These are the best habits for your career. Do what you say you are going to do, build trust in your relationships, listen, live and lead with integrity. Most importantly, dream big and don't let anyone hold you back.
To really be fulfilled and achieve to your potential, you need to do the things that inspire, drive and energize you. Most of us know that. The real challenge, is how do we achieve it? How do we manage to find a career that ideally fits in with the things that our closest to our heart? It is also of the utmost importance to avoid career limiting habits.
Habits for your career
Start small by building the sustainable habits that will give you the freedom to follow your dreams.
Top 5 habits for a successful career
1. Dream big
If you aren't where you want to be professionally or personally, the temptation to dampen your life's ambition is strong. In fact, others may advise you to go conservative with your dreams to soften the blow should you fall short. While setting big goals for your career doesn't ensure you'll reach them, not setting them will almost guarantee you don't. Historically, those who have achieved the most are the ones who set out to do huge things against all odds, logic and probability. Focus on identifying those negative career habits that are holding you back.
When was the last time something you sought to accomplish gave you chills or goose bumps? When you've found your true compelling stretch vision, there's magic behind it. It will help you navigate the route to get there and power through the toughest obstacles. Still, this vision has to be so exciting to you personally that nothing short will be acceptable. A sensible or practical goal will not get you there.
'There is no passion to be found in playing small. In settling for a life that is less than the one you are capable of living' - Nelson Mandela
2. Develop positive habits
Many of the bad decisions you make on a daily basis will be down to force of habit. Over the years, you will have done things in a certain way until they have become second nature to you. When the situation arises, you don’t think about it, you just resort to habit.
Start by sorting our your morning habits, get your day off to the perfect start.
Maybe you are always late for appointments, or you consistently work late. In some cases your bad habits might not appear to be a problem for you, but they are usually a problem for others. You need to replace the bad habits with positive habits.
To develop positive habits, you first need to identify your bad habits. Take a few moments to list all of the bad habits of which you are aware. I would also suggest asking some trusted friends, or family, to help you identify any bad habits which you may have missed. Once you feel you have a completed list, go through each habit and write down the long term effects of sticking with this habit. Then, identify a positive habit which you are going to implement in its place and make a plan for how you are going to implement that new habit.
Without my health, I am of little use to anyone; my family, my work, my community, and the list goes on. So, I have a big responsibility and interest in staying healthy. Here you will find the top five health habits you must adopt.
3. Integrity
Living with integrity is to live as your best self.
Every day you make agreements, both with yourself and with others. At the time of making agreements, you will generally intend on keeping that agreement but in a busy life that often proves to be easier said than done. It may not seem like a big thing when you fail to keep an agreement but every time you break an agreement, you erode a little of the trust between you and the other person. To live with integrity, requires that you keep your word so that you can build trusting and healthy relationships.
Keeping your agreements requires an effective personal productivity system whereby you capture all of your commitments so that you can then process them and act on them. One of the biggest mistakes that you can make when it comes to commitments is relying on your memory to keep track of your agreements. Instead of memory, you need a reliable system to record your commitments and the actions you need to take. That way, you don’t need to remember every single commitment; you just need to remember to check your system on a regular basis.
When you live with integrity, the benefits and the possibilities are endless.
4. Get the best out of others
If you want to build a healthy relationship with another person, the best place to start is by finding some way in which you can help them. It could be something as simple as taking a few minutes to listen to their needs.
When you have helped somebody, they see that you have value to offer and you can be trusted. With one quick action you will have taken giant strides towards creating a healthy, new relationship. Take a look at more great relationship advice here.
Each relationship must be seen as bidirectional. By helping others, you help them to feel good about themselves, and you are also helping yourself by creating a healthy new relationship.
You respect yourself by living in a manner which is consistent with your values, purpose and goals. These factors guide each decision that you make, thus allowing you to achieve more. You know that you can never truly succeed on your own so you offer the same level of respect to others. You focus on building healthy, supportive relationships which are based on mutual trust and respect. When you live with integrity, the benefits and the possibilities are endless.
5. Listen
Listening is the ability to accurately receive and interpret messages in the communication process. It is important to note that listening is key to all effective communication, without the ability to listen effectively messages are easily misunderstood – communication breaks down and the sender of the message can easily become frustrated or irritated.
If there is one communication skill you should aim to master then listening is it. Listening is so important that many top employers provide listening skills training for their employees. This is not surprising when you consider that good listening skills can lead to: better customer satisfaction, greater productivity with fewer mistakes, increased sharing of information that in turn can lead to more creative and innovative work.
Effective listening is a skill that underpins all positive human relationships, spend some time thinking about and developing your listening skills – they are the building blocks of success.
