Welcome to reThink Your Perspective’s blog. Helping you to unlock your potential, empower your mindset, create productive habits, and boost your motivation. Today’s instalment looks at the topic of habits and changing habits, as discussed in the 6 minutes to success program from the Proctor Gallagher Institute.
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Snippets From 6 Minutes to Success – Changing Habits
On the blog recently, I have been doing a sequence of content taken directly from the Proctor Gallagher Institute’s 6 Minutes To Success program. Today’s post concerns the topic of habits and changing habits.
“A habit is an idea that has been planted in the garden of your subconscious mind. And then repetitively fed for a sufficient period of time that you act on it without giving any thought to it.”
Bob Proctor
These next three lessons will help you to understand habits in greater depth. Where they come from, how they are formed, how they affect our everyday lives and how you can upgrade habits that no longer serve you.
Just 6 minutes to a successful life. Click to find out more.
Enjoy!
The following sections are transcribed from the actual 6-minute lessons given by Bob Proctor & Sandy Gallagher.
6 Minutes to Success #25 – Habits
Fancy watching the highlights? Watch this quick reel!
“Welcome back to Six Minutes, and today’s idea is worth its weight in gold without question.
Habits.
Good habits will give you results that stick. Bad habits will destroy everything. This is Bob Proctor, and I’m going to be one of the first to admit… I have some bad habits.
That’s right! All my habits are not great, so if you’ve got some bad habits, don’t feel bad. So does your next-door neighbour. So does your mentor, your coach. Your mother and father, if they’re alive, so does everyone! And the trick of life is to replace a bad habit with a good habit.
I used to hang around bars all the time, and one day I went in, I picked up a glass and I looked around and I thought, “they’re all bums in here”. And then it dawned on me, “I’m always here…” I learned something! I put the glass down and I said “I’m never coming back here again, and I’m never going to drink again”. And I never did!
That was a long time ago. But you know what I did? I went from spending all my money in the bar to the racetrack and I started bet it all on horses. So, I went from making somebody with a bar get wealthy, and then I started to feed the horses. And one day I woke up and I learnt something…
If you don’t consciously, deliberately replace a bad habit with a good habit, you will automatically create another bad habit.
Now what is a habit?
“A habit is an idea that has been planted in the garden of your subconscious mind. And then repetitively fed for a sufficient period of time that you act on it without giving any thought to it.”
I’ll give you an example. I want you to right now mentally, imagine you’re pulling on your underwear in the morning. What foot do you put in first? I put my right foot in. If I tried to put my left foot in my underwear first, I’d stagger and I’d fall over. Now you may say, what’s this got to do with it? It’s got everything to do with it.
Why do I put my right foot? You may put your left, certainly a lot of people do. Well, when I was just a little gaffer, didn’t have a clue of how to put underwear on, my mother or my grandmother, my father, or somebody came along and had the underwear ready (and said) “put your foot in here, your other foot!” What did they do? They had the underwear prepared as if they were going to put it on. And so, pretty soon, I was doing it like they were doing it. They, through repetition, planted the idea in my hand, in my mind.
Well now think of this, you don’t just form habits of how to get dressed…
You form habits to do everything that you do.
And some of them are not that productive.
Any idea that you keep dwelling on and impressing upon your subconscious mind becomes fixed in the subconscious mind. A habit is nothing but an idea that’s fixed in the subconscious mind that you act on without giving any conscious thought.
Many years ago I went in to train Prudential Insurance Company of America, their agents. I ended up training all of their agents and I only got them to do two things. This is in the early 70s. I got them to form the habit of being in front of a prospect before 9:00 AM and ask everybody they talked to to purchase $100,000 worth of insurance. I said you don’t have to sell them, just give them the opportunity to say no.
Do you know, the sales in that company went up by hundreds of millions of dollars. I had a retired VP tell me he thought it was a billion. Just changing two habits.
What habit do you want to change?
I’m forever checking out habits I’ve got. I’m in the habit right now of changing my diet. And you know something? I’ve been doing it for going on three weeks. It’s getting easier, but it’s still not that easy. I’d still like to reach over and eat some of that when nobody’s looking. Doesn’t work. I’m looking! What habit are you going to form, and you shouldn’t try and form more than two at once, it’ll become too big, too heavy and you won’t form any.
Make up your mind, your gonna do it everyday everyday, everyday. Until you don’t have to think about it and you’ll automatically do it. I guarantee you this idea will change your life.
Think about it all day because that’s definitely an idea that will give you results that will stick.
This is Bob Proctor.”
Changing Habits – 6 Minutes to Success #107 – Habit
See this lesson as a short reel.
“Hello, this is Sandy Gallagher, CEO of the Proctor Gallagher Institute with another 6 minutes to success lesson and today we’re going to talk about habits.
And right at the beginning, I want you to make up your mind that you’re going to form the habit of watching your 6-minute video every day.
Do it at the same time every single day.
Many successful people discover the best time to do this is when you first get up in the morning, straight from bed, right into 6 minutes. You know, what I do is I actually do it right in bed. I don’t even move. I just get my iPad and I listen to it and watch it. That’s what you should do.
Now for today’s exercise, you’re going to have to find a bad habit or two. You probably got a few, I know I do! And I keep wanting to knock off one or two at a time.
I want you to do the same.
I want you to think of one habit, something you do automatically, don’t give any thought to it. And it’s giving you results that you don’t want. Okay. And then I want you to make up your mind you’re going to replace it with something essentially the opposite.
And don’t just try to break a habit, because nature abhors a vacuum, it’s gotta replace it with something. So if you’re going to break a habit, create a new one.
Consciously and deliberately replace it with a good habit or you’re likely going to replace it with another bad one.
So take the next five minutes and think what is something I do habitually that I want to change and then decide that you’re gonna replace it and what you’re going to replace it with.
Write this on a card and review it repeatedly throughout the day. Always saying I’m changing this into a habit.
It’s gonna change your life.
This is Sandy Gallagher and thank you.”
Changing Habits – 6 Minutes to Success #280 – One Habit
See this content as a quick reel!
“Hello there and welcome back to 6 minutes.
Today I want to share with you one habit that has really made a big difference in my life.
Now, I’ve got a lot of good habits, because I learned a long time ago that you’ve gotta turn activities into habits if you’re going to win. In fact, Albert E. N. Gray, said,
“The common denominator of success, is in forming the habit of doing things failures don’t like to do”.
A young guy asked him one time, “Mr Grey, why do successful people like doing these things?” He answered, he said “they don’t, that’s why they turned them into habits.”
Think about that for a moment.
Successful people do things they don’t particularly like. But it’s a habit. No conscious thought given to it. They just automatically do it, and they automatically do them well.
So the question I’m often asked is ‘what’s one habit that you value above others?’ Well, you know, I was having breakfast with Earl Nightingale one morning in downtown Chicago. Now Earl was a very, very productive guy. He accomplished more in a short period of time than most anyone I’ve ever known. And he was the most listened to man in the history of the broadcasting industry at the time.
Earl was one of the 18 millionaires who was blown off the Arizona that lived in Pearl Harbour at the beginning of the Second World War. He was a very interesting guy and a prolific writer. And reader, I mean, he’d read all the time. He was a phenomenal writer, though, and I believe he was a genius. And you know something? I never saw him rushing anywhere. He was never in a hurry. There was hardly ever anything on his desk.
At any rate, we were having breakfast one day and I said to Earl, “how did you learn to master time management?” He said, “what are you talking about? I’ve never mastered time management. Nobody masters time management.” He said, “I manage activities. I have a piece of paper like this (and he took it out) in my pocket, that I write down what I’m going to do tomorrow. Goal achieving activities. And then I get up and I do it.” I said, “that’s it?” He said, “that’s it”.
Is That Really It? Changing Habits
So I asked, “would you consider that to be the reason for all your success you are enjoying?” He said,
“Absolutely! Decide what you’re going to do tomorrow. Write it on a piece of paper. And don’t get distracted. Do it. Just do it. Now, if there’s something that couldn’t get done that particular day, add it to your list and you’ll do it tomorrow. Don’t put it off. I never try and manage my time. Time cannot be managed. Manage activities.”
That’s what Earl taught me a long time ago. Now that’s a great habit. I manage my activities.
I want you to spend four- or five-minutes thinking about that right now. Sit down and write out the things you’re going to do tomorrow. The goal achieving activities.
Now, I’ve been carrying this with me for a long, long time. You see, I had Gina, my personal assistant, have this made-up. It’s just a sheet. It’s folded, an 8 ½ by 11 sheet folded by three. And on one side it has a place to write down six things, and then on the other side it has the last chapter from As A Man Thinketh, on Serenity. I read that frequently because it’s on my daily sheet.
“Calmness of mind is one of the beautiful jewels of wisdom. It’s a result of long and patient effort and self-control.”
James Allen
You see, on my last birthday I was 80 years old, but that hasn’t slowed me down. You see I think the trick is to calm down and speed up.
That’s what that last chapter will do for you.
The six minutes. It’ll get a lot done.
This is Bob Proctor.”
Changing Habits – Hope You Found This Helpful!
These lessons are designed to be short sharp snippets to encourage you to think more critically about you and your life. Habits, changing habits and mastering your activities are one of the pillars of my coaching practice, and the focus of my Time Mastery Course. Habits underpin all our potential success and failures in our lives, and 95% of them are done subconsciously.
They are the cause of the success and failure in our lives, so creating productive habits that serve us is a good exercise to undertake!
The simple habit discussed in the third lesson is what I based my Get Done List approach on. Rather than the traditional to do list, it focuses your attention on the things of biggest importance to get done that day. The income generating things. By focusing on them first, you become so much more productive! By changing habits you make massive changes to your levels of success.
What Do You Think?
If any of this resonates with you then please share your thoughts below. If you want to discuss it further then get in touch today. Either here or through any of my social medias or schedule a call to discuss it with me directly. To see the details for the 6 Minutes To Success Program, click here.
I look forward to speaking with you soon.
To your success,
Jaiye
