3 Daily Success Habits that will Change your Life Quickly

Being more in control and stepping into the role of CEO of Me starts with your thoughts and daily habits. “Success is the sum of small efforts repeated day in and day out.” – Robert Collier  There are three daily rituals that have significantly impacted my life (and business) growth that I want to share with you.

#1. Taking care of yourself in the morning before you begin to take care of your tasks or business.

Everyone knows how important having a morning routine where you implement good self-care rituals is important for your physical and mental well being, but I also have found that it significantly improves your work life or business too.  When you get up in the mornings from a place of calmness and take care of yourself first, it allows you to go into your work day with greater energy, clarity and focus.

Studies on productive people have shown that looking at your email and social media first thing in the morning actually decreases your productivity up to 30%! It also increases your level of stress which we all know how detrimental stress can be to our personal lives and our business success too.

Create a morning routine where you put self-care first before doing anything work (housework, career, business work…). Get up, exercise, mediate, shower, get dressed, have a healthy breakfast and take care of anything else you need to do to keep your personal and mental health at peak performance. This will allow you to not only have more success, but also balance your personal life better too.

The emails and messages can wait 1 or 2 more hours before you reply to them. If you’re self-employed or volunteer or work remotely, set clear boundaries in your business and make taking care of yourself a priority if you want to see your business really grow.

#2. Journaling before you begin your day.

In years past I have sporadically journaled or kept a journal for a specific purpose like for my spiritual practice or gratitude. When I really began to look at successful people who had stepped up into a higher level of emotional well being and self-control, I was fascintated to learn how much impact a daily journaling practice had on their success and happiness.

I’m not talking about journaling like keeping a diary of your day’s thoughts and activities. 🙂 This type of journaling goes much deeper and focuses on increasing your self-awareness, setting intentions for how you will live your life and keeping a record of your ideas, gratitude and celebrations.

Each morning, as part of my daily ritual I spend time journaling on 4 key areas. I call this G.I.V.E. journaling simply because I am a word geek though I don’t necessarily go in order of the g, i, v, e…

• First is gratitude. I believe that gratitude is essential to being truly happy and creating more abundance in our lives. I write down all the things I am grateful for, good and bad, past, present and future too.
• Second is emotions. I check in with my emotions each day. I write about what might be bothering me, something I may be feeling anxious, fearful, shameful, confused or excited about. It helps me work through problems that I might otherwise push to the side. It helps me do any forgiveness work I need to do for myself, someone else or a situation that my have triggered me.  It helps me make sure I go into the day with a clear head and heart.
• Third is intention. I write out my intentions for the day and will even write sometimes as if the day is already over and I am celebrating all the things I intended to do, be and have during my day as if they already occurred. This helps me take my goal setting even deeper and create a tangible, believable mindset about all the things I want to accomplish.
• Last is vision. Each day I remind myself of my bigger picture vision for my life and my business. This helps me remain focused and centered as the day goes on and I have to make decisions on how I spend my time, my money, my energy and my actions.

I truly credit this method of journaling with having a significant impact not only on my business growth but my personal growth too. It doesn’t take that much time, maybe 5 minutes some mornings or other mornings it might be 15-20 minutes depending on what emotions I am dealing with or what intentions or ideas I may have for the day. It helps clear out any negative clutter, fears or anxiety and allows me to start my day knowing exactly what I need to focus on, what I intend to accomplish and coming from a place of gratitude.

#3. Evaluating and celebrating your progress.

As human beings (and especially as business owners) we get so caught up in completing the work, creating the next piece of content or finishing our projects that we do not take the time to actually evaluate what we are doing much less actually celebrate our progress.  Success in life and business is based on improvement. If we are not evaluating ourselves on a regular basis, how will we know what is working, what’s not working, what is bringing us a good return on our investment and what we need to be working on next that will move us forward?

This doesn’t mean being self-critical or a perfectionist. We all need to be more kind and flexible with ourselves and focus more on our positive steps rather than kicking ourselves.  Evaluating your progress allows you to make necessary adjustments quickly, before you waste too much time or energy on something that might not be beneficial for you or that might steer you off course of your goals. It is like sailing a ship, you have to watch the wind, the water, the weather and adjust the sales and steer the ship accordingly.

Celebrating your success is equally important to improving your business. It is a way of showing gratitude for all that you have and are bringing into your life and business. It allows you to build your self-confidence and stay in a place of positive energy.  Be your biggest cheerleader, not your biggest critic. The voice in your head is the one you hear and talk with all day long so make sure it is saying kind, encouraging, supportive affirmations.