Editor’s note: This is a guest post by Rita Grohowski.  Rita is a writer, mentor, and angel investor.  In addition to financial assistance, she also helps people find deeper meaning, and discover the “romance” in their careers, professional life, and businesses. When analyzing businesses, Rita asks people what they want to create, and contribute first, and then asks how they plan to make money because she believes hard work can’t be sustainable unless there’s passion.  Here’s Rita on working towards self-acceptance…

For many people, having high levels of self-confidence is a great challenge and something we just can’t seem to come to terms with.  Whether you’re unhappy with your body, your level of emotional connections in your life, or you don’t feel as though you’re doing things in your life that provide meaning and self-fulfillment, your self-confidence is going to take a hit.

When you have very low levels of self-esteem, your level of self-acceptance will also take a plunge, so taking steps to improve this will be important.

Here are some of the things to focus on to boost your level of self-acceptance.

Identify Your Self-Acceptance Problem Points
The very first thing you must do if you are going to get on a path towards self-acceptance is recognize the issues in yourself that you don’t accept.  Unless you know what it is exactly that’s causing you to have negative feelings towards yourself, it will be difficult to create a positive path towards clearing these up.

Assess all the areas of your life: work, health, family and relationships, as well as your own interests and hobbies.  Which are you comfortable with? Which make you feel uncertain of yourself or make you dislike who you are?

Remember that self-acceptance does not hinge on what other people think of you, strictly what you think of yourself.  You are the most important person in your life so your goal is to get to a place where you love yourself.  This may mean displeasing some people, but that’s a trade-off you have to make.  You can’t make everyone like you but you must make yourself like who you are.

Identify Your Self-Acceptance Positive Points
Next, it’s also good to identify the areas of your life that you feel great about.  What do you feel are your strengths? What makes you a good person?

Far too often we get very held up on all the negatives that we forget to consider the positives.  Start considering those positives.  When you can bring them out and into your attention, you’ll feel better about yourself and will kick-start the acceptance process.

Sometimes it takes getting out of a very negative self-perception hole you’ve dug for yourself to begin to see the light and make changes for the better.  Sit down and try to come up with at least ten things you truly do love about yourself and that you feel makes you a great person.

Whenever you’re having a down moment where all you want to do is criticize yourself, bring these points back up into mind and remember all the positives you have going for yourself.

Create An Action Plan Towards Elimination
Finally, you must create your action plan towards elimination.  This is a plan where you will identify the steps you will take to eliminate the behaviors that are causing you low self-esteem and that you don’t accept in yourself.

This will be a difficult thing to do since many of these will be strongly routed in your behavioral patterns right now, but with enough hard work you can definitely break free from them.  Don’t expect perfection right off the bat – instead set small reachable goals that can accomplish within a week or two of work.

In some cases you may need to seek out professional help such as seeing a counselor to overcome the issues so do whatever is necessary.  Self-acceptance is a very critical element to overall well being, so not something you can take lightly.

As you begin making progress towards behavioral change you’ll also notice that making those changes itself helps you feel better about yourself and boosts your self-confidence that you are capable of becoming who you want to be.

Little by little you’ll grow closer to the person you’re striving for and soon you will wonder what held you back from making the chances in the first place.

Each and every one of us has something about ourselves that we aren’t especially proud of. Most of us keep these things deeply covered, never letting others see that side of us.  Despite it not being public however, it will still wear you out emotionally and will influence your day to day life.

Expect this self-acceptance process to be a lifelong journey because it is.  As we continue to grow and evolve as human beings, you may find you want different things in your life and change who you want to be.  That’s fine provided you can stay on top of things and take the steps you need to in order to become someone you can be proud of. When you do that, that’s when you will be living life to the fullest.

Photo by Tiago Ribeiro.

I collect success.  From stories of heroes to gems of insight, I gather and organize principles, patterns, and practices for success.  It’s like a living playbook for life with short-cuts, success patterns, and proven practices.  It supplies me with insight and action that I can use for just about every situation.  Whether it’s motivation or strategies or tactics, it’s my unfair advantage and how I get the edge in life.  It’s truly how I “stand on the shoulders of giants.”

Keys to an Effective Success KB
Here are some of the keys to success when it comes to building a personal “Success KB”:

• Think in Nuggets.  Think in terms of “nuggets” or “gems of insight.”   Collect a nugget at a time and chunk things down.
• Keep it Scannable. Think in terms of “tickler lists of insight.”  Keep ti scannable and write in one-liners where you can.  Make it easy to quickly flip, sort, or search through your KB.
• Factor reference from Action.  If you have a bunch of blah, blah, blah, simply add three take aways or key actionable insight to the top.   Ideally, keep your actionable methods and techniques, separate from good concepts and stories, which are really reference information.  This will help you turn insight into action.
• Keep it Simple. This is a must.  It’s crucial to have a simple way to store and retrieve things.   Otherwise, the little bit of friction adds up and it dies a slow death of a 1000 paper cuts.

I happen to use Evernote for my KB now, but I’ve also used pen and paper, Wikis, text files on my hard drive … etc.   Whatever you use, simply make sure that it works for you and it’s simple.

What Goes Into a Personal Success KB
I think the real key to building an effective “Success KB” is knowing what to put into it.  Here are some of the things I collect:

1. Ah-Has – jot down the little ah-has you find or when you connect the dots.  For example, one of my ah-has I wrote down is “legacy is a by-product of giving your best where you have your best to give.”
2. Book Nuggets – summarize the best insights from the best books.  For example, here’s my book nugget Argue Your Way to Optimism from the book, Learned Optimism.
3. Lessons Learned – make a tickler list of your key lessons from mentors or experiences.  You can even draw from movies.  For example, here are my Lessons Learned from Peaceful Warrior.
4. Mental Models – write down lenses you can use for looking at life.  For example, add the Myers-Briggs Type Indicator to your tool-belt to help you understand yourself and others or the Johari Window to help you know and share yourself more effectively.
5. Patterns – note down patterns you see, including your own success patterns, and name them so you can remember them.
6. People – collect stories of success and lessons learned.  One way is to summarize lessons learned from your heroes.  For example, here is my lessons learned from Stephen Covey.
7. Principles – note down timeless principles.  For example, Covey provides a nice set of principles to start your collection with.
8. Questions – write down the best questions you find help you in any situation.  For example, some of my favorite questions are, “Is it working?” … “Who else shares this problem that I can learn from?” … “What do you need to be successful?” … “What do you want to experience?” … “What’s my next best move?” … “How can I use this?”  As you can see, questions are my game changer.
9. Quotes – write down words of wisdom and the best quotes you hear from friends, books, people, movies, songs … etc.  The right words said the right way can change your life.   For example, here are some of my quotes collections.
10. Success Stories — summarize success stories.  You come across success stories everyday, whether they are your own, or on the news, or somebody you know.
11. Techniques – write down techniques, ways or methods for doing things.   This is your colleciton of “know-how.”

Ultimately you end up with a consolidated set of distinctions and reference examples to draw from.  The sum is way more than the parts.

Start Small
I started small.  A few years back, I got into the habit of dumping quick little insights.  If I took training, I would make sure I had three key take aways.  When I met with my mentors, I got into the habit of taking brief notes.  If I read a book, I summarized the most important, actionable things.  If I heard a great quote, I jotted it down.  If I saw a movie, I walked away with three key take aways.  Next thing you know, turning insight into action became second-nature.

Remember that the goal isn’t to take the place of experience.  It’s to supplement it and help you stack the deck in your favor.  Often what you don’t know can hurt you, and in many scenarios, there is no need to start from scratch.

Photo by totalAldo.

One of our greatest sources of pain in life is when our expectations aren’t met.  Surprisingly, we can control this if we know how to figure out our expectations and the expectations of others.

We all have rules for things, whether we know them or not.  If you know your rules, you can find ways to speed up your success or change what’s not working for you.  When you don’t know your rules, you might be doing all the right things, but then feel unsuccessful inside because you have unrealistic expectations.  When you don’t know other people’s rules you might create conflict because you violate their rules.

Let’s figure out how to find out own rules and other people’s rules to improve our effectiveness.

Figuring Out Your Rules
The simplest way I know to dump your rules out on the table is to ask a question.  For example, to figure out our rules for success, we would ask ourselves, “In order to be successful at XYZ, I need to …?”  To figure out our rules for what we need to feel loved, we would ask ourselves, “In order to feel loved, I need to …?

Here is an example of me exploring my rules of what it takes to be successful at Microsoft:

• I can’t fail at the basics (administration, email, etc.)
• I need to deliver amazing value (patents, game changing ideas, etc.)
• I need to make world-class impact – internally and externally (books that change the world, etc.)
• I need to live the MS values at work: integrity, honesty, openness, personal excellence, constructive self-criticism, continual self-improvement, and mutual respect.
• I need to know the system and leverage it.
• I need to know the network and have the right people.
• I need to have the reputation for getting results and making things happen.
• I need to go up a level at least every two years .

Don’t critique your rules.  Just dump them.  You first need to get your list of rules down on paper so you can explore what’s working for you and what’s not.  Once you have your rules listed out, then you can start to analyze and evaluate them.  Using this simple technique, you can dump your rules for any area of your life.

Your Rules Can Make or Break Your Personal Satisfaction
Some of your rules might surprise you.  It’s very likely that you have some rules that make it impossible to be successful.  You could be the prettiest girl in the world, but feel unattractive because you don’t match your own rules.

If you define your success based on external things beyond your control or if you set unrealistic expectations, this is where you can create your own pain, instead of creating your own pleasure or satisfaction.

MUST vs. SHOULD Rules
This is a distinction that separates bad, good, and great results.  As you dump rules, get clarity on whether they are “MUST” or just “SHOULD.”  For example, if you ask yourself, in order to be healthy, ….,” and you respond with ….

• I SHOULD exercise.
• I SHOULD eat right.

Well, that’s pretty lame and it’s not going to change your life.  To show you the difference, let’s contrast with what we might see  if we ask an athlete.  They might respond with …

• I MUST workout 4 days a week with suffucient rest between workouts.
• I MUST eat the proper ratio of fats, proteins, and carbohydrates for my current condition.
• I MUST limit my starchy carbohydrates to XYZ per day.
• I MUST eat 5 small meals per day to maintain my blood sugar levels.
• I MUST eat foods that are high in nutritional density.
  … etc.

To get great results in areas of our life usually means getting more specific rules and turning SHOULDs into MUSTs.

Rules Conflicts
You can have rules conflicts with yourself or others.  For example, to feel loved, maybe you need to be told, and maybe you need to be told everyday, but your partner thinks actions speak louder than words.  You can imagine the disconnect.  In another example, let’s say you think that to do a good job you need to work 12 hours a day, but your boss doesn’t care how much time you spend, just the results.  When you know the rules, you can better match them or change them, and improve your effectiveness.

Explore your own rules … Ask yourself, “In order for you to be successful, I need to …?”  Explore your boss’s rules … Ask your boss, “In order for you to be successful, I need to …?”  Explore your kid’s rules … Ask your kid, “In order to be a great Mom, a great Mom needs to ….?” … “In order to be a great Dad, a great Dad needs to …”   Expect yourself to be surprised by yourself and others.

Photo by austinevan.

“No problem can withstand the assault of sustained thinking.” — Voltaire

I see good people go from good to great all the time.  It’s not magic.  It’s passion, purpose, and action.

They find their path, they have a purpose, and if they get knocked down, they get up again.  They keep asking better and better questions that get them closer to their goals and they continue to find the people and resources that support them on their journey.  They turn resistance into growth and they fully immerse themselves in the experience.

I’ve boiled down the pattern I see into 10 keys.

10 Ways to Go from Good to Great
These are the 10 ways I see people go from good to great:

1. Find your compelling “why.” Find your one thing. Become a dream machine, turn your dreams loose, and envision the end in mind. Your “why” is your drive and you find your “why” by answering the question, “Why do you do what you do?”  To find your compelling, find the answer that connects with your passion and plucks at your heart strings.  That’s the power of purpose in action and it’s what crusades are made of.  Launch your own crusade.
2. Become a force of one.  Get out of your own way and stack yourself for success by channeling your thinking, feeling, and doing.  Think the thoughts that serve you, feel the feelings that empower you, and do what you know needs to be done.  Disciplined thinking combined with disciplined action is an unstoppable force, and it’s yours for the asking.
3. Model the best. The best do it with models.  They find the best examples of what they want to accomplish, and they learn from them.  You can find role models or success stories or case studies and work backwards from there.  Success always leaves clues and you can play detective.
4. Give your best where you have your best to give. This is you unleashed.  The best play to their strengths.  They spend more time doing the things that make them strong, and less time doing the things that make them weak.  This builds energy and momentum and instead of getting drained, you get charged and you grow where you can grow best.
5. Find your best arena.  Don’t be a fish out of water.  Find your element.  Going from good to great means finding where you can play your best game.  Maybe you’re a mediocre developer, but a great Program Manager.  Maybe you’re an OK doctor, but an incredible actor.  Take your skills to the job or place where they make the most impact.
6. Execute.  Taking action is how you make things happen.  Throw massive action at whatever you need to do.  Even if it seems like you’re only taking baby steps at a time, you’ll eventually hit your stride.  When you keep taking action, you learn faster.  Each result teaches you another way how to do something, or how not to do something.  Sometimes, the only way to get past some problems is to overwhelm them with action.  To paraphrase Voltaire, I would argue no problem can withstand the assault of sustained action.
7. Stick with it.  If you fall down six times, stand up seven.  Remember The Little Engine That Could?  Well, whenever you think you can’t, you’re working against yourself.  It starts with belief.  Think you can, then prove yourself right.   Find your eye of the tiger.
8. Learn and respond.  The best take action, learn, and respond.  They are always failing forward.  NLP teaches us that there is no failure, only feedback.  The great ones use the feedback to improve their approach.  They stay adaptable while they are finding their way forward.  Be your won best coach, not your own best critic.
9. Let it go.  The best let it go and move on.  They don’t carry baggage.  They focus on the objectives and they measure against effectiveness.  Either their approach is working or it’s not.  If it’s not working, they let it go, and find a new way forward.
10. Team up.  The best of the best team up with people that amplify their impact.  They also team up with people that provide more deliberate feedback and that help them find their blind spots and get unstuck.

Putting it all together, you can stack the deck in your favor by playing to your strengths, living your values, and finding the best arena for your greatest results.

For a step-by-step guide on unleashing your best, explore my free e-book You 2.0.

Photo by Dave-F.

While working on my latest book, I had more than a few people ask me about spirituality.  They wanted a succinct explanation or a simple model.  I started going through various definitions, models, and testing what I could find.   Here’s what I arrived at:

• Making meaning
• Living your values
• Finding your purpose
• Making impact

To summarize, the most useful patterns and practices I found are living your values, finding your unique contribution, and shaping a better version of yourself.  This happens to be the foundation that underscores my You 2.0 guide (which might explain why it hit a sweet spot with so many people.)

Stephen Covey on Spiritual Intelligence
I wanted to find a model that’s simple, practical, and proven.  I turned to Stephen Covey.  Here’s how Covey distills Spiritual Intelligence:

• Integrity – Being true to one’s highest values and conscience)
• Meaning – A sense of contribution to people and causes.
• Voice – Aligning work with one’s unique calling and gifts.

In yet another way, he spins it as –

• Meaning, integrity and contribution – serving and lifting all stakeholders: customers, suppliers, employees and their families, communities, society — making a difference in the world (SPIRIT)

Covey also provides common ways to develop it:

• Read and meditate (his personal approach)
• Immersion in great literature or great music
• Find it in the way you communicate with nature

I was actually surprised by how simply and elegantly Covey addresses spirituality.  I like the fact that he provides a simple lens and frames it as spiritual intelligence.  It was also refreshing to see a pragmatic and non-dogmatic approach to looking beyond mind, body, and heart, into the spiritual side of things.

Photo by Problemkind.

“It is not the strongest of the species that survives, nor the most intelligent that survives. It is the one that is the most adaptable to change.” — Charles Darwin

One of the best ways to get results is to change your approach.  You can change yourself faster than you can change other people.  This gives you incredible flexibility in any situation. Your ability to change your thinking, feeling, and doing is the key to changing your lot in life or changing the results you get.

One of my manager’s was especially good at knowing when to ask, "… Is it working?" or "… Is it effective?"  They’re simple questions, but they cut right to the chase.  It’s not about whether it should work, or whether you want it to work — these are direct questions that force you to lay your cards out on the table and see what you’ve got.  Either you’re getting the results you want, or you’re not.

A few of my mentors noted that I’m quick to change my approach when something’s not working.  They said this is a good thing.  Not everybody is quick to admit something’s not working and try a different approach.  For me, I learned early on that flexibility is my friend.  One of my favorite definitions of insanity is "keep doing the same thing, but expect different results."  I learned from Tony Robbins that you "Stay committed to your decisions, but stay flexible in your approach."  I learned from Bruce Lee that you "Absorb what is useful, discard what is not, add what is uniquely your own."  So the sooner I can figure out that something’s not working, the sooner I can test another approach.

So, let me ask you … is your approach working for you?

Photo by Brenda Starr.

“Nobody can go back and start a new beginning, but anyone can start today and make a new ending.” — Maria Robinson

A simple way to think about designing your life is — your job, your village, and your hut.  These three together shape a large part of your every day experiences.  Your job is what you do, your village is where you hang out and who you spend your time with, and your hut is your family and your home.

While traveling cross-country, these three struck me as the common denominators.  They also struck me as the common differentiators.

Choosing what to do, where to live, and who to hang with reflects some of the most basic, yet most impactful choices in the quality of your life.  During my travels, I found some people optimize around their job, to do what they love.  Some people optimize around where to live, to immerse themselves in a particular culture, lifestyle, ambiance, or experience.  Some optimize around their family and roots.

Everybody makes trade-offs in one way or another.  Trading well is the name of the game.  The people that make the best trades, optimize around living their values.

Photo by ~MVI~.

“The greatest good you can do for another is not just share your riches, but to reveal to him his own.” — Benjamin Disraeli

It was a powerful year for Sources of Insight.  I’ve added 190 posts on topics ranging from improving your productivity to sharpening your thinking skills.  My quest is simple – find and share the best of the best insight and action for work and life.  From quotes to featured guests to lessons learned — it’s all about improving your effectiveness and leading a better life from the inside out.

Here’s a tour of the best of Sources of Insight for 2009 …

Top 10 Posts of 2009
I cherry picked the ones that either had the most traffic, or a ripple effect on the Web or that I heard the most about in the hallways at work.  Some of these surprised me.  For example, # 8 below is simply a response to a friend who challenged me to write a quick post of insights I’ve learned from movies.  Here are my top 10 posts of 2009:

1. 3 Thinking Techniques to Improve Your Intellectual Horsepower – Solve tough problems, win friends, and rise above conflict, simply by learning three techniques for thinking and getting curious.
2. Don’t Always Go for the Long Shot – You’ll miss all the beautiful middle along the way.
3. How To Think Like Bill Gates – Yes, thinking is a skill and who better to learn from than the guy that’s applied deliberate practice to the power of thinking over a life time.
4. Living Your Process – Tired? Listless? Rundown? … Do you poop out at parties? …. what you need is an approach to get your groove on and life life on your terms.  It’s the power of your personal process.
5. PM Skills for Life – Project Management is both an art and a science, but you can use the power of project management to make things happen in your life.
6. Productivity Personas – Are you a “starter” or a “finisher”?  … “maximizer or simplifier”? … “achiever or day dreamer?” … Use the productivity personas to improve your self-awareness and get a new lens on productivity.
7. The Power of the Pause – OMG, Vered’s Peanut Butter Cookie’s look so good!  But wait … let me use the power of the pause and to *choose* my best response … OK, so peanut butter cookies turns out to be my best choice after all, but now it’s a mindful choice and I’m responding over reacting.
8. What 16 Movies Teach Us About Life and Leadership – Just when you thought you had safely escaped reality, low and behold, there are insights everywhere.  From 300 to Raiders of the Lost Ark, there’s something to bring back to the real world and take your game up a notch.
9. What’s Your One-Liner Super Hero Power – Everybody has one. Whether it’s “making others great” or “powerful connector” or “writing weird songs,” find your super hero power and make it your differentiator to make your unique contribution to the world, play to your strengths, and stand out in the marketplace.
10. You 2.0 – This is arguably my most important post for the year.  It’s a very simple way to find your purpose, live your values, and play to your strengths.  It’s your core.  It’s your firm foundation.  It’s also a way to reinvent yourself by dropping what’s not working for you, and carrying the good forward.  It really is, You 2.0.

Ultimately, my top posts are whatever ones helped you find a new way to kick some arse, get your inner-mojo going, or wrinkle your brain with a new “ah-ha.”  So tell me, what was your favorite post?

Featured Guests
Who better to learn insights and action from than some of the world’s best selling authors and some experts at the top of their game?   This past year I had some amazing people share some of their best lessons learned:

• Al Ries – Best selling author of The 22 Immutable Laws of Branding shares Left Brainers and Right Brainers.
• Gretchen Rubin – Best selling author of The Happiness Project shares Top 10 Lessons Learned in Happiness.
• Janine de Nysschen – Change maker extraordinaire shares Discover Your Why and Discover the How to Your Why.
• Jay Heinrichs – Best selling author of Thank You for Arguing shares The 10 Best Ways to Persuade.
• Ken Sylvester – Master of negotiation strategies shares Top 5 Characteristics of Leaders.
• Noah Blumenthal – Best selling author of Be the Hero shares 8 Ways to Be Heroic.
• Rick Kirschner (a.k.a. “Dr.K”) – Best selling author of Dealing with People You Can’t Stand shares shares Top 10 Lessons Learned in Interpersonal Skills and How To Design a Fulfilling Life.
• Steve Nelson – Best selling author of QuickBooks for Dummies shares The Five Small Business Success Formulas.

Lessons Learned … “Stand on the shoulders of Giants”
“If I have seen a little further it is by standing on the shoulders of Giants” … great words from Isaac Newton.

I’m a fan of standing on the shoulders of giants over starting from scratch.  With the power of the Web, we can learn from everybody around the world, from the unsung hero, to the every Joe, to heroes of the past and present.  We can all stand on the shoulders of giants:

• Lessons Learned from Bruce Lee – He was more than a martial arts master and movie star.  Bruce was also a personal development master and a philosopher with amazing words of wisdom who taught us to be our best, push the envelope, and live life on your own terms.
• Lessons Learned from Colin Powell –Colin cuts right to the chase on what it means to be a great leader and he gives us 18 powerful lessons we can use for leading our self and leading others.
• Lessons Learned from Guy Kowasaki – Guy teaches us to make meaning and “don’t worry be crappy.”  He also teaches us it’s about the experience and to align your interests.
• Lessons Learned from John deVadoss – John teaches us “if you’re explaining, you’re losing” and  “everybody has flaws.”   He has a way with words and a great way of boiling things down to their essence.
• Lessons Learned from the “Last Lecture” – Randy Pausch teaches us to choose between Tigger or Eeyore and to live our childhood dreams.  He also teaches us leadership skills from Captain Kirk, how to apologize properly, and that if you lead your life the right way, your dreams will come to you.
• Lessons Learned from Oprah Winfrey – Oprah teaches us to live your best life, declutter your life, and surround yourself with an A-team.  Oprah is a master of her own destiny and helps lift others up.
• Lessons Learned from Peter Drucker – Drucker is the man when it comes to management and effectiveness.  He was ahead of his time and he paved a beautiful trail of wisdom and insight for time management, productivity, and knowledge work.

Quotes

Quotes are a great way to share the wisdom of the ages and modern day sages.  This last year, I put together some quotes collections for important topics.   If you study the collections, some of the words might just sing to your heart or give you the just insight you’ve been looking for:

• Bruce Lee Quotes
• Happiness Quotes
• Luck Quotes
• Motivation Quotes
• Time Management Quotes

"A habit cannot be tossed out the window; it must be coaxed down the stairs a step at a time." – Mark Twain

If you want to change a habit and make it stick, this post has the keys (and just in time for New Years resolutions.) While the saying may go, “where there’s a will there’s a way,” I find it’s way more effective to bet on techniques that work, or at least improve your chances for success.

When it comes to change, stack the deck in your favor.  Here are the key steps for making your change happen:

Step 1. Start with a Compelling "Why"
Why do you need to change to this new behavior?  If you don’t feel you need to, you aren’t going to do it.  Meaningful change happens out of purpose or pain, not convenience.
To bottom line it, if it’s not compelling, you won’t change.  You need a strong, emotionally compelling reason to make the change.  Are you doing it for yourself?  Are you doing it for your kids?  Find the reason that gives you the most inner strength.  You’re going to need this during your trying times and your moments of choice.

Change doesn’t have to take forever.  Remember Ebenezer Scrooge — it was a life-changing event for him and it happened over night.  The real key here though is having something to move towards or change to.  It’ tough to just move away from a pattern.  Instead, have a replacement pattern that you want to implement.

Step 2. Catch Yourself in the Habit
There are events in your day that trigger your habit.  For example, maybe it’s every time you feel stressed, you reach for your habit to comfort you.  It might just be part of your routine.  For example, maybe you’ve baked it into your morning routine or when you come home at night.  Make sure you identify these triggers and events up front, so you recognize them when they happen.

What’s important is to know when it happens, so you can catch yourself.  Catch yourself in the moment, and pause.  It’s these moments that you’re going to introduce your chance to choose your new response.  These are your choice points.

Step 3. Choose Your New Response
As Nike says, "Just do it."  Implement your replacement pattern.  This is where it counts.  The key thing here is that you’re choosing your new response.  This is where your compelling "Why" kicks in.  If it doesn’t invoke enough emotion for you, then it’s not compelling enough.

The key here is to make your new habit, feel good.  You can do that by linking it to good feelings, such as playing your favorite song.  You can also think the thoughts that serve you, such as "why" you’re making the change.  You can also focus on "how" you’re making the change.  Either way, you engage your mind and emotions to support you.  It’s a tag team.

Create Glide Paths
Another thing you can do here is create a glide-path for yourself.  Make it easy to fall into your new success pattern.  Structure your success, whether it’s visual cues or just making it easy to choose your new pattern.  Do this planning up front; don’t try to figure this out on the fly while you’re in the thick of things.

Flex Your Attitude of Gratitude
One other key here is to reward your behavior along the way.  Flex your attitude of gratitude and thank yourself for choosing your new pattern in your moment of choice.  Rewarding your behavior along the way versus promising yourself some reward after the fact is the key to results.  This will also reinforce linking it to good feelings.

Example
A simple example of putting this into action comes from a friend who used it on a habit of regular late-night snacking.

• Step 1: Why – genuinely wants to lose the extra weight, in particular for an upcoming reunion.
• Step 2: Catch Yourself in the Habit – snacking would typically be while watching movies, so starting a movie was the time to be watchful.
• Step 3: Choose Your New Response – they like edamame, which is much healthier, so have that ready when the movie starts (this is a Glide Path).
• Step 4: Gratitude – thank yourself for choosing the right behavior, connect it to a healthier slimmer self.

Don’t try to "will" your way through it or suffer through it.  The real key is knowing that you move from intellectual to emotional to physical.  Once physical the new habit is firmly in place and the old one is gone for good.

Photo by ZedZap.away.Van.

“The best mirror is an old friend.” – George Herbert

The more you know about yourself, the more you can skillfully motivate yourself, play to your strengths, limit your liabilities, and make the most of any situation. Socrates taught us to “Know thyself” … but how?  What are some of the more effective ways we can learn about our patterns for thinking, feeling, and doing.

Here are some of the tools, lenses, and techniques that I’ve found to be helpful for self-awareness:

1. Abstract, Concrete, Random, Sequential.  – Are you comfortable learning abstract concepts or do you prefer concrete examples?   Do you prefer to follow information sequentially or do you prefer a more random approach?   Dr. Anthony F. Gregorc identified 4 learning styles: Abstract Concrete, Abstract Sequential, Concrete Random, and Concrete Sequential.   Think about how you can use this for structuring your own learning approach or how you can tailor your approach when you interact with others.    See Links on Abstract/Random/Concrete/Sequential.
2. 5 Thinking Styles –  How do you make sense of the world?  Your thinking style can help explain why you think or act the way you do.  In Coping with Difficult Bosses CST , Richard Bramson identified five thinking styles: Synthesist, Idealist, Pragmatic Thinker, Analyst Thinker, Realist Thinker .  Synthesists are creative thinkers that thinks in terms of opposites. Idealists believe in lofty goals and high standards. Pragmatic thinkers are interested in practical, short-term results.  Analyst thinkers are methodical, and pay attention to accuracy and detail.  Realists thinkers are doers that base reality on whatever their senses – sight, sound, taste, smell, and touch – tell them it is.
3. Satir Categories – The Satir Categories explain how you use language.  Virginia Satir was one of the most effective family therapists ever and  NLP adopted the Satir Categories for improving communication effectiveness.  The Satir Categories are: Blamer, Placater, Computer, Distracter, and Leveler.  The Blamer blames other people.  The Placater wants to make everybody happy and avoids conflict.  The Distracter distracts people from the issue and uses generalizations instead of specifics.  The Leveler stays congruent and is focused on the facts.
4. 7 NLP Meta-programs – Metaprograms are simply your default patterns in strategies or thinking styles  In Unlimited Power : The New Science Of Personal Achievement , Tony Robbins identifies 7 NLP Meta-programs: Towards or Away, External or Internal, Sorting By Self or Sorting by Others, Matcher or Mismatcher, Convincer Strategy, Possibility vs. Necessity, Independent, Cooperative and Proximity Working Styles.
5. 6 Styles Under Stress –  When you know your style under stress, you can recognize it and choose a more effective approach. In Crucial Conversations: Tools for Talking When Stakes are High , Kerry Patterson, Joseph Grenny, Ron McMillan, and Al Switzler, identify 6 styles under stress: Masking, Avoiding, Withdrawing, Controlling, Labeling, Attacking.  Masking is understating or selectively showing your true opinions.  Avoiding is shying away from sensitive topics.  Withdrawing is existing a conversation or exiting a room.  Controlling is coercing others to your opinion.  Labeling is putting a label on people or ideas so you can dismiss them as a stereotype or category.  Attacking is belittling or threatening.
6. The Lens of Human Understanding – Do you tend to focus more on task or people?  Do you tend to act more aggressively or passively?  In Dealing with People You Can’t Stand: How to Bring Out the Best in People at Their Worst , Dr. Rick Brinkman and Dr. Rick Kirschner offer a simple model for understanding behavior: Task Focus, People Focus, Aggressive, and Passive.
7. Johari Window – The Johari Window, created by Joseph Luft and Harry Ingham, is a model for knowing and sharing yourself with skill. It consists of four quadrants: Open Self, Blind Self, Hidden Self, Unknown Self.  The Open Self is what others know about you and you know too.  Blind Self is what others know about you, but you don’t.  Hidden Self is what others don’t know about you, but you do.  Unknown Self is what others don’t know about you, and you don’t either.
8. 10 Types of Difficult People – What are some difficult behaviors that might cause others to think of you as a difficult person?  If you know what these patterns are you can change them or respond more effectively.  In Dealing with People You Can’t Stand: How to Bring Out the Best in People at Their Worst , Dr. Rick Brinkman and Dr. Rick Kirschner identify 10 types of difficult people patterns: Tank, Sniper, Know-It-All, Think-They-Know-It-All, Grenade Person, Yes Person, Maybe Person, Nothing Person, No Person, Whiners.
9. The 16 Myers-Briggs Type Indicators – The Myers-Briggs type indicator (MBTI) is a lens for understanding your behavior based on four pairs of preferences:  extraversion vs. introversion, sensing vs. intuition, thinking vs. feeling, and judgment vs. perception.  Extraversion and introversion are where you draw energy from.  Sensing and intuition are how you gather and perceive information.  Thinking and feeling are how you make decisions.  Judging and perception are how you relate to the outside world.
10. Discover your “Why.” Why do you do what you do?   When you know your purpose, you know when you’re on path or when you’re off and it’s easier for you to summon your inner strength and live your values.  It’s also a way to keep your thinking, feeling, and doing congruent.  See Discover Your Why.

Photo by Tina Keller.