Break the Cycle: Using Corrective Actions to Overcome Bad Habits

It’s true what they say. A person who is convinced that they can or can not do something is right.

Even when we’ve figured out what our personal mission is or our next steps in life are, many times we’ll find ourselves still in a place where we might think “Well, the ideal me might be able to do this or have that – but I’ll never get to that point. I have these problems to deal with.”

If you have that kind of perspective, then you need to break the cycle.

Why?

Because this is the mindset of a victim. Victims blame others or their situation in life for their shortcomings. If you pay attention to the media, there’s a lot of this going around.

Unfortunately, a victim is just one of 4 internal saboteurs that can affect our ability to actually achieve what we want to do.

The others include the child, whose entirely naive and innocent. They focus on family and fun.

There’s the drama queen, who just feeds on drama and being the center of attention.

Then there’s the prostitute, who might say “I have these standards and I’d never do… <fill in the bank>”, but as soon as as a large enough reward enters the situation, they throw their standards out the window.

Personally, I can recall being one or more of these at different points in my life. 3 of the 4 I used quite regularly when I was in college. (I don’t remember ever trying to be a drama queen. Video games kept me from being in everyone’s business.)

It’s no wonder that I didn’t feel like my life was going anywhere!

Eventually I was able to stop the vicious cycle, and hopefully what I learned can help you too!

Building Your Awareness

Don’t Aim For Perfection – Go for Mastery!

Being more aware of your surroundings, or simply being more present, I feel is the biggest ingredient in getting out of your own head.

What do I mean by this?

Well, when you think about your time in school, if you were a good student, you might have been focusing on doing everything perfectly.

However, in life, we can’t be perfect. In fact, trying to be perfect before we actually take action only prohibits our eventual success.

Have you heard that an entrepreneur doesn’t go “ready, aim, fire” but instead goes “ready, fire, aim” when they’re starting a business?

That’s what I’m talking about.

Entrepreneurs have to be aware of their situation and read it for what it is. Why? If anything clouds that perception, then their product or service won’t do as well as they’d like. They could build the perfect solution to a problem they believe their market wants, but if they’re not actually getting feedback, then they’re not really building what the market wants.

Check Your Outdated Caveman Firmware

Another thing that clouds our perception of reality is our antiquated feeling of fear. On his podcast, Jordan Harbinger regularly has guests on that talk about how many of our bad habits are from outdated caveman habits – fear is one of them (jealousy is another).

Back in caveman days, it made sense to have a decent amount of fear. They had a ton of threats to deal with in their day to day lives. Some of these threats included large animals – some that wanted to eat them for lunch.

So the more fearful they were, the more likely they’d stay alive.

However, that fear today prohibits us from stepping out of our comfort zone. In our conversation with Marti MacEwan, we chatted a bit about how this fear gets in the way of us becoming public speakers. (Here’s a bit more on the topic from Dr. Dave Guin if video is more your thing.)

In both the case of running from predators and public speaking, what you’ll find out is that this fear can be totally rational. The trick is to be aware enough to understand why that fear is there in the first place. What could have triggered that feeling? If nothing presents itself as a trigger (for example, the audience isn’t going to laugh at you) – then you should proceed.

The more you do this, the more you can harness it as somewhat of a “Spidey Sense” to tell you if a certain situation is wrong or not.

Instances Where Action-Correction is Useful

As I previously said, a real entrepreneur doesn’t go “ready, aim, FIRE!”. Instead they’re all about “ready, FIRE, aim!”. As veteran Andrew O’Brien said in his interview, being an entrepreneur isn’t about being a sniper. It’s about seeing where the bullet lands and adjusting!

But entrepreneurship isn’t the only instance where this cycle can be used. Here’s a few others:

Personal Spending (Use cash if your spending is out of control!)
Health and Wellness (Count your caloric intake!)
Investing (What works, what doesn’t?)
Relationships (Learn to care what your significant other cares about so you can help them get what they want when you get what you want and visa versa.)
Fun and Entertainment (Get out there and give it a shot! Don’t knock it until you try it! Want to learn to dance? Then dance!)

Action Steps

Ok, so your next step here really depends on how you’re planning on using this new information. In most instances, it probably would help if you have someone external to give you feedback – so get an accountability buddy.

Another thing that would help is to have a journal. Why? Because you don’t want to keep all these thoughts and ideas about your learning about in your head all the time! Perhaps that journal takes the form of a blog. Maybe it takes the form of a calorie counter app on your phone. Heck, maybe it’s a financial statement.

Just keep track of whatever you’re trying to improve. Doing so will allow you to make better judgements in how you can adjust your game!