Habits for winner!

Habits define who you are and what you shall be.

Even if you don’t consciously know your habits, they exist and influence your life.

“We are what we repeatedly do. Excellence, then, is not an act, but a habit.”

 - Aristotle

The nice thing here is that you can consciously define your habits and change them. Changing them will help you choose better ones.

“Winning is not a sometime thing; it's an all time thing. You don't win once in a while, you don't do things right once in a while, you do them right all the time. Winning is habit. Unfortunately, so is losing.”

 - Vince Lombardi

The biggest difference between someone successful and someone who’s not is the habits they choose to have in their life.

What are those habits for success?

From the book “The seven habits of highly effective people” by Stephen R. Covey.

     Independence:

-          Be proactive: Take initiative in life by realizing that your decisions (and how they align with life’s principles) are the primary determining factor for effectiveness in your life. Take responsibility for your choices and the consequences that follow.

-          Begin with the end in mind: Self-discover and clarify your deeply important character values and life goals. Envision the ideal characteristics for each of your various roles and relationships in life.

-          Put first things first: A manager must manage his own person. Personally. And managers should implement activities that aim to reach the second habit. Covey says that rule two is the mental creation; rule three is the physical creation.

Interdependence

-          Think win-win: Genuine feeling for mutually beneficial solutions or agreements in your relationships. Value and respect people by understanding a “win” for all is ultimately a better long-term resolution than if only one person in the situation had gotten his way.

-          Seek first to understand, then to be understood: Use empathic listening to be genuinely influenced by a person, which compels them to reciprocate the listening and take an open mind to being influenced by you. This creates an atmosphere of caring, and positive problem solving.

-          Synergize: Combine the strengths of people through positive teamwork, so as to achieve goals no one person could have done alone.

      Continuous improvements

-          Sharpen the saw: Balance and renew your resources, energy, and health to create a sustainable, long-term, effective lifestyle. It primarily emphasizes exercise for physical renewal, prayer (meditation, yoga, etc.) and good reading for mental renewal. It also mentions service to society for spiritual renewal.