Why Are You Not Crushing It? *

Article by Anthony Rodriguez

Certified Performance Coach

Have you encountered people that just seem to be successful at everything they attempt? “It seems like he gets all the breaks”.  “Life just seems to come easy to her.”

Meanwhile you are struggling to keep it together in the grip of life.  While they are crushing it, you feel like you are being crushed by it!  You may even feel a little guilty for resenting their success.

So why are some people successful in life and others just seem to scrape by? There are several answers to that basic question, and one of the top answers is simply this …Habits.  Your health, wealth, happiness, fitness, and success depend on your habits.

Let us quickly examine the process. Your mindset leads to your behaviors, and your behaviors create your results. Let us look at that in reverse. Positive outcomes result from productive behaviors. Productive behaviors result from proper mindset. Therefore, what we think activates what we do, and what we do creates the result that we get to live with.  If you want to improve your health, create more material wealth, accelerate your professional success, or develop more meaningful relationships, you will have to align your thought process with your desired result and begin acting towards that aim.  Simple right? Then why is it so hard to sustain the action overtime?   If this process is so simple to understand, why is it so difficult for many people to do?   The answer is in the brain.

We are hardwired to gravitate away from pain and towards pleasure. Avoiding pain can keep us from doing stupid stuff for sure.  Fear of being eaten would cause a caveman to avoid petting the saber-toothed tiger that just entered his camp. Today we do not face the physical dangers of early man; however, that ancient program still runs in the background on your operating system.  Regularly giving in to this primal tendency of fear will lead to a life characterized by sloth, indolence, and a lack of achievement.  The doors to our comfort zones are marked “Fear.”  There is a cemetery in every person’s comfort zone and written on the headstones are words of their unrealized potential, unaccomplished dreams, and dashed hopes.  Comfort and achievement are polar opposites. So how do we break the gravitational pull emanating from the comfort zone?  The answer lies in your Habits.

 A Habit is an acquired behavior pattern regularly followed until it becomes almost involuntary.  Habits are the result of repetition. There are success habits and failure habits.  Success habits compound over time resulting in better health, a greater sense of fulfillment, higher self-esteem, and outstanding personal and professional accomplishment.   Failure habits lead you down the road towards feelings of frustration, a lack of satisfaction with life, poor health, and poverty. I have observed that if I do not actively cultivate success habits in my life, failure habits seem to creep in automatically like weeds in a garden.  Advertisers understand this concept.  There is a nonstop assault on our minds pushing the pleasure button until they have us habitually buying, watching, or listening without thinking.  This process creates revenue for them and often regrettable outcomes for us.  If you gained 30 pounds after eating one fast food hamburger meal, they would never sell another one!  You gained the 30 pounds from eating that hamburger meal every day for months or years.   

The road to success is uphill the whole way.  Achieving your dreams and goals in every important domain of life will come at the expense of pain.  Dr. Sam Chand’s incredible book, Leadership Pain, explores this concept and will lead you to a place where you may be ready test your mettle by embracing the pain of pursuing success.  People who are genuinely crushing it have made a Habit of doing the things that people who do not win refuse to do; they embrace discomfort. Yes, that is counter intuitive to the natural state.  This is not a difficult puzzle to solve. The good news is that the beautiful three-pound computer (your brain) your Creator gave you is capable of rewiring, reformatting, updating, expanding memory, and reprogramming to meet the requirements for achievement formulated by your mindset.  Many of us are running glitchy programs that are outdated and no longer serve us.  A properly formed habit will rewire your mind and have you automatically performing the tasks that lead to success without thinking about it. You will not have to summon up the gumption to do the right things.  You will be doing the right things on autopilot long enough to arrive at the right results you desire.

 How do we get there?  Here is a quick story.  Just like you, as I have traveled through the journey of life, I have developed some good habits and picked up some not so good habits.  Recently I profoundly experienced the mental and physical shift that happens when a new habit really takes root in your life.  On Thanksgiving for the last several years, me and several friends committed to walking or running one mile or more every single day from Thanksgiving Day to New Year's Day.  This kept us focused on a healthy habit that would help us avoid gaining extra weight during the holiday season.  We texted each other each day with a screenshot of our exercise results from our running apps.   It was fun to get started and figure out how to accomplish this simple goal during a time of shopping for gifts, travel, family events, cold and rainy weather, and a little fatigue.  We kept each other accountable and encouraged.  On January 2nd some of us decided to go for 50 days; the group got a little smaller.  Then we pushed on to 75 days; the group continueg to get smaller.   Somewhere between 70 and 80 days I felt a shift; I could not stop.  This habit built itself into my schedule as a nonnegotiable.  I was not trying to do this; it just happened.  My brain rewired itself, and I was on autopilot.  I no longer needed the accountability of others to motivate me. Bad weather or full schedule was no longer an excuse.  My subconscious organized my day to ensure this activity was executed.  Again, we went for 100 days and then for 125 days.  At the time of this writing 3 of the original 30 participants (my wife Alice being in that group of 3) are bearing down on a 150-day streak, and we have all increased our daily mileage.  I was already running 15 – 20 miles per week.  However, this one small habit of walking 1-2 miles on my former off days has reduced my waist size by two inches!  This small habit did in four months, what diet and exercise did not do in the previous decade.  I am sure I will take a break at some point in time; it just will not be tomorrow.

Here are my takeaways:

1. To escape the gravitational pull of the comfort zone you must decide daily to act no matter what.
2. Accountability partners/groups are a wonderful way to get started and stay on track while developing a new habit. Knowing someone else is depending on you is strong incentive for a person of character to not let them down.  The camaraderie, encouragement, and shared struggle can create a support group essential to you being consistent.
3. Accept the fact that not everyone in your accountability group will complete the course. Do not judge those who do not continue but draw strength from the fact that you are staying the course. Your self-esteem will elevate.
4. Do not fall for the well worn saying, “It takes 21 days to create a habit”. Years ago, I was taught that, shared it with others, and believed it.  The “21 days” appeals to the pleasure-seeking part of the brain.  My experience causes me to believe that habit formation takes a lot longer.  If you mention that it takes 90 days to create a habit, you can see some people's eyes glaze over.  It is actually easier than you think if you simply take it one day at a time.
5. Whether it is reading for self-improvement, or making sales calls, or journaling, or exercising, or studying to get that degree, you will experience the joy of a good habit when you no longer need any external support to make it happen. Update complete!
6. The positive results from your new habit serve as a positive feedback mechanism rewarding you for your efforts. These rewards fuel you to keep going. In this new success loop you now derive pleasure from doing the hard things.  Here is where you will see yourself separate from the crowd.  

Lastly, I encourage you to learn about the habits of the leaders and achievers in the domain in which you want to excel. Read great books.  Listen to podcasts from people whose core values line up with yours. Associate with groups of like-minded people.  Attend seminars where leaders gather.  Examine their thought and work habits.  Make their positive habits your own and You Will Crush It!     

*Crushing It is a common expression to describe succeeding at something in a particularly impressive way.