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Posted over 4 years ago

Forget Opportunities Create Habits

“Opportunity only knocks once.”

It’s a cliche in our society. It's used in countless movies and tv shows, quoted thousands of times over. It’s a crutch for many people who cling to normalcy. It’s even misused by people who have the drive for success. There are motivated people in the world who run their professional lives like the equivalent of chicken with their head cut off frantically trying to find and listen for the opportunity that is knocking.

I’ve seen it in new entrepreneurs and investors where they are hyper vigilant on being able to recognize the “once in a lifetime opportunity” (also a horrible cliche) that will propel them to success. They never take the time to make deliberate choices that produce the results they want. They flutter around their spheres of influence seeing and listening to what everyone is doing in an attempt to find their ‘knock of opportunity’ through other people's habits. Never actually taking the time to create their own habits of success.

They fail to understand that if you use habits to perpetuate self improvement, improve your relationships, and exercise self care that opportunities are then attracted to you. Create habits that attract opportunities rather than focusing on finding the one or two opportunities.

Your daily choices that you make turn into the habits that determine the direction of your life.

Make habits to improve your mind, improve your knowledge, connect with your spouse, engage with friends, find connections in your professional life, etc. Here’s a few examples of what you can do to create your habits of success.

MORNING ROUTINE

I’ve talked about the importance of a morning routine in a prior blog so I won’t go into too much detail here. We’ll skim the cream off the top of the milk. Of course it’s a dairy reference, I’m from Wisconsin.

Set a morning routine where instead of watching the morning news you exercise, read, and have whatever your version of healthy breakfast is (Not Cocoa-Cocoa Puffs). Morning routines set the tone for your day and are the most overlooked portion of our days that can create not only success but true joy. Spending 2 hours in the morning doing what we enjoy that improves us puts our minds in a positive state before we begin the ‘real’ portion of the day. Don’t get caught up on the idea of having to rise early to have a good morning. You don’t have to mimic the people who get up at 3am, 4am. You can get up at 6am and likely still have 1-2 hours to run through your successful and happiness habits before the real world begins to wake.

IMPORTANT FIRST THEN EVERYTHING ELSE

Structure your days so you always do the tasks that have the potential to create massive change first rather than reacting to the urgent. There are few scenarios in this world that are urgent that can’t wait a few hours. Reserve the mornings to tackle the important tasks that will get you closer to your goals. Leave the urgent (and your email!) until you have devoted time to those tasks.

Also leave the routine items like errands, returning calls, and bookkeeping to the afternoon. I prefer to leave those for the last 2 hours of my day on alternating days. This provides you with maximum productivity for working on the important, handling the urgent and ending the day with the routine to make sure you stay on top of the day to day.

TOUCHDOWN AND SHUTDOWN WITH PURPOSE

An evening routine provides additional structure of joy but also sets the tone for the morning. If we have a crummy night, it will be harder to get up and do our ideal morning routine. We’ll likely sleep-in or opt for “chill activities” like Netflix or the morning news. So start the night before with having a shutdown protocol..I guess kind of like a computer.

First on the list should be handling household items that “put in a bug in your butt”. Hate dirty dishes in the sink? Get those done first. Smelly trash throw off your entire evening, then toss it. Get those 1-2 pesky things done that will mock you out of the corner of your eye if they aren’t done. Then move on to preparing yourself for the next day. Get your items ready for the following day. Clothing, documents, charge your devices, prep your on the go meals, and get ready for bed, etc.

Lastly, end with quiet items that begin to shut down your mind. Read, journal, meditate, ASMR videos...whatever puts your mind into a cool down mode. Like at the end of the workout where you’re supposed to allow your body to slowly cool its jets. Something that quiets your mind, relaxes your body and maybe even makes you sleepy.

Create habits like this and opportunities will find you in abundance. Then your biggest problem will be selecting the opportunities.

Corina Eufinger



Comments (1)

  1. Solid advice here. Putting energy into creating positive habits makes a lot of sense.