Life Coaching Tools for Success

Chapter 18
BREAKING BAD HABITS

Life coaching tools for your success are provided throughout this course. One of the most important lessons for success, however, is in learning how to develop the necessary discipline to break old habits that don't serve you well and create new habits that do.

Your life work will become either the masterpiece it is intended to be, or a disappointment. By overcoming bad habits and building healthy habits will help you to avoid a life filled with regret.

breaking bad habits

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“When shall I begin training my child?” asked a young mother of her doctor.

“How old is your child?” inquired the physician.

“She recently turned two years old”, said the proud mom.

“Hmm, then you’ve already lost two years.” he replied gravely.

From the earliest stages we begin to form habits. Through our experiences we train ourselves to react or respond in a manner that makes us feel the most safe and secure. Therefore, the adoption of life coaching tools are so important for children and young professionals.

"Take care of the early years of your life so the latter years will take great care of you."

While good habits depend largely on self-discipline, and often on a purposeful self-denial; bad habits, like poisonous weeds, spring up without invitation and can grow quickly.

We seldom see great change in people after they get to be in their mid-twenties and thirties, except that people do continue to travel farther along their chosen path. This can be a blessing or a curse, depending on the habits you’ve adopted during that initial quarter of your life.

You can take comfort in knowing that it is almost as easy to acquire a good habit as a bad one, and that is it possible to be habit-formed in goodness just as well as being taken hostage in the habits of personal destruction.

Unfortunately, the most definite cause of failure in millions of lives has been the firmly embedded existence of bad habits; drinking, smoking, gambling, drug addiction, laziness, unseemliness and pessimism – all become vices and disease that do nothing but hurt and destroy our quality of life, and the lives of those we love most. So take great pains to form good solid habits to rule your life.

If you make sobriety a habit, then indulgence in drink will be intolerable; make punctuality a habit, and tardiness will not be allowed; make character a habit, and you won’t stand for laziness or men whom you cannot trust.

“There are four life coaching tools that support the development of good habits - punctuality, accuracy, steadiness and hard work. Without the first, time is wasted; without the second, mistakes are made and may become the reason for others to unknowingly make additional mistakes; without the third, nothing can be done well; and without the fourth, opportunities of great advantage are lost forever.”

Through will-power you can educate your focus and thought to always be on the bright side of things; those which lift and elevate the spirit. Habits of contentment and goodness may be formed the same way as any unhelpful habit.

There is a story of two sailors who had been drinking heavily and decided to take their boat out for a ride. They rowed but made no progress. Each man began to accuse the other of not doing his part to get the boat away for its dock.

Both men rowed with great attention until they became almost exhausted. Having sweat out most of the liquor, one of them said soberly, “Why, Tom, we haven’t yet pulled up the anchor!

This is the same lesson gained from the realization that a bad habit will keep you from gaining prosperity in your life. Cut off bad habits just as you would intelligently pull up the anchor of a boat you wish to sail. Use whatever life coaching tools and resources necessary to break destructive habits.

"The biggest single obstacle to success, happiness and performance.. is FEAR."

We humans are prone to overlooking the true ways a habit is formed. Most bad habits are formed out of fear, when we wish to avoid something that we are uncomfortable with.

Every repetition of an act makes us more likely to perform that act. We discover that once the act is performed we have a tendency to want to perform the act again until the act has taken on a perpetual motion. Once the habit takes over it becomes difficult for the mind to once again regain control.

We successfully throw out a bad habit over time, through repetition of new activities, which once again take hold and become a more positive habit. The secret is to replace the bad habit with one that serves you in a healthy and successful way. A good example of this would be giving up cigarettes and replacing it with healthy exercise. 

By building up the newly forming positive habits, you will gain more confidence in your ability to tackle other difficulties in your life or business. 

"Habit, if wisely and skillfully formed, truly becomes a second nature."

- Bacon

Life Coaching Tools and Activities

Complete the following exercises...

  1. Describe two bad habits that are in the way of you becoming your best self. Next, describe two favorable habits that you are proud to exhibit on a regular basis. Explain in detail the meaning each habit has to you and how it has either lifted you up mentally or physically, or how it has depressed your spirit.



  2. Looking back, explain how each habit was born? Is it something you were taught by parents, teachers or friends? Or was it born of your own choosing, perhaps without even knowing you were creating the habit? Do you wish to either adjust or break the habit and are you committed to doing so?



  3. Given what you know now from the above information, how might you go about breaking a bad habit? Explain what life coaching tools or resources you may need to help you break this habit.  and gain better results for the future.




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