A new paradigm of shaping personality – The power of forging sustainable habits

“After all, throughout history, the glory of our countries it has always been the narrative of remarkable people, and, that divided people into two categories of followers and leaders”. “Unknown”

Imagine someone offers you a chocolate while you are on a regime the temptation steering straight on your face – the delicious chocolate bam of sugar. Your regular SCAM trying to draw from your willpower and say NO. Two minutes later if not sooner the gratification of eating chocolate is gone. Beyond everything, a chocolate won’t screw your regime. However, if the occurrence start to repeat for the second and, perhaps, few more times, you may become vulnerable with less resistance to the temptation to stand on your commitment and, eventually you may end-up accepting the offer – That’s where the difference of people start to emerge.

People who tend to have a great quality of self-control, and stick with their long-term plans over immediate gratification – they are the ones with an ocean of charisma and presence who can influence other people and be a great leader. This requires your self-discipline, the determination to stay on the course until you attain your objectives – even when no one is watching you. To derive such quality, you must have a holistic approach to form a healthy and sustainable habit – push your boundaries and take a massive action, regardless of your feelings at that very current moment, physically or emotionally. This will create a virtue of discipline and commitments and you grow stronger over a time.

Being able to perform, keep your commitments, promises and deadlines is essential to success both in life and business. Building a character that associate with getting tick the boxes in a very systematic and methodical way requires discipline.

Most of us lower our standard – why? I guess, who you spend your time with, who you become. What is your habit? habits form the chain of your character, who you desire to become, and ultimately, who you end-up living your life. But how we could build a long-lasting and successful habits? For instance, when you want to lose weight you go on a diet for a certain period of time and take a massive action or, ideally you alter your lifestyle, the way of eating, detoxifying the environment you have been surrounded with , and stay on the course for a long term. The same strategy applies to form a habit – we must go on a mental regime to condition ourselves, and resist with short term gratification in order to gain our long-term objectives. These behaviours will support your aim and strengthen your self-discipline.

A study conducted by Funder, Block and Block, who found the two types of delay of gratification measures at age four projected uniformly positive traits later in childhood: “Boys who delayed gratification tended to be independently and consistently described as deliberative, attentive, and be able to concentrate, reasonable, reserved, cooperative, and generally manifesting an ability to modulate motivational and emotional impulses. Boys who didn’t delay gratification, by contrast, were irritable, restless, and fidgety, aggressive, and generally not self-controlled. Girls who delayed gratification were independently and consistently described as intelligent, reliable, resourceful, and competent. Girls who didn’t delay tended to go to pieces under stress, to be victimised by other children, and to be easily offended, resentful, holding grudges, sulky and, whiny".

Habits, attitudes, actions, and perhaps skills are the fundamentals of shaping our character and bring out the best out of everything that happens in our life.

Research shows that it takes from 21 to 254 days to form a new habit. On average it takes 66 days to create a new behaviour and make it autonomous - 66 days later it takes less discipline to maintain the habit – as the process becomes automatic without thinking of it.

Charles Duhigg the author of the power of habit “what we do why we do in life and business” breaks down a habit in three factors:

• Queue

• Action

• Reward

The brain follows the simple process when sees a familiar queue, it makes you perform the associate action, usually with no or little consciousness in order to attain the reward craves the most.

Each and every one of us has a multitude of personality within us – we are ambitious and easy going, reserved and outgoing, soft and strong. We usually engage and contribute in various environments and circumstances with unalike people. But what would it be happen when you fall back on traits that you are most comfortable with– particularly when crisis happens? I guess, you settle for what’s familiar, generating results that leaves you to crave more instead of re-structuring the equation of your behaviour through elimination of your bad and/or old habits - coming out of your comfort zone, and learn how to take the reign of things and anticipate what would come along the way. And that requires your curiosity to dig beneath of your natural talents and gifts. More importantly, old habits must be replaced with new habits – only breaking old habits will leave a large hole in our routines, and, the absence of old habits become more perceptible and that may creep back in.

The more you can expose yourself to different ways of executing things in different environment, learning and gaining confidence in uncertainty, the more adaptable you become, and it gives a room to open to new ideas and anticipate changes.

According to Andresen and Gronau adaptability in the field of organizational management can in general be seen as an ability to change something or oneself to fit into occurring changes. In ecology, adaptability has been described as the ability to cope with unexpected disturbances in the environment. The process of trial and error at new things will help to expand your capacity to respond to various situations and, also, enhance your decision-making process to adapt new habits.

Lastly, we also should not forget that celebrating accomplishments and rewarding yourself is an absolute crucial to which keeps your environment fun, and strengthen your determination to keep the momentum going.