Your Habits Control Your Money & Your Life

Posted On 9 May 2022

Last updated on April 6th, 2024

We are a product of our habits. There are reasons why some people have accumulated wealth, and there are reasons why others are broke. People tend to be overweight or healthy because of their habits.

Habits are like the individual strands that make up a mighty rope. On their own they can be easily broken, yet the rope is incredibly strong and almost impossible to break. We often decide to introduce a new habit into our lives only to discover that it did not stick and become a part of our life.

If we want to make some changes in our lives, we need to start by changing our habits. When we change our habits, we will start to see changes in our lives.

Habits That Stick

The book “Habits That Stick” Thibaut Meurisse wrote about how it can be best to work on developing one habit at a time. When we focus on a single habit at a time, we can have more success in turning that behavior into a habit. Besides focusing on just one habit, we need to make sure that we don’t miss a day. If we miss two days in a row, we are at risk of not developing that habit.

Benjamin Franklin worked on one character trait at a time. You can read about his self-development program in his autobiography. He had a list of thirteen character traits he wanted to develop. Each week he would focus on one trait. Then, he would rotate through the traits in a way that he would work on each one four times in a year.

Daily Dozen

I was first introduced to the concept of the “Daily Dozen” as an Amway distributor in the early 90’s. While it is a simple way to keep track of what you are doing and help keep you focused on what you need to do in order to develop good habits, it can be challenging to do.

The Daily Dozen made a significant impression on me. I kept the original copy that I was given for years! I used it while I was a distributor, and then when I was no longer a distributor, the Daily Dozen was put away – but not discarded.

Over the years I had created an Excel spreadsheet for the Daily Dozen. Then, it was put aside again. After starting Canoosa, I realized that I needed to do something to help me develop better habits. (Again!)

An App For You

I decided to see if there was an app that would work in a similar way. After some searching, I decided to try Loop Habit Tracker. This app works exactly the way I was hoping it would work!

The app, which shows up on the phone as “Habits” comes with no predefined habits. You get to enter the habits you want to work on developing. Habits can be color-coded. They can be either a checkmark or a number. Reminders are available as well.

Start Where You Are

We must start from where we are. Since you can use the app the way that works best for you, you can set it up the way you want. Personally, I have 13 habits I am working on. Why 13? It’s close to a dozen and they all fit on my phone screen.

If you wanted to start off with a couple habits and gradually add to them, you could do that. Again, the idea is to use the app to help you get better at the things you want to get better at doing on a regular basis.

Keep Improving

While the Habits app does not allow exporting or saving your data outside your phone, I am ok with that as I just use it to try to keep me on track – not something I’m going to look at for the whole year. When I hold the phone upright, I can see the last 5 days, and when I turn it sideways, I can see 11 days. That is enough for me to see my consistency.

The objective is to get better. If I am easily accomplishing everything in my habits app, either I have made them too easy or I am doing amazingly well. There are items on my app that I struggle with. At this point there are some things that I can only check off once per week. While that is not as good as I want to be, that is better than not doing it at all. These habits are what I want to develop. Accomplishing all my habits right from the start would mean that I am excellent and do not need to use the app.

You Can Start Again

Starting a new habit is great! A lot of people make their New Years Resolutions, yet they don’t become habits. We are not going to be perfect. If you are like me, you will fail with creating a habit. That is ok.

When we mess up, and we will, we need to learn how to pick ourselves up and start again. We are not in a race with anyone else – just ourselves. If we cheat a little with creating our habit, we are only cheating ourselves.

The reason for creating good habits in our lives is to improve our lives. So what if the improvement takes longer than we were hoping it would take? We need to give ourselves credit for making our life better.

Since The Rock Fell

I heard about a speaker who had a method for starting something new. He said you can take a rock out in a field. Throw the rock up in the air and watch it land back on the ground.

We can then say, “I haven’t done ____________ since the rock fell!” If we fail, we can go and have another rock experience.

You Can Do It

We can develop good habits in our life. It will take work. You may need to restart several times. Keep at it and you will see changes happen in your life!

Let’s encourage each other to improve our lives and live the life we want to live. The next step on Canoosa Finance is to Channel Your Money.