3 Long-Term Habits That Will Enable You To Thrive Through Life (When Applied)

Habits to nail into your left breast

“Lining up strong habits is a mathematical tool to direct your life.”

Once you start to study the world around you, you’ll find very soon that not everyone lives purposefully.

It’s a sad thing when this finally starts to grab your attention.

Much has been said about habits already.

There isn’t an exact roadmap for life. Although certain habits hold the power to unlock great motivation and enable you to gain life traction.

I’ve captured three long-term habits that (when applied) will provide you with long-term benefits, blended with some personal experiences.

This post captures some personal stories,

Wrap your mind around fundamental principles.

When you are hunting for lifelong personal success.

When you’re on the lookout for transformation.

Dive in together with me…

1. Intentfull listening

The habit of absorption.

During conversations, many people are NOT listening to what you are telling them.

Your reason to acquire this habit?

“Intentful listening feeds your mental models efficiently, and it helps you to build patience.”

Most are waiting to tell what they want to say, without focussed effort in trying to comprehend what has been told to them.

The key word is “effort.” We, humans, are lazy by nature, our preferred route is the route of least resistance.

Names are a great example.

When you meet new people, often they introduce themselves, or you introduce yourself, and soon after both of you find that you’ve already forgotten each other’s name, especially when you’re meeting more new people at once.

It’s because you weren’t focused and had the name locked in straight away. When willing to recall later on, you’re likely to give up too fast, saying that you can’t recall the person’s name or you use the excuse that you’ve met too many new people lately.

Let me tell you this: “You have an effort problem.”

It’s just easier to sit down and pretend like you’re listening, while actually, the only thing you’re focussed on is that voice in your head, your own voice.

When you put more effort into trying to actually listen, imagine, and understand another person’s point of view, there is always something to learn. Whether that’s because of the way they talk, how not to say certain things, or rather, because of the unique story they are telling.

Absorbing from your environment comes for free, and is a very useful long-term habit. Frankly, it’s the baseline enabling you to always learn, you’ll find yourself always on the progress train track.

As for names, here’s how you lock in your intentful listening:

When new people introduce themselves.

For instance: “Hi I’m John Defau.”

You have a few seconds to lock in the name. A simple way how to do this is by association. Make it funny (emotional link).

Let’s say: “Jigsaw Johnny The Flow.”

Try to sketch an image that goes with it. (We tend to recall pictures easier than scribbled names.)

You can be very creative with it, when you can associate the name with a facial or personal trait, you win the game entirely.

The next time that you meet someone new, give it a try, focus, and lock the name in instead of just concentrating on the handshake.

2. Writing and Reading

The double habit of mental teleportation and conversion.

I’m always surprised how few people actually read. Or let’s say read by pleasure. Truly enjoy the process. See, reading requires a certain effort, and understandably some books can seem overwhelming.

Your reason to read?

“Reading is your mind’s food.”

People who say they read, but only pick up a book occasionally and never apply any tactics or lessons from the material they read can as well be non-readers. Unless they just read by the end of the day to relax their thoughts.

Even ferocious readers, therefore aren’t always writers.

The majority of people stop reading and writing from the moment they surpassed their school phase.

Arguably, depending on the nature of their jobs. Yet, even while your job requires you to read or write, in most cases, you’ll be typing. Nevertheless, writing volume will diminish significantly after school.

Your reason to acquire a writing habit?

“Daily writing provides mental clarity, reinforces your thinking, and makes you a creator.”

Our modern-day world is constructed in a way that often we don’t have time to read or even need to write anymore. Although typing itself also has certain positive elements attached.

By avoiding writing on paper, you’ll miss out on some (perhaps) more important things.

And yes are differences. Well, more than one actually.

First, typing doesn’t provide the same advantages on a neurophysiological level.

Secondly, the kind of things you write on your job, aren’t always mind-relieving. Rather exactly the opposite.

Third, when you write on paper, chances are that you’ll be less subjected to digital distractions.

What got me started writing were two triggers:

Ever since I took my reading seriously, after reading a couple of biographies among a few written by the famous author ‘Walter Isaacson,’ I became so amazed by the incredible writing skills, so amazed because I never really thought that writing offers an incredibly broad way of releasing your creativity.

It seems a very difficult craft to practice. I’ve always enjoyed struggling through life, perhaps because I’m used to it.. after a while you like to struggle I guess.

My second trigger, roughly two years plus ago, while listening to a podcast, a woman was explaining how she got started writing online here on Medium, by writing about her cat.

Apparently, she was doing very well at the time of the podcast.

This got me thinking, look I lived a wild life already, perhaps it’s time to blend my experiences into practice and get started with this writing thing. I mean, if someone who starts writing about her cat can become a great writer, I also had cats before. Didn’t you?

To acquire the habit of reading and writing, you want to make it easy for yourself.

If you aren’t writing yet, here’s one way how:

For fresh writers, forget what I said about the paper thing, first you want to get started. If that works better for you through the digital way, so be it. It’s more important to get started first, you can always exchange your “bad” habit for a “good” one later.

1. Understand why you want to write
2. Make sure you have a pen and paper close by at all times, near your bed, at your breakfast table, where you workout early mornings…
3. Set a notetaking app on the front page of your smartphone, laptop, or tablet. Make it unavoidable.

Reasoning tip:

Journaling can be one great motivator to trigger yourself into becoming a prolific writer. The idea of leaving something behind can offer a huge long-term perspective.

Conversely, reading can trigger you into writing, like how I got more interested in writing since I became impressed by the way authors like Walter Isaacson keep your mind occupied.

Take this

Trust me, if you read and write consistently through life, the benefits are huge. It’s one of the best self-investments you can make.

This doesn’t mean that you have to publish or make books.

Just the process of extracting your thoughts could be a tremendous emotional equalizer.

The next habit might upgrade your writing habit and more.

3. Being Patience

The habit that leads to outperforming the rest.

The quiet force with the least resistance.

Your reason to acquire this habit?

“Long-term beats every game, become subliminally good at it.”

Although this might seem an easy practice, being patient isn’t easy. You’ll be surprised at how few are up for the task of keeping themselves under control to wait for the correct time.

The whole world around you is built to make you act directly and impulsively. When you thoroughly start to observe what’s happening around you, you’ll notice that impulsive actions lead to inefficient and more work. The whole is a global phenomenon, it’s so deeply implanted in most industries that it’s near impossible to filter this behavior out.

When lots of people engage in a work rapidly, the majority will often drag the minority with them.

I call this the “act trap.”

Undertaking action is great, doing entirely nothing won’t help you out either. But taking your time to act at specific moments well though could induce small wonders. It has much to do with what the Israelian psychologist “Daniel Kahnemann” explains in his book: “Thinking Fast and Slow.”

Here’s a personal glimpse of how I acquired patience

This is a short capture of my two-year experience while recovering from AML:

Endless long waiting periods for medical checkups taught me much about patience. It just had no use to make yourself crazy in why you had to wait so long. I was a very impatient kid. I grew up in a great family where we got everything we wanted and more, straight away. It’s a double-edged sword. In a way I’m very fortunate, on the other way, perhaps it’s not the best way to learn about what’s life about.

For me to really become patient at a young age, and appreciate the time offered within waiting moments required me to face near-death situations a couple of times. Perhaps because I’m the stubborn type, who will tell?

Real patience isn’t acquired or learned just like that, it’s drilled. Just like other habits. Of course, there are some methods you could apply to drill patience.

1. Grow a plant, start by planting a seed, and go check the progress daily. Become acquainted with a slow progressive process that eventually delivers fruits.
2. Zoom out and acknowledge that whatever you’re doing today is just a small part of what you’re hunting for.
3. Focus on learning from other people’s mistakes, this will automatically teach you a more careful and patient approach.
4. Meditate first about what you’re planning to do.
5. Go for a walk in nature more often.
6. Practice acceptance.
7. Intentful listening.
8. Reading.
9. Writing.

95% of the population doesn’t have patience, society has created us to be like this, and it’s getting worse. When you drill the habit of patience into your system, you’ll be equipped with a power tool to outperform that 95%.

Being patient instead of over-reactive offers you time to think of better solutions. You’ll make fewer mistakes. Being patient induces your problem-solving abilities.

It’s even a superpower when you are into value investing.

Becoming patient will make you win for life. No matter what field you’re in.

Make it stick better:

• What are the key ideas of this post?
• How would you define those ideas?
• What terms or ideas are new to you?
• How do the ideas relate to what you already know?

Some posts you might like:

“The accumulation of past habits projects your present life.”

Absorb, Read, Write, Sleep, Exercise, Thrive!

Thanks for reading this post!

P.S.:

I’m a firm believer in building a prosilient mind. I like to inspire by writing.

Some of my writings are about: Sleep & Dreams / Writing tips/ Life lessons/ Mental Health / Circadian Rhythms / Submarine Power Cables.

Want to get my posts in your inbox and read my content directly? Receive it here! If you like to experience Medium yourself, consider supporting me and thousands of other writers. Then you can get unlimited access here for 5$ per month.