We think of habits as bad – smoking, the extra glass of wine, forgetting to reply to emails, calling Mother.

But habits can also be good and good habits are the way to success – the athlete who trains every day, the A student burning the midnight oil, the best-selling author who crosses out every cliché and redundant adjective.

In a TED broadcast, Matt Cutts describes how he started to set himself simple tasks that he would carry out every day for 30 days, and how, by sticking to them, he has grown more confident and outgoing. He explains that by making small strides rather than occasional bold leaps to achieve these personal goals, it has brought him greater satisfaction and closer to discovering his true potential.

Starting a new routine is the hardest part, especially if you want to change your old bad habits into a new good habits. By setting reachable goals, it is easier to keep going – Lao-tsu said a journey of a thousand miles begins with the first step. You feel good about yourself doing what you set out to do and able to set more difficult challenges.

Matt Cutts’s broadcast encouraged me to go back to my Spanish exercise books. I have never gone beyond a rudimentary conversation level and have often given up when the finishing line was almost in view, a common mistake. Good habits require determination.

What I decided to do was learn 10 new words a day by creating 3 questions that contained those 10 words, for example:

How long does it take your children to get to school?
Where did you go for your holidays last year?
When are you going to visit me in London?

These questions contain basic words. Each day for 30 days, I added questions with words that are less common but essential if I was ever going to speak Spanish with a degree of fluency – for example: Do you believe small changes are sustainable and essential in reaching your goals?

Sustaining Good Habits

I had read that people in everyday conversation in Spain only use 1000 words. By learning 10 words a day for 30 days, I would have 300 new words and be one third of the way up the mountain.

Matt Cutts’ first goal was easy: he decided to take a photograph every day for 30 days. Looking back at those photographs now, he recalls exactly where he was and what he was doing that day – when, so often in our lives, 30 days can slip by and we remember nothing at all.

Having reached his goal, Matt took on greater and greater tasks: he gave up sugar, biked to work and, a year later, trekked up Mount Kilimanjaro, the highest mountain in Africa, something he says he would never have had confidence to do without creating and sustaining good habits.

He also wrote a novel in 30 days which, he admitted, ‘was awful.’ But, then, novels are not liked other challenges. What Matt does have is a first draft. He just needs another dozen or so 30 days challenges to edit, re-write and finish it. I have no doubt he will and, meanwhile, wish me bon suerte: I’m on the 15th day of my 10-words a day challenge.

Please share with the links below:

The post How Good Habits Are the Way to Success appeared first on Erotic romance writer Chloe Thurlow.