Only 1% of Americans do this essential daily habit

Only 1% of Americans do this essential daily habitOnly 1% of Americans do this essential daily habitOnly 3%of Americans have written goals.Only one percent of Americans rewrite their goals on a daily basis.Giving yourself even five minutes per day to orient your life in the direction of your goals is the difference between success and average.Follow Ladders on FlipboardFollow Ladders magazines on Flipboard covering Happiness, Productivity, Job Satisfaction, Neuroscience, and moreIf you dont give yourself time, every single day, to orient your life in the direction you want to go, then you will default to former habits and patterns.Life gets busy.Life is stressful.Its easy to forget what you really want.Its easy to disconnect from your purpose and priorities.Its easy to fall into autopilot and go through the motions.Its easy to watch several weeks or months go by and realize you havent made much progress on your goals.Its easy to let the little fundamentals slip.Its easy to default to consumption rather than organizing your life and environment for creation.Its easy to focus on the constraints of your circumstances rather than the power of your capabilities.Distraction fuels the need for more distraction.Addiction is an endless vacuum.Indecision and inaction lead to a loss of confidence, motivation, and hope.Success Is a ChoiceChoosing to be successful isnt a moral decision.You can be a good person or a bad person and be focused on your goals.You can be a good person and choose to be average.Its really your choice, the life you will live.Its your choice if youre going to be happy.Its your choice if youre going to be healthy.Its your choice if youre going to be financially successful.The decisions you make right now are a direct reflection of the person you will be in one, three, five, ten, and 20 years from now.When you look at yourself in the mirror, youre looking at your former selves choices, actions, and habits.Staying the CourseIt is fundamentally impossibl e to stay on a straight course without continually checking in to see how youre doing.If youre not reviewing your goals on a daily basis, then I can guarantee that your behavior and performance is sub-optimal.Without clarity of direction and purpose, behavior and motivation become erratic.Without orienting yourself, first thing in the morning, with who you are and what youre about, you will be going through the motions.Youll be disconnected from your purpose.Youll be disconnected in your relationships.Youll lack motivation and conviction.Youll allow low-level influences, activities, and actions to creep into your life.On an occasional basis when triggered by something random in the environment, youllrememberyour goals and dreams.Youll feel a quick rush of excitement and enthusiasm to get back on track.You may even engage in some powerful behaviors - like send positive and helpful messages to key relationships, go to the gym, write in your journal, or take action toward a goal.But u nless you establish a lifestyle of reviewing, remembering, and engaging with your goals and purpose daily, you will make minimal progress.In bestellung to make extreme progress, you need momentum.In order to get momentum, you need to be consistent.Not just consistent, but you need to continually be getting better.In order to get better, you need goals that youre actively pushing toward. For example, many people go to the gym but have no goals. They are simply moving their body and not getting better.In the bookTurning Pro, Steven Pressfield said, Addictions embody repetition without progress.Doing something over and over may be how you develop a habit. But habits dont guarantee success.Habits, if unchecked, actually create apathy, boredom, and a lack of engagement. Habits can lead to mindlessness.Consistency, not habits, is what youre after. You want to consistently show up and push through your current level.You want to get yourself focused and clear on what you want to achieve. Yo u then need to fuel that focus by taking powerful and bold actions, daily, toward your goals.As you take action toward your goals, your identity will change. Youll quickly begin to see yourself as the person you intend to become.Your personality will change.Your expectations will change.Your confidence will change.Your subconscious will change.Your results will change.Your environment will change.Youll be able to produce results, easily, that once took enormous effort.Your new normal will be beyond what your former selves dreams were.Your standards for yourself and your flexibility and empathy toward others will improve.Your appreciation for life will deepen. Your ability to feel and love will grow.Your reasons for living will change. Youll stop focusing on what you can get and simply try to be as helpful as you possibly can.Youll shift from consuming to creating.Youll stop focusing on your present circumstances and focus on the leverage you have to create new circumstances for your self and others.Youll change your life more for the sake of others than for yourself. Youll hold yourself to a higher standard so you can perform better work.Youll eat better because you cant put regular fuel in a Ferrari.Your goals will become bigger and longer-term.Confidence can be measured by how far out your goals are.Most people are living day-to-day because they dont have the confidence to see and believe in a bigger future.Confidence can be earned, but it must be earned every single day.You can create confidence with the choices you make and you can lose confidence with the choices you make.Your confidence reflects your self-trust.The more you trust yourself, the more willing you will be to do things that are beyond your current capability.The less you trust yourself, the less willing you will be to make decisions and commitments.ConclusionWhen welches the last time you wrote your goals?Did you write them down this morning?Did you set yourself up last night for success, or w ere you numb in distractions?Do you really love yourself?Do you care about yourself?If so, then why wouldnt you become successful?Why wouldnt you create a better life for yourself?Why wouldnt you get clear on who you are, what you stand for, and what you want?Why wouldnt you crystallize that clarity and create the confidence to actually create a better future and life for yourself?Why wouldnt you upgrade your standards and let go of the low-level influences and choices holding you back?Make the DecisionThis is one choice that will influence all others.Make the decision to start your day by writing your goals down.Then do your best throughout the day to align your daily behaviors with your future dreams.As you take daily steps toward your goals, your confidence will increase. As your confidence increases, your belief that you will succeed will grow.Your identity will change.Your environment will change.Your brain will change.You will change.You will succeed.This article first appeare d on Medium.