The zero habit

Try taking your car and driving off, simply driving, “with no certain destination”: your fuel will run out and you'll have spent time and energy getting to... nowhere! You might enjoy the ride, but it's hard to contemplate the road when you don't know exactly where you want to go (or are going to go).

It's the same with life: either you know where you want to go, or you can't even complain about where life has taken you, since you didn't clearly know where you wanted to go. “Let life take me, life takes me”... it's an excellent slogan to sing at a barbecue or a get-together with friends, but THINK: how many successful people do you know who have actually achieved their success by following a line of thought and conduct like this? I don't know (some take this line AFTER they have already achieved success and, in a programmed way, when everything is going well and is on track in their life, career and finances, they apparently start to live a life “without too many strings attached”...). The reasoning is simple: you can only choose paths, plan efforts, join forces and achieve something if you clearly know what that something is!

That's why, before you start changing your habits and thus changing your life (*), I suggest that you take a large, blank piece of paper (it could be cardboard) and start putting your life PURPOSES on it; purposes are big things, like helping others, being happy, getting rich, etc. Don't worry about whether or not your purposes are feasible at this point in your life: remember that they represent where you want to go and this is beyond reality, as it should be. And there's no right number for them, okay? Just don't force your mind: when no more purposes come to mind, move on to the next stage: many people will be surprised to discover only one or two purposes, BUT it's a great relief to know that the beacon that should guide your efforts has been identified!

Now, write down your life goals, following the same steps and suggestions you used for your purposes: you'll see that you have a lot more goals in life, since goals are a bit more direct, for today, tomorrow, the week, the month, the year, the decade; goals represent where you want to be in a more tangible way and many are even material. And once you've listed them, there's the first filter you should apply (but only after no more goals have popped into your head, okay?): which goals are directly in line with your purposes (the top priorities, remember)? Because these should remain on your list “for the moment” and the others, perhaps rethought and perhaps “left for a second moment”.

Have any of your goals included something like “improving my health” or “taking good care of myself” or anything like that? Great! Then in a way you were already “in the spirit” of this book and you're sure to find some very useful tips here on how to succeed, especially in this goal (which leads to the others). But if you haven't “aimed” for anything in health so far, don't worry: in order to do what you want in life, get where you want to go and enjoy your moments, your path to your goals and the success you eventually achieve, you certainly need to be alive, right? But more than alive: in the best possible conditions of well-being to enjoy the hard-earned rewards, right? So, if living well necessarily means being well in body + mind + spirit (we'll explain this more in the course of this book), you've already understood that EVERY goal of yours involves seeking health, haven't you? And this is basically only possible by adopting and maintaining healthier lifestyle habits.

Remember from now on that every living being faces distractions, antagonists and obstacles along the way... But no fall defeats us when we always try to get up, better - and having goals and purposes makes this, getting up and moving on, better and even more motivated, easier: it's like having a lighthouse, a “light at the end of the tunnel”, making it easier for us when we want to get through the fog!

Once you've identified your goals and objectives, the next step is to plan: after all, if you already know where you want to go, now it's important to know how. Planning is crucial so that you invest your time and energy as wisely and usefully as possible, including as many obligations and activities as you really need in your schedule. Remember that, as we get older, time and energy aren't left over... They're missing, and it's up to you to use them wisely so that you don't stop doing what you really need to do and avoid spending time and energy on things that aren't that productive or useful (you know the metaphor of filling the bucket with big stones before the small ones and only after that with the sand and lastly with the water, where the big stones are what matter most in your life?) My suggestion here is that you draw a schedule for your standard week, where the rows show your timetable and the columns your days of the week - this will prevent “resource eaters” such as delays, forgetfulness and, above all, wasting time and energy on things that aren't a priority, things that are so damaging to anyone who really wants to improve their habits and thus improve their life. It will initially be blank, and you should fill it in as follows:

• Red: write or color in red the blocks corresponding to the days of the week on which you have essential commitments and whose schedule cannot be changed. For example, your working hours and days, your sleeping times, when you eat your main meals, etc.

• Yellow: write down or color in yellow your important commitments, which need to be carried out but can have flexible schedules; however, they need to be kept. For example, your exercise schedule, your church schedule, etc.

You'll see that several tasks linked to your goals (or that you simply want to do in your routine, even for leisure) are still left out on your side list: that's where they come in

• Green: write down or color in green the commitments and activities that you think should be carried out (because of your goals) but which don't yet have a timetable or that you haven't thought of yet. For example, your time with your family, your leisure activities, your weekly day and time for planning activities (yes, I recommend you have this time so that you have fewer unforeseen events or have time available to resolve them).

• Blue: write down or color in blue everything else that's in your sidebar and hasn't yet been covered in your routine as to when it should be done (only if there's still room and without “squeezing out”/compromising the yellow or red commitments).

Understand that there will be mixed blocks, i.e. with two different characterizations: for example, you may have to be physically at work at certain times, but you can “fit in” times for meditation, snacks in between, reading something (I just suggest that “your boss” doesn't see this plan of yours, or he'll know that you're fitting a lot of things into “working hours”! lol).

Now that you know what to do and when to do it, another very important stage of planning is necessary: how to do it. To do this, it's essential that you get quality information: go online (look for good websites), exchange experiences (social networks or even in person), ask accessible experts, reflect, research, reason - after all, every problem-solving process should ideally have three parts, the first being to recognize the problem and its characteristics (know the enemy), the second to plan how to solve it, and the third (and most important, with which we should spend most of our time and energy) to set out to apply the best strategies, planned and chosen, to solve it.

Don't be too hasty: those who skip stages end up facing more difficulties and unforeseen events and, as a result, end up demotivated and reaping worse results. Go at your own pace, but always be progressing: after all, if most of life is a journey and not a destination, let's all always be “walking”, evolving, right?

Finally, when you know what you want to achieve, where you want to get to, and more or less when and how to do it, now you have to exercise focus, discipline and perseverance, with the necessary patience (good results rarely come overnight... After all, what you have built up or destroyed over years is unlikely to be fully corrected in a matter of days, don't you agree?), so that, with your strength, time and energy well invested, positively applied (optimistically: those who believe in themselves and do their bit, in something that is really beneficial to them, can only succeed, sooner or later. On the other hand, those who don't believe in themselves start every day “more in difficulty”, “more defeated”, by themselves...) reap the results they deserve, productively: improving their lifestyle habits and, as a result, reaping body + mind + spirit in better conditions to succeed in everything that depends on health.

Got it? So now it's up to you: identify your purposes and goals in life, read this book carefully, plan/program yourself to fit good lifestyle habits into your daily routine, don't give up when obstacles come your way and, all in all... cheers!

* Talmud (Excerpt) :

Pay attention to your THOUGHTS,
for they will become your words.

Pay attention to your WORDS,
because they will become your actions.

Pay attention to your ATOS,
because they will become your habits.

Pay attention to your HABITS,
because they will become your character.

Pay attention to your CHARACTER,
for he will become yours DESTINATION.