Watch your thoughts, they become words.

Watch your words, they become actions.

Watch your actions, they become habits.

Watch your habits, they become character.

Watch your character, it becomes your destiny.

Lao Tzu

Have you heard of Claude C. Hopkins? 

Me neither, until a few years ago when I was struggling to form a habit that I truly desired. I’d heard that it takes three weeks of routine before a habit is formed, and I desired to know if that was true.  After a little research, I found that the three-week rule is not exactly true, for some people it can take as long as a year to form a habit.  In the process of researching I stumbled upon Claude C. Hopkins.

Hopkins is considered by many to be the nation's most famous advertising executive.  He lived in the early years of the 20th Century before the age of television, mobile phones, and the internet.  Yet he transformed the world without social media and other forms of mass communication with a novel idea:  brushing your teeth.

I don’t know about you, but I cannot imagine a world where no one brushes their teeth. Well, that world existed until 1915.  Hopkins was approached by a friend with a frothy paste for the mouth named “Pepsodent”. But it is not toothpaste that Hopkins is famous for.  His greatest contribution to mankind was developing the tooth-brushing habit.  Hopkins, unknowingly, tapped into the three components to forming a habit.  There is first a cue, a trigger for a behavior.  Next a routine that is the behavior itself.  Then comes a reward, a sense of craving which is how your brain decides whether to remember a habit for the future.  If you want to craft a new habit, identify the right cue and the neurological craving of the reward, and you can establish almost any habit.  No matter how large or small, all habits have these three components.

We are creatures of habit—some good and some bad.  Perhaps you eat the wrong foods, procrastinate, or simply think the wrong thoughts. These negative behaviors do not necessarily make you terrible, but they can make life uncomfortable for you and others.

Regarding thoughts, identify the habit of how you think about yourself and change it if necessary.  findingJOY within is about loving who you are and that can be difficult with negative, unhealthy self-thoughts. Simply choose to love yourself.

• Stop and think about your thoughts, your inner monologue, the speech to yourself.

• Identify the cue of why you think about yourself the way that you do.

• Change the routine. Once negative thoughts begin, stop them.  Have the discipline to say no more.  Instead of can’t, think can.  Instead of I am not, think I am.

• The reward comes over time as you begin to love the uniqueness of you.

What you think of yourself is what you become. I’ll say it again.  If you have a habit of thinking I can’t or I’m not, then you can’t and you won’t.  Your destiny begins and ends with your thoughts.  You control them, no one else does. Lao Tzu states it beautifully. 

If you believe you are destined for greatness, you will be!

Lagniappe

The great blue heron in the photo visited me one evening while I was sitting on the beach during a girl’s trip.  This trip (and this bird) was during an important time in my life when I realized that I needed JOY.  For me, findingJOY has been a process, a daily mindset, that begins with my thoughts and flows through my actions.

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