HALF YEAR GOALS. BECOME UNSTOPPABLE.
There are five months left in 2023, 152 days left of limitless potential!
Right now is an opportunity for you to become unstoppable. Right now, right here could be the moment you start taking radical ownership for your outcomes. The question is, will you seize it?
The secret to success isn’t found in drastic, one-time changes. It lies in your everyday habits, those minute-to-minute decisions that, over time, create a powerful momentum toward your goals. If you truly want to harness the remainder of 2023, there are daily practices you need to adopt.
Carve out time to Set Clear Goals, Habits and Routines
You make time. For me, I have set clear goals for this half of 2023. I have created my list of habits to get me closer to accomplishing these goals. My habits make up my daily routine and in order to complete my daily habits I make time by waking everyday at 5am to begin my morning routine that fuels my fire for the rest of my day. I put ME first so I can show up as a better version of myself for others. Every morning, is an opportunity to become 1% better than yesterday. I’ve been practicing this for 5 years and it works when I’m 100% committed.
How often do you say, “I don’t have time”? How you experience time is a function of, well, how you experience time. And who is in charge of that? Your answer will depend partly on whether you have a reactive approach to life, or a proactive approach.
With a reactive approach, first life happens to you and then you react. It’s a game of dominoes in which you are a domino somewhere in the middle. Something acts on a domino further back along the line, and its consequences travel down the line of events, knocking you flat along the way.
With a proactive approach, you look for ways to be the something that acts on the earlier domino.
STEP 1: Establish your identity
The key to building lasting habits is focusing on creating a new identity first. Your current behaviors are simply a reflection of your current identity. What you do now is a mirror image of the type of person you believe that you are (either consciously or subconsciously).
To change your behavior for good, you need to start believing new things about yourself. You need to build identity-based habits.
The Recipe for Sustained Success
Changing your beliefs isn’t nearly as hard as you might think. There are two steps.
Decide the type of person you want to be.
Prove it to yourself with small wins.
First, decide who you want to be. What do you want to stand for? What are your principles and values? Who do you wish to become?
These are big questions, and many people aren’t sure where to begin—but they do know what kind of results they want: to get six-pack abs or to feel less anxious or to double their salary. That’s fine; start there and work backward from the results you want to the type of person who could get those results. Ask yourself, “Who is the type of person that could get the outcome I want?”
Here are five examples of how you can make this work in real life.
Want to lose weight?
Identity: Become the type of person who moves more every day.
Small win: Buy a pedometer. Walk 50 steps when you get home from work. Tomorrow, walk 100 steps. The day after that, 150 steps. If you do this 5 days per week and add 50 steps each day, then by the end of the year, you’ll be walking over 10,000 steps per day.
Want to become strong?
Identity: Become the type of person who never misses a workout.
Small win: Do pushups every Monday, Wednesday, and Friday or better yet hire a coach!
Want to be a better friend?
Identity: Become the type of person who always stays in touch.
Small win: Call one friend every Saturday. If you repeat the same people every 3 months, you’ll stay close with 12 old friends throughout the year.
Want to be taken seriously at work?
Identity: become the type of person who is always on time.
Small win: Schedule meetings with an additional 15–minute gap between them so that you can go from meeting to meeting and always show up early.
What is your identity?
STEP 2: Begin to track habits
If you want to stick with a habit for good, one simple and effective thing you can do is keep a habit tracker.
Habit tracking is powerful for three reasons.
It creates a visual cue that can remind you to act.
It is motivating to see the progress you are making. You don't want to break your streak.
It feels satisfying to record your success in the moment.
Habit tracking naturally builds a series of visual cues. When you look at the calendar and see your streak, you’ll be reminded to act again.
Research has shown that people who track their progress on goals like losing weight, quitting smoking, and lowering blood pressure are all more likely to improve than those who don’t. One study of more than sixteen hundred people found that those who kept a daily food log lost twice as much weight as those who did not. A habit tracker is a simple way to log your behavior, and the mere act of tracking a behavior can spark the urge to change it.
Habit tracking also keeps you honest. Most of us think we act better than we do.
Measurement offers one way to overcome our blindness to our own behavior and notice what’s really going on each day. When the evidence is right in front of you, you’re less likely to lie to yourself.
The most effective form of motivation is progress. When we get a signal that we are moving forward, we become more motivated to continue down that path. In this way, habit tracking can have an addictive effect on motivation. Each small win feeds your desire.
My favorite tracker is the Clear Habits Journal by James Clear, author Atomic Habits.
WHERE DO I START?
James Clear, author of Atomic Habits, recommends starting with these super small habits to make sure that you are at least showing up in a small way each day. Here are some examples below and break them out by daily, weekly, and monthly habits.
Common daily habits to track:
journal 1 sentence
read 1 page
meditate 1 minute
do 1 push up
stretch for 1 minute
write 1 thing I'm grateful for
make your bed
wake up by [TIME]
go to bed by [TIME]
take a shower
floss teeth
weigh myself
take medication
take vitamins/supplements
play [INSTRUMENT] for 1 minute
contact 1 potential client
prioritize to-do list
say “I love you” at least once
put all dishes put away
take a walk outside
call mom
walk the dog
Notice that most items on this list can be completed in two minutes or less. Make your habits so easy that you can stick to them even on the hard days.
READ MORE HERE on why and how to track your habits!
By making these practices a part of your daily routine, you set yourself up for success. They’ll help you tap into your full potential and make the most of the remaining months of 2023. Success isn’t always about speed; it’s about direction and consistency. Stay focused, stay committed, and soon you’ll become unstoppable.
Here’s to seizing the rest of 2023 and becoming your best self. Here’s to being unstoppable.
