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Creating and developing good business habits today will ensure your long-term success. In fact, creating and developing good business habits is the key to success; whereas bad habits are the unlocked door to failure. When we think about News Years resolutions, one the most popular New Years Resolutions is to loss weight. And if you think about what it takes to be successful in losing weight, it takes forming and developing good habits such as the habit of eating right and exercising. Whereas, failure in losing weight is always to linked to bad habits such as regularly eating the foods that we should not eat or sleeping late instead in the morning instead of getting out of bed to exercise. Clearly, the only difference between those who have succeeded and those who have failed lie in the differences of their habits. Success people form good habits; unsuccessful people are bound by their bad habits. Therefore, it is imperative to create and develop good business habits.

People are slaves to their habits. In most cases, we talk about people being a slave to bad habits, such as a slave to tobacco, alcohol, and other bodily stimuli as well as the bad habits of checking email every 15 minutes, excessively watching TV or procrastinating. However, if we are going to be a slave to habits, let us be a slave to good habits. We must destroy bad habits and plant the seed for good habits. But how do we destroy bad habits? It is one of nature's laws that only a habit can subdue another habit. Therefore, the only way to destroy bad habits is to replace them with good habits; habits that will bring us closer to success. So that brings me to two questions:

What are good business habits and how do we form our good habits in order to subdue the bad ones? Let's answer the first question. What is a good habit? In an attempt to define good habits in relation to our business, I have taken each letter of the word habits and have assigned an idea or action that defines good habits in our business.

The H in Habits stands for Healthy Lifestyle - Creating and developing the positive habit of living a healthy lifestyle is an important but often unnoticed and part of our business success. However, our business success is correlated in part to our health lifestyle. With creating and developing the positive habit of living a healthy lifestyle such as exercising daily and eating the right food, our energy and motivation will increase and we become more focused. I know firsthand that when I get up early to exercise that I am more awake and have more energy throughout the whole day than the days that I sleep in and do not exercise.

The A in Habits stands for Action - Taking action daily is the most important positive habit we can create and develop as business owners. Creating and developing the positive habit of taking daily action is the bridge between our inner world and our outer world. Our inner world consist of our thoughts and feelings that create or goals and dreams. Our outer world is simply the results that we have in our life. Action bridges our inner world goals to our outer world results. In fact, the habit of daily action is the only thing that determines the value of our business. We can be the most intelligent smartest people in the world or have a college degree in marketing, however, if we do not create and develop the habit of daily action and put what we know and learn into action, then nothing is going to happen in our business.

While creating and developing the positive habit of taking daily action is the most important habit in our business, many times it is the hardest and most difficult habit to create and develop. This difficulty in creating and developing the habit of daily action is many times rooted in rooted in fear and discomfort. The only way to conquer this fear is to take the first step in creating a habit of daily action. Once we take the first step of daily action, then the fear we have regarding that action will be reduced. With taking the first step in creating daily action, we learn to tame the loin of fear. It is not necessary to get destroy our fears in order to succeed; it is only necessary to tame our fears in order to not impede us taking action. Continue developing the action, and soon we will laugh at the smallness of our fears. So to tame our fears we need to act without hesitation. Create and develop the habit of acting now. . . acting today. . . without thinking about whatever has happened in the past. Yesterday is history, tomorrows a mystery, all we have is today to act.

The B in habit stands for Befriending Successful People - Creating and developing the habit of befriending and associating ourselves with successful people is important to our business. There was a study done that showed that an individual's income is directly correlated to the individual's friends and associations. In fact, the study showed that our incomes are within a few percentage points of our friends and the people we associate with. Successful people befriend and associate with other successful people because their association is a means to motivate themselves. Successful people are grateful for their associations with other successful people as they have a blueprint to follow that will make it easier to attain their own success. Why reinvent the wheel? Associating with successful we can learn the mindset and strategies that successful people employ to achieve success. Successful people are also a fountain of positive energy. Energy is contagious. So it is only logical to create and develop the positive habit of befriending and associating with successful people.

The I in Habits stands for I-Time - I-Time means taking some time each day to do something for yourself, something that you enjoy, hence the name I-Time. This time is for only you when you do something that is a pleasure for you to do. You are not doing something for someone else during this time. Your I-time can be as little as 10 to 15 minutes working on a personal hobby or reading the article about your favorite sports team or just meditating quickly. The purpose is to do something that you enjoy doing for yourself. The purpose of I- Time is also an opportunity to reward yourself, to celebrate your successes of the day and to be grateful for them. I-Time also provides a sense of balance in our days that can be many times jammed pack with working, taking care of our families, and running your business.

The T in Habits stands for Time Management - Time management is another imperative positive habit to develop for success in our business. Our lives are filled with many obligations and commitments outside our business, such as full time jobs and family activities. Sometimes it is easy and even happens without our noticing it that we overlook our business commitments. Therefore, it is important to draft a Daily Method of Operation for your business and personal life for each day. It is important to draft DMO the night before. In relation to our business, our DMO should consist of only Income Producing Activities. Income Producing activities are those tasks that will generate money into our business. Income Producing Activities do not include organizing your desk or checking your email or reading cnn.com.

The S in Habits Stands for Self-Development - It is important to develop the habit of engaging in self-development on a daily basis. If you think about it, we invest time and money in other aspects of our business, such as advertising; however it is just as important for us to invest time and money into our mind through personal development. Without self-development and preparation in yourself, we will never be ready for leadership and will have a longer road to the success we desire. There is tons of self-development material out there. You can start at your local library for free or find inexpensive material on Amazon.com. Better yet, invest your money into a self-development seminar or even your own Life Coach. Creating and developing the positive habit of daily self-development has proven to increase income, energy and the expectations for yourself and your future. Spending 15 - 20 minutes a day on self-development is sufficient and does not require a lot of time. In fact, you combine self-development in other daily activities. For example, while developing the habit of a healthy lifestyle through exercise, you can listen to self-development audios while you are exercising.

So by taking each letter of the word habit we have defined six good business habits to create and develop and that brings us to our second question. How to we form good habits?

Simply put good habits are formed with constant repetition. With constant repetition and activity or task becomes easy to perform, and when an act becomes easy to perform it become a pleasure to perform, and if it is a pleasure to perform it is our nature as human beings to perform it often. So we can create and develop the good business habits we just defined by constant repetition.