Entrepreneurship Does Not Need Motivation But The Essence Of Consistency Borne Out Of Positive Habits

By Steve Biko Wafula / Published July 7, 2022 | 8:13 pm

KEY POINTS

Oxford Dictionary defines HABIT as a settled or regular tendency or practice, especially one that is hard to give up. Imagine developing amazing awesome habits that drive your business and they become hard to stop or give up. That’s how you create amazing outliers in sectors.

KEY TAKEAWAYS

Here are the top 5 tips for forming good habits and actually sticking with them:

Start Small
Be Intentional
Celebrate Every Victory
Partner Up
Be Balanced

The Essence of Habits

Octavia Butler in his book “Bloodchild and Other Stories” said that we must FIRST forget inspiration. That HABIT is more dependable. That Habit will sustain you whether you’re inspired or not. That Habit will help you finish and polish your projects. Inspiration won’t. That Habit is persistence in practice.”

How I wish everyone could understand and see just how profound this statement is. I thought inspiration is what drove the engine of entrepreneurship. Ten years into building three of my core businesses, with blood, sweat, and prayers and I realized, with pain in my heart that habits tramp anything from talent to motivation. The engine of habit is daily persistence. Something I wish I had learned in school.

As Aristotle once said, “Excellence is a habit.” I would say furthermore that excellence is made constant through the feeling that comes right after one has completed a work that he himself finds undeniably awe-inspiring. Habits are the ecosystem that creates the needed inspiration.

It does not matter how gifted you are or how talented you are or how connected you might be. From my own experience and from others, consistency in doing something will tramp all these. Hence, consistency is a KEY habit that will lay down the needed foundation for success. Consistency is the denominator of habits.

Habits are the building blocks for sustainable and visible success. The essence that defines success. The reality that puts the aspect of motivation into its right place. Habits create the needed motivation. Not the other way round.

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Baltasar Gracián, in his book titled “The Art of Worldly Wisdom One,” says we should cultivate good habits of memory, for it is capable of making existence a Paradise or an Inferno.” Paradise or hell is at the tip of what habits we create and nurture.

What is a HABIT?

Habits

Habit, in psychology, is defined as any regularly repeated behavior that requires little or no thought and is learned rather than innate. A habit—which can be part of any activity, ranging from eating and sleeping to thinking and reacting—is developed through reinforcement and repetition. The essence of consistency in entrepreneurship.

Rubin says people fall into one of four categories: upholders, questioners, obligers, and rebels. Once you’ve figured out your tendency, you can work on finding habit-forming strategies that will work for you. What kind of entrepreneur are you? Habits stay with you even when you don’t have the motivation, always remember this, no matter what kind of entrepreneur you are.

Why Habits are IMPORTANT to Entrepreneurs

Habits

Harnessing the power of habits is a great way to pursue, nurture and grow success, from generation to generation. Committing to habits allows you to free up your brain capacity to make better decisions, do your best work when you are in a prime mental state, and stay on track even when things are difficult. This is not easy. It is easy to write about this than it is to actually achieve and accomplish this.

Habits effectively allow our brains to outsource some of the grunt work of decision-making to our environments. As habits become more automatic, neural activity transfers from the prefrontal cortex to the basal ganglia. Consistency is the best weapon an entrepreneur can have, after time and patience.

The major psychological benefit that a habit provides us with is structure. “By and large, the structure is important since it gives us a sense of rhythm in our lives,” says Dr. Orme. “We don’t do well with a lot of uncertainty, and we like to feel a sense of control.

A business grows from structured planning and this is possible with a focused, structured mind that can conceptualize the process. See the end from the starting point.

Good habits create a positive mindset. When you focus on behaviors that you can control, you can develop plans and take action. A positive mindset is a fuel that ignites the right habit when our consistency nurtures and grows it. Conflict is standard in business as it is in relationships.

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The hope of being able to solve a problem is often enough to change your mood which in turn changes the outcome. Developing and keeping good habits is about the process over the result. Structured thinking makes it easy to silo problems, find solutions and move forward without wasting any time.

What is a POSITIVE mindset that an Entrepreneur Needs?

Habits

Having a positive mindset, or positive mental attitude, means that you are optimistic about the world around you, and you expect that good thing will happen to you. Your consistent habit will essence create the right environment for this to happen.

Allan Rufus in his book The Master’s Sacred Knowledge, says Life is like a game of chess. To win you have to make a move. Knowing which move to make comes with IN-SIGHT and knowledge, and by learning the lessons that are accumulated along the way. We become each and every piece within the game called life. Success in life is not for those who run fast, but for those who keep running and are always on the move. A positive mindset is looking at a glass and saying it is half full, not half empty. It’s appreciating the rain as we wade through the mud. It’s giving thanks for the sun as we search for a tree for some shade. It’s appreciating the joy we have as we remember the tears that we have shed.

What factors define what Habits to nurture?

Habits

Reason One: Habits Free Up Creative Capacity

On the Daily Show with Trevor Noah, I saw former U.S. President Barack Obama being asked why he wore the same suit every day and his answer was very interesting. He said that he tries to pare down his decisions. That he didn’t want to make decisions about what he was going to eat or wear because he had too many other decisions to make. Barack Obama adopted a strict regimen for all the “little things” in order to ensure that he had the capacity to focus on the big things. Habits help free up creative capacity and if done consistently, then one has the ability to address and handle bigger issues with ease.

This is actually the evolutionary purpose of habit. We are triggered to do, and learn how to do, many things subconsciously so that we free up more of our higher brain level brain activity for important things. Dear Entrepreneur, if you want to develop habits that help enable success, focus on habits that help you eliminate the small decisions that we make every day. Commit to habits that see that decision made in advance.

Reason Two: Prioritizes Important Activities

A cluttered mind is a recipe for failure hence the reason we need to limit the number of decisions that we make each day is because we as human beings suffer from decision-making fatigue. The more decisions we make before a period of rest, the worse we are at making them.

So successful entrepreneurs need to not only limit the number of decisions that they need to make every day but also ensure that they do the things that are most important and require the most brainpower first. That is why you will often read advice such as “tackle a difficult task first thing when you get into the office”. In other words, use your fresh brain for creative tasks rather than answering emails.

Beethoven believed in waking up early and working until midday when he was the most creative. It is probably no coincidence that Leonardo Da Vinci took a 20-minute nap every four hours, which would have helped refresh his decision-making and creative synapses.

Reason Three: It Helps Maintain Motivation

As a general rule, successful people aim high and have big ambitions. We are often told to set dreams that seem too daring to be achieved, as even if we only get halfway there we are doing well. To achieve big dreams, we must have the small and big pictures in our view. The only way to do great things that will outlive us is to do small deeds perfectly and consistently. All these small deeds put together will show a sustainable graph of growth that occasional big moves would not be able to achieve. In this way, you move your attention away from something that is unachievable, to something manageable that you need to achieve every day.

Positive Habits to Nurture

Want to write a book? Commit to writing at least 1,000 words every day.
Want to grow your business? Commit to making five cold calls to potential new clients every day or writing 5 proposals every morning and mailing them
Want to build your expertise in a certain area? Commit to reading relevant news and articles for 30 minutes every day.
Want to improve your health? Commit to eating right, drinking water at least a glass every hour throughout the day
Want to keep fit? Commit to walking at least a KM a day
Want to achieve a lot per day in terms of workload? Commit to waking up early, say every day at 6 AM.

Focusing on these habits, which force you to do the things that you need to do rather than focusing on the things that you can’t, help you to stay on track and motivated.

Conclusion;

Harnessing the power of habits is a great way to pursue success. Committing to habits allows you to free up your brain capacity to make better decisions, do your best work when you are in a prime mental state, and stay on track even when things are difficult.

Here are the top 5 tips for forming good habits and actually sticking with them:

Start Small
Be Intentional
Celebrate Every Victory
Partner Up
Be Balanced

If you want to form successful habits, maybe you should start by bookmarking this website, then by leaving a comment in the comment section and referring ten other entrepreneurs to this site, and following us on Twitter at @sokodirectory and Facebook at https://www.facebook.com/SokoDirectory/

Steve Biko

Thank you for reading. For more, reach me on:

0719360078
biko@sokodirectory.com

About Steve Biko Wafula

Steve Biko is the CEO OF Soko Directory and the founder of Hidalgo Group of Companies. Steve is currently developing his career in law, finance, entrepreneurship and digital consultancy; and has been implementing consultancy assignments for client organizations comprising of trainings besides capacity building in entrepreneurial matters.He can be reached on: +254 20 510 1124 or Email: info@sokodirectory.com

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