Make Respect a Habit

“Keep your thoughts positive because your thoughts become your words.

Keep your words positive because your words become your behaviors.

Keep your behaviors positive because your behaviors become your habits.

Keep your habits positive because your habits become your values.

Keep your values positive because your values become your destiny.”  -Gandhi

I have always loved this quote from Gandhi and ran across it just the other day. It doesn’t matter how many times I’ve seen it over the years, it still causes me to pause and affirm to live each day at my best.

The part of this quote that I am most focused on today is the part about habits. In our work with leadership development we know that people are creatures of habit.  Habits serve us well because once we have a habit engrained we become very efficient. We don’t have to exert much intellectual energy to accomplish tasks. Did you know that brain researchers estimate that out of every 11,000 signals we receive from our senses, our brain consciously processes only 40? This shows how often we operate on “auto pilot” as we go about our work and personal lives.

Habits, our automatic responses, can be bad or good. One bad habit I have worked on is interrupting people before they have finished talking. This behavior is not respectful. Even though I have never interrupted someone with the conscious intension to be disrespectful, this behavior doesn’t match my values and so I risk being perceived as not honoring what others have to say. I am committed to practicing good habits in listening because they align with my values and create the perceptions that I want others to have of me.

Og Mandino, author of The Greatest Salesman in the World, gives the advice to “make yourself a slave to good habits”.  Here are three simple tips to develop a good habit.

1.    Start simple.
Choose one behavior that you want to make habitual. Write it down on a piece of paper as an affirmation and post it somewhere that you will see each day. Visualize yourself behaving that way in a number of different situations.

2.    Commit for 21 days.
Three to four weeks is all the time you need to make a habit automatic. If you can make it through the initial conditioning phase, it becomes much easier to sustain. Consistency is also important during this conditioning phase so commit to doing your new behavior every day for 21 days.

3.    Celebrate outcomes.
Notice what the results are when you practice your behavior. If your behavior is a personal health related one, notice how you feel.  Good habits in self care result in higher levels of self respect. If your behavior is interpersonal, notice the results your behavior has on others.  Consider sharing your commitment with a friend or co-worker and ask him/her to give you feedback as he/she observes your behavior.

Warm Regards,
Georgine