We often think of success as the result of a massive achievement, truth is the success has come about through the myriad of smaller habits we have formed to get us there in the first place
Humans are creatures of habit, we thrive on routine. Studies have shown that 45% of what we do is driven by habits. It seems that having engrained positive habits are one of the keys to achieving success.
Recently I’ve been having more and more conversations with those I coach talking about habits vs motivation. What’s more important out of the two? It’s a really interesting conversation. I think you need a motivator to start, for an endurance athlete that’s probably going to be an event. Very quickly though I believe you need to form positive habits to help drive success. There are plenty of examples that endurance athletes need to form to be successful. An obvious one is training. If you’re a triathlete you may go to swim squad at 5:30am every Monday, Wednesday and Friday as I did for countless years.
When we set ourselves big chunky goals we often get disheartened if we don’t see significant progress towards that goal. We become too focussed on the result and loose sight of what we need to execute during the process of getting there. This often knocks our confidence and limits our desire to maintain the behaviours (habits) required to thrive. What’s the solution? Breaking our goals down into smaller habits that can be achieved more easily. Here’s the kicker. When we achieve goals (big or small) dopamine, the feel good hormone, and adrenaline, the energy hormone are released. This ignites our desire to maintain those behaviours critical to success and the habits very quickly become part of our routine. Ultimately the sum of all these habits and mini goals achieved allow us to thrive and become successful.
To help drive your success focus on engraining the positive habits into your routine making up part of the process of achieving your end result. Once that’s done your success will take care of itself.
“We are what we repeatedly do. Excellence is not an act but a habit.” - Aristotle