Failure is habit forming. So is success. Which habit are you in?

Did you leave the womb brushing your teeth every day?

I didn’t think so.

Were you very young when helpful adults got you launched on this healthy habit?

Yup.

At this point in your life, tooth brushing is an activity you can easily and efficiently do on auto-pilot. It’s a habit that makes your life easier and better.

What are your mental habits doing for you?

From a very young age, each of us unconsciously developed habits of thought. While those thoughts may have served you well at age four or five, a few decades later it’s all too likely some of them have become weights anchoring you to disappointing results.

The excellent news is that any unhelpful habit you developed over time can be replaced – over time – with a habit that serves you much better.

So how do you start dismantling those counterproductive mental habits and replacing them with success habits?

Pay attention to your thoughts, words, and actions.

Do you ever catch yourself doing any of the following?

• berating and calling yourself nasty names
• feeling like a turtle on her back
• constantly bracing yourself for disappointment

Any time you notice yourself falling into this type negative self-talk or negative expectancy, it’s time to pull yourself up short.

Challenge yourself to notice the positives.

Some people may chronically look on the gloomy side due to clinical depression. (Based on my own personal experience with this, I’ve discovered better living through chemistry; antidepressant medication is my friend.)

Many others, however, have simply and unwittingly fallen into a habit of negativity.

If you’re one of this multitude, periodically put on some rose-colored glasses and notice all the good stuff happening around you.

Consistent baby steps are the key to creating new habits.

Choose to re-train your brain.

You are NOT at the mercy of your thoughts! You’re the one ultimately in charge of them; you just get to act like it.

That means making a conscious, powerful choice to do the work to begin replacing self-sabotaging habits with success habits.

Persist.

Starting is always more arduous than continuing. So, yes, you’ll be taking on more work in the early stages of developing the habit of greater positivity. And that’s okay. The payoff is well worth it.

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If you find yourself thinking, “Yeah, yeah, yeah…that’s all easier said than done,” woohoo for you! You’ve caught yourself in a negative thought and can start shifting it.

And if there’s a particularly sticky spot you could use some help with, let me know what it is in the Comments section below. I’ll give you a hand by sending you two of my most popular no-charge cheat sheets with tools and tactics for identifying and dismantling self-sabotaging thought habits and replacing them with self-supporting ones.

The choices are all yours. Which will you make?

(BTW, thanks to Neeta Lind for posting the tooth-brushing image in the Creative Commons section of Flickr.)

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