Habit Wisdom

Top Success Habits: Resilience & Persistence

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habits of successful people

What makes very successful people different?  THE top success habits are resilience and persistence. Resilience is the mental ability to recover quickly from misfortune or discouragement.  Persistence means refusing to give up. To achieve success we  must harness the power of resilence and persistence.

Strategies for Becoming Resilient

Build a Support Network

Having a great support system helps give that bounce needed after experiencing failure. Try to build relationships with close family members and friends and be open to accepting help from people who listen during those trying times. Support can also be sought from faith-based organizations and other social groups where you’re active.

Look Into The Future

Yes, stressful events will happen and that’s not something you can change, but you need to develop a positive outlook and an understanding that this phase will pass. Look out for activities that improve your mood as you deal with these harsh challenges and try to do more of them.

Accept That Change Is Constant

Some things will just not go as planned, some plans will need to be modified and while experiencing these setbacks could be depressing, understanding that there’s only so little you can control could be relieving. When a goal becomes unattainable, adjusting to the next best scenario should be considered.

Small Wins Build Resilience

When you’ve recently failed at something, developing the confidence needed to try again should be the first line of action. One way to do that is by moving towards easily achievable goals. Ask yourself, “What’s the one realistic goal I know I can accomplish today?” Then go do it.

Take Action

You can’t wish stressful challenges away, developing a plan (even one that may eventually fail) to solve the problem is the best way to handle situations like this. Try finding out how people in similar situations handled the problem and look for strategies to apply in your case.

Care for Yourself

Take your mental health seriously, take some time to clear your head if necessary and get involved in some relaxing activities. Mediation, self-talk and deep breathing are some exercises that concentrate specifically on mental health. Training the mind to process setbacks by kick-starting recovery is an excellent form of natural healing.  People with persistence keep going; they never give up (They may “let go” of unhelpful approaches but they DON’T GIVE UP.) How do you build this important trait?

Developing Persistence

Identify Your Goals

You need to identify your goals so you can concentrate on achieving them. Try reducing your desires to a realistic number because persistence requires focus and you just can’t focus on too many things at the same time. Write down those goals, no matter how impossible they seem because those notes will keep you going even when you’re not at your best.

Discover Your Motivation

Why do you want to achieve those goals? The answer to that is your motivation and that’s another source of energy to keep you on course. If your motivation is something controversial, you may want to keep that to yourself. Not everyone likes the fact that there are people who start businesses to make as much money as they can.

Maintain A Positive Outlook

Persistence means pushing on even when there’s no clear sign of success. You need a positive mental attitude to keep you going even when you harbor doubt about the outcome of your goal. Build or join mastermind groups including people with positive vibes who can give unbiased judgments when you’re beginning to succumb to these negative thoughts.

Discipline and Persistence

There are many with talent but very few with discipline. Determination is key. How far are you ready to go and what sacrifices are you willing to make to achieve your goal? Any goal you’re trying to achieve will alter a thing or two about your normal schedule and it takes discipline to stay on this part for a future good.

Expect A Challenge

Too many people expect an easy path to their success and when things don’t go as planned they give up. Persistent people expect the hard way so when those challenges come, they’re mentally prepared for them. It’s probably going to take more time than you thought and this is something you should be ready for.

Learn From Successful People

Getting inspiration from those who’ve walked your path could be inspiring. Thomas Edison was known to have failed a lot of times before getting it right with his inventions. That’s a good example of how persistence can result in success. You can check for other examples of success stories even in your field that you can learn from. When you meet life’s challenges with resilience and persistence, you’re definitely coming out victorious so use the tips in this post to develop these two important traits.

Journaling Every Day

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Not Journaling Every Day? Try this.

Journaling is not a one-of-a-kind process or subject matter.  Some people journal about their travels, their relationships, and funny things their kids say. 

Others may ask themselves deeper questions to discover their own answers within.  Many have wanted to start journaling, but give up soon after they start, so it never becomes a habit.  They often feel like they don’t know what to say.  

A friend who has been journaling every day for many years, sat at a coffee shop one morning, writing in her journal. 

A high school student who worked there came over, pulled out a chair and sat down across from her.  “Are you journaling?” he asked.  Her reply was “Yes.”  He continued, “My therapist said I should journal, but I just couldn’t.  How do you do it?”  So she gave him tips on how to start and keep writing often.

She saw him two weeks later and as she walked into the coffee shop, he came up and gave her a big hug.  “I’ve been journaling every day for two weeks and I feel so good!  It wasn’t hard.”  

What can journaling every day do for you?

Journaling every day is a powerful habit that allows you to explore your thoughts and feelings and become aware of how to address them.  It can have you discover what is getting in your way in areas of your life, relationships, goals, job – and recognize healthy solutions.  

To move on from something that upset you, also takes a vulnerability to feel the discomfort or pain that you have attached to a problem.  People will often say to just move past the discomfort, yet doing so without getting in touch with the emotions of it, will have them come up to again to bite you later.  

Exploring the feelings and discomfort through journaling, allows you to let it go, so when you choose a positive version, it’s not sitting on top of the negative.  

Tips for journaling every day

Tip: Start small – Commit yourself to do it every day for a week and do one page per day, morning or evening.  You may want to do both after you start.  

As with any success in forming a new habit it takes time, and especially in the beginning of the process. Write in a place where you have few distractions.  After journaling awhile, you may find you can journal in the middle of a lot of noise.

 Writers get stopped most often because they have no idea what to say.  “It’s a beautiful day.  I fed the dog this morning,” and then they quit because they are at a loss for words.

Practice writing by saying whatever thought comes into your mind.  There is an endless supply.  Maybe it’s “I have no idea what to say next.“  This gets you into a stream of thoughts. You aren’t ‘thinking’ what to say as much as becoming a vessel for the thoughts to be expressed.  You will get into an effortless and energizing flow with your writing.

Write with pen and paper instead of typing.  A brain study showed that journaling every day by hand boosts brain activity and fine motor skills, which they believe is helpful in learning and memory.

Tip: Start with a gratitude list of at least 5 things.  After writing them down, jot down a few things about each of the 5 items.  Why is that item on the list?

You may find over time that you have gratitude for things you find hard or upsetting.  It might surprise you.  Write how you could be grateful – what did you learn?  What did it teach you?  

Habit of journaling creates a powerful perspective

Journaling every day opens your inner world where you get to know yourself, what stops you in life, how to move through it, and where you excel.  It lightens you.  You get to choose.  It also affects all parts of your life, and with the addition of the gratitude list, you will see everything in your life with gratitude.  What a way to start your morning!

To read more on journaling go to:  How Journaling Can Help You in Hard Times

Struggling to Find Happiness

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The concept of happiness has different definitions for different people.

According to Psychology Today, most experts define a happy individual as “someone who experiences frequent positive emotions, such as joy, interest, and pride, and infrequent (though not absent) negative emotions, such as sadness, anxiety, and anger.”

So what causes us to be happy or unhappy? Can we develop happiness as a habit? 

To understand that, we must first look at the contributing factors to both happiness and unhappiness, why it can be so difficult to sustain positive emotions that lead to happiness, and how to make choices that create a lasting state of positivity and joy.

What causes us to be unhappy?

There are many underlying causes for persistent unhappiness. For people who grew up in unhappy homes and families where negativity and conflict were the presiding themes, happiness may be unrecognizable because it has never been present.

Others may allow negative thought patterns to take root and stifle any hint of positive thinking. Guilt over bad habits and unhealthy life choices can also pile on to an overall sense of unhappiness and discontentment with life.

According to a recent survey, only 33% of adults in the United States claim to be happy, which means a staggering two-thirds of the population is still looking for happiness. Where do they look for it?

The search for happiness

We search for happiness in countless ways. Some believe that a bigger paycheck will finally push us past unhappiness and into contentment. Others find temporary happiness in buying things they don’t need, but find that the positive emotions are fleeting, and soon replaced by feelings of regret and stress about finances.

The search for happiness isn’t limited to the desire for money or possessions. Many unhappy people believe that a new (or improved) relationship will bring lasting happiness, while some shift the blame for their unhappiness to other people, hoping they will naturally feel better by avoiding negative feelings.

The common thread of nearly everyone seeking happiness is a constant compulsion to look for “the next good thing.” By never settling into and enjoying the present, these people feel that happiness is hiding around the bend, and just out of reach.

Why is happiness so elusive for some?

Happiness seems like an impossible dream for many. When we are tied to emotions that stifle positivity and contentment, we become pessimistic and unhappy.

To overcome the downward pull of negative emotion, we must first recognize what triggers our unhappy feelings. Maybe it’s a fear of change that keeps us firmly planted in a job or relationship that makes us unhappy. It could be a lack of self-esteem that whispers the lie that we don’t deserve to be happy.

Whatever the cause, we must acknowledge that life doesn’t wait for ideal conditions and then drop unlimited happiness in our laps. To find happiness, we must first know how and where to look.

Happiness isn’t a one-size-fits-all

Our perceptions of happiness are as unique as our fingerprints. Our personalities play a large role in our ability to feel happy or not. For example, researchers have found that extroverts tend to be happier than their introverted counterparts.

Why?

Because they are generally surrounded by people and stay active with social engagements and human interaction. Don’t despair, introverts– studies have also shown that non-extroverts can boost happiness by simply thinking about and emulating the behavior of extroverts.

Does this mean that a very contented introvert is just lying to themselves, believing they are happy when they aren’t? Of course not.

No matter your personality type, your happiness will be defined by your comfort level in who you are. We are born with certain personality traits part of our very core. While it’s healthy to push ourselves to try new things and reach outside of our comfort zones, happiness won’t come from trying to be someone we are not.

As we examine which elements of our personalities contribute to feelings of joy and satisfaction and those that do not, we need to remember that we’re all unique and the beginning of happiness depends on our ability to accept and nurture who we are.

Choosing to be happy

As you shed unhappiness and learn what fills your life with purpose and contentment, make a conscious effort to feed the thoughts and habits that support a more joyous life.

Note what makes you happy.

  • Is it sharing in the joy of others?
  • Supporting a meaningful cause?
  • Spending time in nature?

Lasting happiness takes practice. No one will do the work of creating happiness for you while you sit by and wait. It’s the responsibility of each of us to discover and cultivate the pathways that lead us to lasting joy.

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