One Way to Form Habits That Lead to Success

Welcome to the Author Audience show, the podcast that helps you reach more people with your message, create a book, connect with your audience, change lives. Here's your host, Shelly Hitz.

Hi, my name is Shelly Hitz. I'm the owner of Author Audience Academy. I'm an author coach on a mission to help you reach more people with your message. And in today's training, I'm going to talk to you about one way to form habits to that lead to success. Now, we just finished the month of January, we just finished the first month of 2017, and January is a month we often think about goals. We often think about things we want to achieve. And you know, a lot of people set New Year's resolutions. Now, I don't believe in New Year's resolutions. I believe in setting goals. And if you followed me for any amount of time, you know, I believe in setting 90 day goals. So what we're gonna talk about is just about habits. And this is on my mind because, to be honest, I have some habits that need changing. And so I've been working on this and I've seen some things that are helping me and I wanted to share them with you as an author, as a writer. There are so many ways that small habits that you do consistently every day can lead you to success. Those small habits of having a power hour every week or a couple times a week to work on writing your book, that can allow you to finish your book. The small habits of doing marketing each day can lead to more sales. In fact, one of my author audience Academy members, Kim Steadman, she was just talking in the group today how she had gotten busy and stopped posting regularly on social media. And for her, you know, everyone, it's different. For her, I think it was Facebook and Pinterest, I can't remember exactly, but when she stopped posting, her sales stopped and she was getting consistent sales. When she started posting again, the sales picked up again. And so there's so many small, consistent actions and habits that can lead to success. And so I want to talk to you about that. But first of all, let's be honest. We have to be honest with ourselves. What are some good habits you want to create? And so I want you to pick one habit. What is one good habit you want to create? And what is one bad habit that you would like to break? I would love to hear from you. What are some of the habits that you are wanting to change in your life, but you have to really dig deep, be honest. And sometimes maybe we're not ready to change Something or we're not wanting to admit that it's an issue. For me personally, there have been several different habits that I've needed to change. One small thing is I have really soft teeth. I guess. I don't know. I get cavities really easily. And my dentist has wanted me to start a treatment of fluoride. It takes 10 minutes or five minutes in the morning, five minutes at night, but it's just easier for me to batch it. You guys know how I am on productivity. Batching, batching. And so, you know, it takes 10 minutes in the night three times a week. He's been telling me this for probably a year and a half. You need to do this. And every time I go, there's still, you know, a bunch of cavities that are close. They're watches. And, you know, this last time was the first time I didn't have a new cavity, but there's some that are very close. And he said, shelly, you could actually potentially reverse some of this damage if you would just do this fluoride treatment. And I finally was like, okay, I know I need to change that habit. That's a good habit I need to create. It could save me thousands of dollars eventually in dentist bills. And so what I did is I decided that I was gonna get serious about this. And I decided, you know, that's a habit that I want to break and a good habit I want to create. You know, you have to have a. Why? Like, you must go deeper for the motivation to change. So for me, it's like, I only have one set of teeth. My grandma lost all her teeth. Like, she had to have them all pulled out, and she had to have dentures when she was young, I think in her 30s. And I want to keep my teeth, you know, I mean, it is very expensive to always be getting work on my teeth done. I've spent thousands of dollars on my teeth recently. And so I have that motivation, okay? So I'm like, okay, I need to take care of my body. My body is God's temple. And though this is something that he's given me, I want to be a good steward of the money he's given me. And I finally was like, okay, I'm going to do this. So these are three ideas to create new habits that I implemented. And so the first thing is to connect it with something you already do every day. So one thing I've started to do for self care, I never, ever was a person that enjoyed a bath or a warm bath or. I mean, I'M a get it done type person. But in the last probably six to eight months, I've really just realized I need to have some self care sometimes in my life. And so at night, take. Taking an Epsom salt bath with like a lavender oil or something has been really good for me and it's been self care. So what I decided to do is to connect the fluoride treatment with my bath. The fluoride treatment needs to be 10 minutes and I, you know, a lot of times I spend about 10 minutes just soaking in the bath. So I decided I think I could do it at the same time. The, the second idea is to set a reminder on your phone. Most of us have our smartphones with us all the time, so set a calendar reminder, use the reminders app, whatever you need to do. So I set a reminder, a recurring reminder, and I decided Sundays, Tuesdays and Thursdays, because he wants me to do it three times a week would be the nights that I would make sure that I would take a bath, do my Flora treatment and just do it. And you know what? I have been doing it. The third idea is to have accountability. So, you know, we provide accountability for you in Author Audience Academy. In fact, here in just about a half an hour, I'm getting ready to go live in my private Facebook group for Author Audience Academy. And you know, we have accountability calls. We. I do a weekly accountability post. But you know, having accountability can really help you create a new habit. So I told my husband and I had some accountability, but oh my goodness, connecting it with something I was already doing and that was already something that I enjoyed and I knew and it was like I was doing, doing, kind of able to do both at the same time because I had something, I just had that thing in my teeth and while I was relaxing and it didn't interfere with the bath and it didn't. I don't know, it just works. It works. Something else that I've been doing is I've been having a little bit of neck and back pain recently. In the last seven months, I've really gotten into art and so I have an art studio. While I was really getting into lettering and I was doing it a lot during the day and I think it just eventually my muscles kind of started tightening up. So I've been trying to take care of myself. And anyways, I decided I need to do certain exercises that my chiropractor has given me. And I've been drinking tea more often in the mornings. So while my tea is getting made and I'm waiting for it to steep. I have about three to four minutes. That three to four minutes. Instead of standing there waiting for my tea, I'm doing my exercises. And you know what? It only takes three to four minutes to do the exercise he wants me to do. And I can do it by hooking it and connecting it with something I'm already doing every day. And guess what? I have been doing my exercises every day.

So it's really amazing what can happen. And, you know, setting a reminder. Now, these are just a few ideas. Some of these things may not work for what you want, habit you want to create, it may not work for you. But like, for instance, I'm trying to really eat better and not eat as much sugar because I just know I get so addicted to it and I crave it and crave it and crave it. And so. And I know it's not good for inflammation, which with my muscles and everything that I've been dealing with. Another option, another idea is to have a positive something else to replace that. So, you know what I'm going to do is I'm going to always make sure I have some sort of healthy bar, an alternative to a suite in my purse, and have something available at home all the time that I can just grab real quick if I have a craving. And it's an alternative that I can use now I'm just implementing this, but there's so many ways to create new habits. What is your favorite way to create a new habit? Let me know in the comments. I would love to hear from you. And as we close, I just wanna pray for you because ultimately, no matter what we're trying to do, I. I believe we should do everything we do to the glory of God. Amen. I want to pray for you. And he's the one that ultimately can help us to change. We can try all the behavioral modification in the world. That's a psychology term, a counseling term. That's like setting the timer and setting all these things. We can do all those things and we can still fail and we can still not succeed because there's something deeper. There's something deeper. It's connected to something deeper going on. And so sometimes it really requires us to get alone with God to pray, to ask him what is the root of this? I recently did some soul searching. Back in November, I went to a fasting and prayer retreat for only 24 hours. But God really revealed some deep things to me. And at the time, I was addicted to my phone and checking in Facebook and Email. And I have not been checking on Facebook and email on my phone since that time. That's like three months. I mean, it's crazy. Like it's never been like this for me because I finally got to the deeper issue. So what's that deeper issue? Let's pray. I'm gonna pray for you. I just pray that God gives you the clarity and shows you the plan to break those bad habits you want to break and create those new good habits you want to create. Because, you know, when we're writing and we're trying to fit things into our lives and you know, marketing, it can get overwhelming and sometimes we just simply need to create these things as habits into our lives. So let me pray for you. God, I just thank you for each person that is listening right now. I thank you for their desire to continue to grow. We're going to continue to grow until we reach heaven. And I just thank you that they have a desire to grow. I don't know personally right now all of the habits that they want to break and the habits they want to create. But, but Lord, you know them, you know their heart's desire. You know those things that even if they're not willing to admit it right now, that has a stronghold on them, that has a hold on them. And Lord, I just pray that as we just want to really glorify youy, we want to honor your with our physical bodies. So what we're doing with our physical bodies, the things we're eating, exercise, but also, Lord, glorify youy with our gifts and abilities, the writing and the, you know, the teaching and the encouraging and the ministry that you have given us through our books and through our writing. Lord, may we honor you with that. And so, Lord, I just pray that you would just help each person get to the root, help them to really see what it is that's holding them back. And I pray that you would bring breakthrough in Jesus name. And I pray that you would do an amazing work in their lives and I just thank you for them. In Jesus name. Amen. So I encourage you, if you have not already, sign up for my free seven day writing challenge. We talk a lot about developing habits for writing and how to find your sweet spot for writing so you can really get your first draft done. Until you have your first draft done, you don't have anything because you know you have to have that first draft done before you can self edit, before you can have it proofread, professionally edited, send it to a beta group, whatever, and so sign up for free@writingweek.com if you've already signed up. I appreciate if you would just share that resource with the writers in your life or those you know have a story to tell and I will see you next time. Bye Bye.

Thanks for listening to this episode of the Author Audience Show. Connect with us online@authoraudience.com where you'll find all the resources mentioned in today's episode. While you're there, grab Shelley's free video training on how to write and publish your book using her Six Step Ascent method. Join us again next week to learn how to reach your audience with your message.