Moshe’s Blog

How to Stop Letting Bad Habits Get in the Way of Your Success and Happiness

Start with Stopping Bad Habits

“Let’s figure out what habits get in the way of you being the leader you want to be,” I tell executives I coach. “Then we’ll come up with ways for you to stop doing them and make space for more productive behaviors.”

What I’ve found is that for most people, first stopping bad habits makes them far more likely to succeed at starting good habits. The habits you stop may be interrupting others, hiding in your office, or avoiding priorities by drowning in emails and meetings – whatever gets in the way of you being fully present and focused on what matters most.

It’s like having a “Not To Do” list to go along with your “To Do” list. For example, health tech CEO Jon was having a hard time completing his top “To-Do” – designing their new growth strategy. So he added the top bad habits that got in the way onto a “Not To Do” list. He committed to stop demanding perfection from his team on their growth ideas and to stop going to meetings that were not essential. Stopping these habits created an opportunity to do the important strategy work that needed his energy.

1. What are the most important priorities for you to focus on for your organization’s well-being ?

2. What bad habits get in the way of you achieving them?

3. What helps you get back on track?

5 Amare Steps to Stop Bad Habits Now and Build Greater Success

1. Find your very top priority. Take a deep breath and write down the single most important thing for you, in your particular role and with your unique genius, to focus on. Repeat with additional priorities as you like.

2. Find your very best bad habits. List the top three behaviors that consistently get in the way of making progress on those priorities or prevent you from putting your time and energy into them.

3. Make your very best “stop” rules. Make a “Not-To-Do” rule to stop yourself from engaging in each of those bad habits. Be very specific about the limitations you put in place. Make them realistic. Start small to build success.

4. Come up with replacement habits. Make a list of what you will think or say or do in place of the habit you stopped. Practice in your mind and out loud, then in real life with low-risk situations.

5. Track your progress. Bad habits are often deeply ingrained and hard to break. So, when you notice you’ve made a little progress, track it. And if you fall back, forgive yourself and go for it again. See if you can find what situations and stimuli make it easier and which make it harder.

Identifying, owning, and stopping bad habits is one of the keys to successful love-powered leadership. It will help you be the kind of authentic leader that others want to be around.

Keynotes for Organizations Ready to Succeed Differently

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