Category Archives: Atomic Habits

Live Every Single Today

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“I have fought the good fight, I have finished the race, I have kept the faith.” ~ Apostle Paul, 2 Timothy 4:6-8

It’s important to live every single day without regret, with clear goals and with purpose

Bronnie Ware, an Australian palliative carer, wrote a book called The Top Five Regrets of the Dying. In it, she describes the five most common wishes she heard from her soon-to-depart clients.

  • I wish I’d had the courage to live a life true to myself, not the life others expected of me. Stringently adhering to cultural norms at the expense of your own passions will result in disappointment and bitterness.
  • I wish I hadn’t worked so hard. Time is non-refundable so if you spend it working, then you can’t spend it doing more meaningful things.
  • I wish I’d had the courage to express my feelings. It is only by being open and honest about your thoughts and feelings can you form genuine bonds with other people.
  • I wish I’d stayed in touch with my friends. It is dispiriting to be disconnected from those who truly understand you and accept you as you are.
  • I wish I had let myself be happier. The expectations and opinions of others should not prevent you from being happy with who you are. Moreover, happiness can be found in the journey, not just the destination, which you often never reach.

Another regret heard most often is:

I wish I’d taken better care of my health.  Most people do not think about their health until they experience a health challenge.  And at that point, we  make promises to ourselves that if we get better we’ll do a better with our health and well-being. But, I t shouldn’t take a major health challenge to get us to prioritize and focus on our health, fitness and diet. Your body must be your major priority and should be cared for. Nourish it with healthy food, exercise it daily and get a sufficient amount of sleep. Small healthy habits every day will compound and make a big difference over the long-term.

Never give up on yourself

Life and how you live it everyday is a choice. It is your life. Choose consciously, choose wisely and choose honestly. Choose happiness and focus on what is good and positive. Always be grateful.

References:

  1. https://www.psychologytoday.com/us/blog/life-s-biggest-decisions/202106/the-6-most-common-regrets-people-experience
  2. https://www.forbes.com/sites/ericjackson/2012/10/18/the-25-biggest-regrets-in-life-what-are-yours/?sh=63f5f3f6488

Atomic Wealth Building Habits

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“You do not rise to the level of your goals. You fall to the level of your systems.” James Clear, a core philosophy of Atomic Habits:

“An atomic habit is a little habit that is part of a larger system. Just as atoms are the building blocks of molecules, atomic habits are the building blocks of remarkable results,” writes James Clear, author of the best selling book, Atomic Habits.

Applying the principles and philosophies of Atomic Habits to your wealth building, money management and achievement of financial freedom can grow into life-altering outcomes.

Focusing on little habits repeated over a long period of time is how to create good habits, break bad ones, and get 1 percent better every day.

Habits are the compound interest of self-improvement. Getting 1 percent better every day counts for a lot in the long-run. “It is only when looking back two, five, or perhaps ten years later that the value of good habits and the cost of bad ones becomes strikingly apparent,” writes Clear.

Thus, habits are a double-edged sword. They can work for you or against you, which is why understanding the details is essential.

Small changes often appear to make no discernible difference in the short term until you cross a critical threshold. The most powerful outcomes of any compounding process are delayed. You need to be patient. “Many of the choices you make today will not benefit you immediately,” Clear explains.

If you want better results, then forget about setting goals. Focus on your system instead. “You do not rise to the level of your goals. You fall to the level of your systems,” stresses James Clear. “Goals are good for setting a direction, but systems are best for making progress,”

Habits Shape Your Identity (and Vice Versa) There are three levels of change: outcome change, process change, and identity change.

Focus on who you wish to become

The most effective way to change your habits is to focus not on what you want to achieve, but on who you wish to become, writes Clear. Your identity emerges out of your habits. Every action is a vote for the type of person you wish to become.

Becoming the best version of yourself requires you to continuously edit your beliefs, and to upgrade and expand your identity. Your behaviours are usually a reflection of your identity. “What you do is an indication of the type of person you believe that you are either consciously or non consciously.,” Clear says.

The real reason habits matter is not because they can get you better results (although they can do that), but because they can change your beliefs about yourself.

A habit is a behavior that has been repeated enough times to become automatic. “Every action you take is a vote for the type of person you wish to become. No single instance will transform your beliefs, but as the votes build up, so does the evidence of your new identity,” said James Clear.

The ultimate purpose of habits is to resolve the routines, challenges and problems of daily life with as little conscious energy and effort as possible.

References:

  1. https://jamesclear.com/atomic-habits
  2. https://waymakerfinance.com.au/blog/applying-atomic-habits-to-your-finances

The Power of Faith

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“Faith consists in believing when it is beyond the power of reason to believe.” ~ Voltaire

What is the Power of Faith?

One example of the “power of faith” is to imagine that you’re a passenger on a Boeing 747 jetliner and trusting that the law of physics applies regarding the lifting force generated by aircraft wings are sufficient to allow an inanimate cylindrical object that has a mass of several thousand kilograms to sustain controlled flight at an altitude of over thirty thousand feet for several hours and several thousand miles.

Faith is believing and trusting that aeronautical engineers properly designed the passenger jetliner, that manufactures, such as Boeing or Airbus, correctly assembled the technological complex flying machine, and that government agencies, like the FAA, reliably certified the jetliner as safe you’re currently flying on as a passenger.

Finally, faith is accepting that the pilots at the controls are adequately trained and experienced to fly the multi-engine passenger jet, that the maintenance technicians were competent and skilled in their duties to maintain the aircraft systems and prevent catastrophic failure while the aircraft is in flight, and that the operations watch standers are cognizant and alert to ensure no other aircraft will share the same volume of airspace at the same time with the jetliner in which you’re a passenger.

Bottomline, most things we do in life, such as flying the friendly skies, are based solely on conscious or subconscious faith.

Faith is believing, trusting and accepting the unknown or that which you cannot know for certain. In a way, faith is believing and trusting what you cannot be entirely be certain about.

It’s the complete and absolute trust or confidence in someone or something. Educator Dr. Mary McLeod Bethune was quoted as saying, “I plunged into the job of creating something from nothing…. Though I hadn’t a penny left, I considered cash money as the smallest part of my resources. I had faith in a living God, faith in myself, and a desire to serve.”

Believing and having faith in yourself will ensure you achieve your loftiest goals. You can say that faith is the key to living a better and more fulfilling life.

“Faith is the first factor in a life devoted to service. Without it, nothing is possible. With it, nothing is impossible.” ~ Mary McLeod Bethune

Patience is a Virtue

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“The most useful form of patience is persistence. Patience implies waiting for things to improve on their own. Persistence implies keeping your head down and continuing to work when things take longer than you expect.” ~James Clear, author of Atomic Habits

Patience, along with effective habits, are a necessity and essential virtue in order to make changes and improvements in your life.

As James Clear points out: “Your outcomes are a lagging measure of your habits. Your physical fitness is a lagging measure of your eating and training habits. Your knowledge is a lagging measure of your learning habits. Your net worth is a lagging measure of your financial habits.”

Effectively, you get in your life what you repeat over the long term.

And, patience is imperative in investing.

Billionaire investor Warren Buffett reminds investor regarding the importance of patience when he quipped that: “Successful investing takes time, discipline, and patience. No matter how great the talent or effort, some things just take time. you can’t produce a baby in one month by getting nine women pregnant.”

“The key to everything is patience. You get the chicken by hatching the egg, not by smashing it.” ~ Arnold H. Glasow

References:

  1. https://www.purposefairy.com/75545/quotes-on-patience/
  2. https://bizadda360.com/quotes/warren-buffett-quotes