Living By Principles vs. Habit

Hey guys, welcome back to Journey Principles and Whiteboard Lessons. In this video we're going to talk about how principle based living can help you move forward and how to avoid those negative habits that have kept you stuck far too long. So stay tuned.

Alright guys. So one of the things that I quickly realized back in my early days, if you will, is, is how much I was staying stuck in repetitive bad behaviors on my part. For instance, no one ever actually taught me how to use money and make money work for me rather than me work for it. No one ever taught me what it's like to actually take the time to choose someone who can actually add value to my life rather than some meaningless relationship. Unfortunately, that wasn't going to take me anywhere. And when it all comes down to it, we all have a complacency, if you will, to kind of focus on habit based living, meaning you are focused on reactions rather than choosing intentional principles that help you, guide you, move you forward. For example.

Okay, so here's what I mean by that. I like to think of principle based living, if you will, as a train running on a train track. Okay? A train is never going to go anywhere different than where that train track takes it. So principals are the train tracks. They help us take our life down the right track or down the wrong track. Let's go ahead and take time to break down habits and principles and see which one actually adds the most value. Here's what I mean. I like to think of principles specifically as a train on a train track. Your life being the train, the train track being the principles that guide your train to where it's supposed to be. You can either take a train off a cliff or you can take a train up the mountains and into the promised land, so to speak. Okay, so it's important to know what principles we're using, how to apply them, and then how to use them to kind of carry us forward.

So when you use principle based living specifically, here are some benefits that you can kind of count on to help you really kind of get unstuck and help you become unstoppable move forward. Here we go. 1. Principles make choices before you even have to. What I mean by that is once you make a principal choice, meaning if I'm going to focus on living a life of integrity and honesty, then every single time that I have an opportunity to be dishonest or showcase a low level of integrity, I don't even have to think about it. The decision's already made because I'm living a life based on a Principle of honesty, okay? Offers predictable action steps, okay? If you want predictable action steps, then principles are the way to go. Primarily because habits, unfortunately, especially bad habits or bad forces of habits, unfortunately, never give the opportunity to know where you're heading because it's all reaction. So you're always going and getting the reaction piece rather than actually knowing, hey, look, this is the principle, these are the choices, this is the action step, and this is the result I'm looking for, okay? That's why principle based living can be so important. Let's look at another one. Reduces the effect of Murphy's Law. How many of you have ever taken the time to get smacked upside the face with Murphy's Law? Meaning all of a sudden the tire goes flat, the car breaks down, the baby's sick, you work in extra hours, you're doing all these different things all at one time, and all of it makes you feel more overwhelmed, more anxious, and less fulfilled. When you live by principles, right? Specifically honesty, integrity, commitment, diligence, work ethic, all of those different things, just like generosity, for example, are principles that feed you. And when you do those things on a consistent, diligent basis, then what happens is you're able to get predictable results. Therefore, when Murphy comes to smack you in the face, you've already ripped the rug out from under him. He falls on his face. How good would it feel to finally get back at Murphy after all he's done to you, right? Think about that. If you live your life by principles, then you don't have to worry about Murphy because you've already taken Murphy's wind out of his sails and. And you never have to think about it again. All right, One more. Makes personal growth easy. I find that people. It's not that people don't want to grow or it's not that they don't want to move forward. What I find is that life is constantly going to nipping at their heels. In other words, all the things and all the seeds that they have sown to lead them to a negative lifestyle, right? They're currently reaping the harvest. In order to overcome that, then what you're going to have to do is you're going to have to use principles to begin to dig out, which will in turn make personal growth easier. In other words, the more time you spend on using this information and applying it to your life, the less difficult it will be to actually grow personally on a regular basis, no matter which of the eight pillars of life you decide to dig into. Oh, by the way, if you haven't checked out the eight Pillars of Life video. Make sure you do that. It's in the whiteboard lessons and the face to face videos. Okay, let's go ahead and knock out the habit side. Here's why I have chosen not to live a life by habit. Right? You see my little stick figure here that I drew? Okay. That guy is hanging on by a cliff, basically by the fingertips. Okay? If you're currently trying to achieve life mastery and you've been kind of having negative effects. Negative effects, negative effects, Negative effects. Then you probably feel like you're actually going through a struggle season where you feel like you're always holding on by your fingertips, right? A lot of times that comes down to really two areas, finances and relationships. More often than not, people feel like they're barely hanging on, okay? It's because you're not choosing your direction. You're letting life happen to you rather than you telling your life where you want it to go. So we want to make sure that you are telling your life where to go. And here's what kinds of things happen when you don't do that and you focus on living your life by reactionary habits. First of all, it limits your ability to make good choices. Why? Because you're being forced to make choices in a split second. You're not actually having being able to take the time to do some diligence and think through your decision making process, right? A young man came to me just recently, hey, look, I need to make some quick money. Well, there's lots of different ways to make quick money, right? Here's what I told him. Why don't you take the time to actually figure out which role, which job, which hobby, one of those things that you can earn extra money based on your time and talents? Not based on, hey, look, here's the first thing that comes to me. Because the first thing that comes to you may not actually be the best thing for you, but if you're not living by principles, you won't know the difference and you'll make a bad decision, which means you get a bad result, which means you stay stuck. And that's the last thing we want. We don't want you stuck. Okay? So let's hit the next one. Amplifies chaos. I find that people that live a life just like I used to. Now I'm no better than you guys, right? I learned this stuff the hard way, which is why I'm like, please don't do it this way. Please do it this way, right? I learned the hard way that when I didn't do what I was supposed to do, it amplified chaos because my decisions were not able to actually come to full reality in the way that I wanted them to. My outcomes were never the way I wanted because I didn't take the time to plan the actions. Right? Chaos is formed when principles are not applied. Let me say that again. Chaos is formed when principles are not applied. How can you apply life giving principles and avoid chaos together? Consider that. Alright, next one. When you live a life by reactionary habits, guess what you do? You set up the nice little brass walkway and you take that red carpet and you just kick it and that red carpet just rolls down the hill. You literally put out a red carpet for Murphy to get you. And you don't want to do that, do you? I bet you're tired of having life smack you in the face. I bet you're tired of not giving where you want to go. I bet you're tired of not getting the promotion you want or making the kind of money you want or having the relationships you want.

This is the way to get there. Stop living a life by reactionary habits and start using principle based living to help you make decisions that matter. So you can live a life of your dreams and actually live a life that actually adds value to you day in and day out. I'm able to wake up every single day with intentionality on purpose and with passion to come in here and hopefully give you something that you can use to change your life today. Alright, last one. This is what happens when you don't use principle based living. Increases the chances of staying stuck. I've just spent the last several minutes explaining how you can stay stuck by living by reactionary habits. Right?

The goal is, is to have a principle. So let's do that. Step one, Principle. Okay? Step two. Choice.

Three. Action.

Result.

That's it. Choose the principle. Are you going to live by diligence? Are you going to live by honesty? Are you going to live by integrity? Right? Those are elements of principle based livings. And I'll make sure that I get with Connor and will take the time to actually give you a complete rundown of of principles of eat in every single pillar to help you begin to win at your life that actually feed you every time you use them. But remember, if you want to break free from this entire cycle, right, because we want to live here. This is where we want to live. We want to get rid of this junk. Okay, Then what you have to do is first is you have to choose the principal that's going to feed you. You're going to have to actually take the time to bring this choice to fruition. In other words, I'm going to make a healthy choice. I'm going to take deliberate, intentional, focused action which is going to give me the result I've always wanted. Take the time. Take the time to really research the things that you want to live by. Take the time to discover what you stand for and what you stand against. Take the time to figure out how you can actually add value to someone else's life. Take the time to grow yourself and we'll see you on the next Whiteboard lesson. Take care.

That's about all the time we have for today's Whiteboard lesson. Hopefully that gave you some real value that you begin to put away right now. If you enjoyed today's video and you want to dig even deeper, I put together a free ebook called the Five Must have Principles for a Personal Breakthrough. If your goal is to make change in any area of your life, these five principles are absolutely necessary. You want to make that progress lasting. You can access that by clicking the link in the description below this video. Alright, you're up.