Earlier this week I shared a 9 minute animated summary of the book Tiny Habits by BJ Fogg. I wanted to circle back to that and highlight something crucial, something that all property entrepreneurs need to do yet so many fail to. It’s something I strongly believe in, and work hard at consciously practicing.
Anyone who’s worked with me in mastermind groups know that I’m a stickler for this, but it’s only because I want to help people to become their next level version… and to do that, they need to practice this crucial thing?
What is this thing?
It’s celebrating!
So you want to achieve XYZ goal in property? Celebrating is a key ingredient to getting you there. OK, I like to crack the champers as much as the next person, but I don’t literally mean bringing out the bubbly at the end of each work day (that’s a slippery slope in the wrong direction).
What I’m really pointing to here is that the only way to sustain productivity, is to genuinely feel good about what we do.
For context, let me quickly back up and share BJ Fogg’s 3 step habit forming framework, then I’ll circle back to the celebrating piece and it’s relevance to property entrepreneurs.
Here’s a quick summary of Fogg’s 3 step ABC method
A- is for Anchor moment
Use an existing routine in your life that will remind you to do the new positive behaviour. Here’s a simple template sentence you can use to fill in the blanks – “After I……[something you already do], I will…..”[your new positive habit]
B- is for Tiny Behaviour
In other words to physically do a small version of the new positive habit you want to embed ie two press ups.
C- is for Celebrate
This is something you do to create a positive feeling inside yourself for having completed the positive behaviour (Fogg calls this feeling ‘Shine’)
This final step of the framework is the crucial step, and it’s the one that is too often missed out. Why is it so important? In Fogg’s words, “It’s emotions that create habits. It’s not repetition. It’s the emotion that your brain connects with the behavior that makes it become automatic, or in other words, a habit.”
[Read that last sentence again, you need to remember it.]
The celebration is something you do to create a positive emotion inside yourself. You need to get really good at creating that inner feeling of success from doing the small things that you know will lead to the big results.
Fogg tells us that, ‘Learning to celebrate after a tiny win is the most critical component of habit development.’ The problem is so many people hold back on the celebration because they think they should only celebrate huge successes ie the the day they purchase a property, but that’s a huge mistake.
Lets use an exercise related analogy to capture the message. If your goal is to bench press 120Kgs – as you work towards the goal you are not measuring did I lift 120kg today? Rather, you are measuring did I show up and go through the necessary pain to get closer to the goal (the pain being the core work out, the stretching, the work on other muscle groups). Did I show up and do that? – Yes, then that feels good, you create an inner feeling of success, your inner shine. And the more you do it, the more you feel good about it.
So what might be your equivalent ‘property workouts’? The small sessions you schedule each weekday that will eventually get you to your desired property portfolio and income? It will likely be groups of activities like phone calls (for due diligence, for quotes, for selling, for marketing), spreadsheet analysis, viewings, batched admin tasks etc.
Whatever it is, you need to schedule those property workouts, do the task and consciously acknowledge and celebrate each mini win. Create that positive emotion and find your “Shine” so you can form the habit and make the behaviour automatic.
Even though we won’t always overly love the nature of the task, we can train ourselves to love the feeling of the mini win. This is important for property entrepreneurs (and anyone for that matter) because it reinforces delayed gratification, which our subconscious doesn’t like to do.
When you feel successful at something, even if it’s seemingly pretty small, your confidence grows quickly and your motivation to do that positive behaviour again increases. Even better, motivation spills over to perform other related behaviours and this leads to success momentum.
Moral of the message is, don’t resist celebrating the small wins, that will only hold you back.
So, what’s a small win for the week that can be celebrated here?