Your Habits of Success

In the sweetness of friendship let there be laughter, and sharing of pleasures. For in the dew of little things the heart finds its morning and is refreshed. ~ Khalil Gibran

There is something special about the significance of "a new dawn, a new day." It's the end of a period of darkness, and revitalizing surrounded by light is just all that more appealing, don't you think? If I asked you to visualize the time of day when you felt most fresh, most positive, most self-assured, wouldn't it be morning vs. night time?

What can we do early in our day to set the scene for a very successful experience? Here are some habits of success you'd do well to have in your tool box, and don't feel as if only doing them in the morning is necessary. Any time will work.

Read things that inspire you. It might be a biography, an autobiography, a historical novel, a self-help book, a treatise on strategic thinking. You can choose whatever you think will work best as long as it inspires you to take one step further and higher. But whenever you choose, do it because you'll be well served by feeding yourself with powerful ideas. You might surprise yourself how you'll take off after reading one!

Exercise really does feel good first thing in the morning, but you are free to choose whichever time works best for you and for your schedule. The important habit of success here is to be consistent.

Send Out Notes. Generously handwrite notes to folks you know, yes, handwrite them, even in this day of email popularity. You will stay connected with them in a very personal way. Share something you remembered about childhood days. Tell them of a great resource you discovered that made you think of them. You spend the whole day at a computer. Handwritten notes is a deliberate, thoughtful way to communicate your caring.

Set Goals. In the musical South Pacific, the lyrics say "You've got to have a dream. If you don't have a dream, how you gonna make a dream come true?" Set five year goals, and then break it down into one year chunks. Then break those down into more manageable sized pieces. Read your goals daily to keep yourself on track. You will achieve more than someone who does not set goals, believe me!

Use a Planner to Set Up Your Day. The calendar in Outlook or on Google Docs is a great place to set up your daily plan. You can do it as you go along, or you can do it the night before. If you say "I want to get this, this, and this done tomorrow" and then you get it done, what a fabulous feeling that accomplishment is. It's conscious and deliberate, pro-active vs. re-active.

Meditate. Some folks call this praying. Some call it meditating. Some call it thinking. Some call it puzzling. What you call it isn't important; doing it, is! Allow yourself to sit in the quiet. Watch where your mind wants to go. If you're working to manifest something specific, think about that. It helps support the things you "do."

Make Time for Goals Work. If you did not devote a few moments every day to working on your goals, do you think you'd get to them sooner than if you did?

Think About Your Immediate Past. Review what just happened to you today or this week, and make sure that the lessons sent were the lessons learned. Here's the place to put new learning into focus.

You can do all of them every day, but you can pick one or two each week and work on them. Then, switch to something new next week to keep yourself fresh. You'll have so much more progress if you can incorporate these habits of success into your life.