaffirm and rein­force the behavior. Soon you begin to associate, at an unconscious level, the pleasure of the reward with the behavior. You set up your own force field of positive consequences that you unconsciously look forward to as the result of engaging in the behavior you have decided upon.