Every desire to permanently change yourself is filled with at least a little pressure and self-doubt. The problem is that doubt kills more dreams than failure ever will. I have this personal mantra that I want to share with you, and it's that I need to fail way more times than I get to try.
“Entrepreneurs are simply those who understand that there is little difference between obstacle and opportunity and are able to turn both to their advantage.” Victor Kiam
What does that mean? Don’t you have to first try to fail, well think of the first time you did anything (chess, tennis, blogging, sales pitches, etc) the first few attempts only provide information on what the process might be like. You haven’t even begun to attempt to build your OWN process in order to succeed. Once you understand the game then you can start to develop your own strategy to try and keep trying until you get that opportunity to show off your hard work. 30 Day Challenges have always been an excellent way to do experiments in my personal life and test if something works as an individual or not. I am already an early riser, but what this challenge provided for me was another hour of self. I finally had some time to think about next year’s goal as a business and family and where I would like to see my career in five years. To be honest I hadn’t had the time to really flesh out my dreams because everyday feels like a moving train. This hour provided me mental development I didn’t even know I needed.
We all want to get better at some skill (writing, reading, exotic carpentry, etc). We all have something we want to improve, but it likely never gets improved because we swing for the fences. Imagine what you could accomplish if you just spent one extra hour per day enhancing a skill. That’s cutting one extra hour of playing video games, or staying up an extra hour in the evening. For me it was waking up an hour early for the challenge and watching TV for one less hour. On a small scale, one hour doesn’t seem like much. However, when you add up that extra hour every day over time, it turns into something huge.
Earl Nightingale once said that spending one extra hour per day enhancing a specific skill over five years will make you an expert in your industry. When you put it that way, one extra hour suddenly seems huge.It’s both the good and bad habits done every day that impact your life in the long-run. Eating junk food every day adds up to extra pounds over time. Smoking a cigarette each day leads to detrimental effects on your health. The things you do each day affect your entire life. In a previous post I shared there are four main areas of development: physical, mental, spiritual, and social. Doing something new for 30 days is usually enough to see the changes in your body, blood, moods, emotional health, social life, financial statement or whichever life metric you want to improve.
Once again here are the behaviors you can self-improve on to building better habits:
Beginnings are always the hardest. After performing a 30 Day Challenge, it’s much easier to persist, towards 100 days, 365 days and then for however long you want to do something new. Be conscious of the decisions you’re making. Be sure to spend all of your time wisely. Push yourself to spend more time on the things you love to do. Choose your next 30 day challenge and start NOW! In no time, your life will be changing in major ways.
Thank you for reading,
Joe
