Successful people mostly exactly know how to be successful. Success is rarely just luck, it is mostly the result of hard work and planning behind. They have a plan A, minimum also a plan B and they are generally not scared about making failures. They take them as an extra free lesson about how to avoid doing things and as a reason to adapt their plans.

For keeping focus on these ambitious plans, daily routines to strengthen body, mind and soul are important- they are the essential good habits. So, getting up 5:00, doing your workout, having a healthy breakfast, structure the upcoming day and week, prepare for work, getting the latest news, break and walk during the day, evening routines, planned meetings, or calling your family and network, reading interesting books, yoga sessions, prepare to sleep and getting enough sleep is like being part of the DNA when having these routines for a longer time.

People who try that and do that for a longer time will feel better and have enough energy for keeping focus on whatever they want to achieve. And at the end of the day, when they did all what they wanted to, normally they feel even much happier than with an unstructured day. These habits are our framework where we can keep moving on one side and also digest when things happen that did not go according to a plan. 

So far the theory. And how does it look like in reality?

These habits are like the medicine for us. They even can replace medicine like blood pressure aids, painkillers or at least reduce the need of them. And like with almost every medicine, e.g. pain killers, antibiotics, cardiovascular, or cancer medicine – everything is a matter of the correct dose. Taking too less does not have a significant effect – too many painkillers can make you addicted, too much blood pressure medicine is even life-threatening!

I personally think this is the same with good habits. When we are successful with our good habits, we want even to do more. The result is to over-structure the day, and there is even no space for flexibility, or urgent topics that come up unexpected. 

Also, when you plan to do every morning a 10km run, and one day you can’t because of a small injury, you feel bad like not achieving the goals of the day. And besides, running 10km every day is not healthy for most of us on the long term J

The result is feeling unsatisfied and de-motivated. When that happens from time to time, it does not make a difference. We have just to consider that not everything goes according to plan. But for some it is hard to accept. Not accepting and still running with an injury will lead to results that we do not wish. And even worse – not achieving on long term makes de-motivated. It could be the start of a downward spiral.

I know – one of the most famous sentences of Schwarzenegger is: “your day has 24 hours, and you just need 6 hours of sleep - so plenty of time to do everything what you want to achieve!”. I personally agree to the day which has 24 hours J, and when we sleep 6-8 hours and work for our employer 8-10 hours, 1 additional hour of workout etc. there are still plenty of hours free to be planned.

But please: do not plan every single minute or single hour! Our body and our soul are not robots, we are different from day to day. Listen to your body, also leave some spare time for the unexpected, let yourself be surprised by the things that were just not planned to get some fresh ideas.

And then you will see how great it is to just keep on going from time to time 😉

Cheers,

Marko