Here we are at the beginning of another month, ready to start a new; September is the start of the Fall season and looking to the end of the year. Football season is once again (yeah!) and kids are back to school, cooler weather will come in, plus the holidays are all activities to look forward to.

If you haven’t yet, this is a great time to make new goals and, then, new habits that will lead you to reach them. You must make the decision to really want the change and are ready to commit to daily success habits.

Once you make the commitment, you must now develop the mindset and daily rituals that will lead to new, positive habits; consistency bring mastery..

The following steps will help ensure successful habit formations:

Plan

Success habits don’t just happen by accident. They are created by design. Creating a plan will increase the chances of you successfully creating a new habit. Think of the plan like a roadmap: include your starting point, the final goal and all the steps along the way. Don’t forget to note down potential stumbling blocks and how you will overcome them.

Many people add a vision board in their planning. This is a great way to see what your goal looks like and when placed somewhere that you will see it regularly can reinforce the goal you want to achieve. A great exercise is to use Everest Goals, which means that you start with the outcome already achieved, and work backwards  – it’s a great way to identify all the steps needed to take.

Focus

You must be committed to your goal of creating a new habit. If you are not committed, then the chances of succeeding in attaining it reduce dramatically. It is important to believe that you will create your new habit and to be able to see yourself doing it.

Write down a positive statement that affirms you have created your new habit.

For example, if you want to create the success habit of waking early – which helps with focus and performance – then you could write, ‘I wake at 5.00 am every day refreshed and ready to start my day. I use my extra time to run for 20 minutes and to eat a healthy breakfast. I spend 30 minutes reading a motivational book because I know that it helps me improve my knowledge and will inspire me. Before I start my work I make sure that I plan my day and make sure that I know which tasks are important for helping me to achieve my goal.’

Having an accountability partner, such as a coach, is another sure way to hold true to set goals to make them happen.

Know Yourself

Self-knowledge is crucial to creating new habits, as well as eliminating old ones.

You need to understand your strengths and weaknesses. It is important to know where you are right now, where you want to be and what needs to change. Also, knowing when you are most productive will allow you to take advantage of those times to work on any goal you are focused on.

By knowing yourself you can create a growth mind-set. This ensures that you understand that action is important as by taking action you create change which leads to success.

Habits these days can take anywhere from 60 days to a year to be enveloped – the hard part is unlearning old behaviors; consistency of new ones leads to mastery. Acknowledging the wins increases motivation to keep going. The trick is to start; as the saying goes, ‘one foot in front of the other…’

If you’re needing help with setting new goals and the mindset needed, reach out to get started today.