What is the one thing, that if I did it daily, would improve my life dramatically?
This is one of the prompts that will be in my new gratitude journal. I first learned it when I was 20 years old and working in sales with Cutco. There are several reasons why I love this prompt, but they all trace back to this: we all know the answer.
What do you know you should start, stop, or continue doing every single day?
Think about it for thirty seconds and you probably have the perfect answer. That is, if it didn’t come to you immediately. We all know the answer, but in many cases we don’t do it— why is that? I’ll share from my own experience.
I discovered a program called “The 5AM Club” at age 21, and fell in love with the concept. It was all about starting the morning with a dedicated hour (or more) of personal development, which more often than not led to a great day. And yes, it required waking up at 5AM (no, I won’t be trying to convince you to do this :))
Anyway, I committed to this ritual and absolutely dominated in life for about 90 days. I got into significantly better shape, won multiple sales incentive trips, earned more income than ever before, and I had people around me commenting on how happy I seemed to be. They were right, and it all resulted from that 5AM club. At one point, however, I fell out of this routine. This is called life. If you don’t work hard to keep the momentum you have in any area, you lose it, and the objective should be two-fold. First, self-awareness to realize that you’ve gone off track, and then working to shorten the length of time it takes you to “get back up on the horse.”
This brings me to the journal prompt.
I knew logically that waking up at 5AM and doing that routine was the key to crushing my goals at the time. With that being said, my “one thing” was to get to bed before 10PM. If I commit to getting to bed before 10PM, I know without a doubt that I can force myself to get up and get started at 5. Even with that obvious knowledge right in front of my face, I failed to stay consistent with this program for years. I found myself getting more and more frustrated every time our company held a personal development event and I was reminded of that journal prompt. What was causing the frustration? Simple: my “one thing” never changed, and for a long time, neither did I.
I’d imagine you can relate to this concept. How many January 1’s have you sat down to set your goals, and found that they were exactly the same as last year? Probably several. Nobody is going to be perfect with this, but I’ve found through taking serious time for self-reflection and learning from others that there are a couple of key steps to moving past this barrier.
- Identify the actions (or lack thereof) that prevent you from sticking to your “one thing”
- View it as a mental challenge to give yourself no other option
- Commit to a lifestyle, not a short-term challenge
When it came to the “5AM club,” there were a couple of things I did consistently that prevented it from happening. If I worked “really hard” that day, for example, I often rewarded myself with having a few drinks that night. It is well-documented that this is not a recipe for a good night of sleep. On top of that, I would have those drinks while either watching sports or a Netflix series. I still thoroughly enjoy both of these things, but when combined with alcohol, I was making myself mentally weaker when it came time to make the most important decision in my life: do I keep watching, or do I go to sleep right now and follow through on my commitment?
This is the fundamental reason why I strongly recommend the “Live Hard” program to anyone that will listen. Yes, it is intense. Yes, it is inconvenient. In my experience, though, it is the only program that forces your personal commitment to making lasting change in your life.
You don’t have to do this program to create lasting change. What I will suggest, however, is to start with your “one thing.” Take 20 minutes today or tomorrow morning to reflect and ask yourself these critical questions:
- What is the one thing, that if I did it daily, would improve my life dramatically?
- What are the actions or decisions that are preventing this from happening each day?
- Am I ready to commit 100% to becoming this person daily?
From there, make the decision to embark on your mental toughness journey, every day. Not a 30-day challenge, not a 60-day challenge, but every. single. day. Giving yourself an end point will only encourage you to overcorrect hard back to your bad habits if you complete your arbitrary challenge. You will fail at times as we all do, and you will have valleys in your life when you are off track, but you will begin to entirely change who you are by committing to your one thing as a lifestyle. It’s simple, and it only took me ten years to learn it 🙂 You can do it, too.
