Does this list describe you, or the activities you find impossible?

Get up early with a smile

Cleaning up after yourself

Complete a task from beginning to end

Listen

Be on time

Save money

Do you wish you could, or would, automatically do all the good behavior actions you are supposed to do? You know the activities you think will make you a stronger person able to achieve your goals like starting your own business. And imagine if the process of converting your good habits into your DNA is not annoying or a burden.

What if you could build good habits in to your everyday life and not have to be reminded to make an exception?

Having good habits is a skill on the road to success. People who are able to consistently perform and to get things done are the people who end up completing the work necessary to achieve lifestyle freedom by starting a business and becoming an entrepreneur.

Those that don’t have to settle for a life of struggle.

You can make yourself the person you want to be by focusing on six abilities: desire, effort, progress, consideration, reliability and thrift.

You have heard it all before, but how do you actually make those abilities part of the person you are on a daily basis?

Self-help books are full of ideas for developing good habits. But how many people are able to keep the habits? You know you want to be one of those people who function at the highest levels of competency at all times. How do they do it? And why is it so difficult for many others to embed good habits into our DNA so we are able to live in success mode all the time?

What does it take to turn good habits into your DNA?

Desire

To set yourself off on the right direction to embed good habits into your DNA, you have to want the goals you are striving for. And wanting does not mean you expect to be rich by doing nothing. ‘Wanting’ means you are absolutely committed to figuring out how you can be rich and do nothing, and then execute on the plan to make that vision a reality.

You will work to ensure you do not have to work.

People who are taught to get up early because they ‘have to,’ for chores or school, end up resenting losing the time they could have spent sleeping. But if those people were excited about every day, because they were anxious to learn or contribute to the harmony of their family life, they would want to be up long before anyone told them they had to be.

You have to match the activity to the desire for achievement of a higher goal to help convince yourself the work is worth doing.

Effort

Habits that require actual physical labor, like cleaning up after yourself, are not going to be sustainable unless you make the practice automatic.

We hate chores. We want to avoid work as much as possible and pursue a life of leisure. We constantly put off the activities we do not want to do and become more and more anxious as those activities pile up and begin to threaten our peace.

How do we make a chore part of our DNA? You do it by forcing yourself to complete the task at the exact moment you are aware of the work must be done. You have to train your brain to do the activity without thinking.

As you stand up from a table after eating, gather plates and cutlery into your hands. As you walk into the kitchen, go directly to the dishwasher and unload into the racks. Do not stop to place the plates on another surface, where they will be left for days.

Do the activity immediately without thinking about it. Resist the urge to moan and groan about something you have to do. For every chore you are required to do, make the prior act and the chore the same activity. For example, make the act of getting up from the table and removing your plate one continuous motion.  Remember: no thinking.

Train yourself to follow all the way through until the work is done. Soon you will realize there are no more chores haunting you from the imaginary to-do list in your head.

Progress

Any task without a deadline inevitably is only done on deadline. Too often we do not complete work from beginning to end because we do not feel a sense of urgency. One way to overcome this lackadaisical approach is to focus on just one task at a time.

Instead of making to-do lists with 20 or 30 items you have to check off, make a list of one item. Just one that you must finish before you do the next one.

If you are afraid of forgetting your bigger list, write each item down on index cards (or tear up paper into smaller squares), and place the one card with one activity at a place where you can see it until the item listed on it is done.

Finish the task as if it’s the only thing you have to do. If the work is particularly difficult, it may roll over until the next day or the next, but you cannot put your card away until it’s done.

When it’s done, go for the next card. Before you know it, you’ll have no more cards to deal with, and you would have made incredible progress.

Consideration

Where does your mind go when someone is talking to you? Do you drift towards unfinished business at work, or maybe the bad date you had the night before? Do you forget to listen? We are easily distracted not just by actual events and activities before us, but by our own minds and our ability to think about too many things at once.

But when you fail to listen you could be missing a range of vital information from heartfelt confessions to a critical work assignment. You have to teach yourself how to hear what others are saying.

To do this, you can try hanging on every word. That is, make it a habit to repeat in your mind the words that are said by the speaker. When you are learning another language, you have to focus on every word the other person says because you are not familiar with the hearing and processing the sounds. The more you become familiar with the sounds, the more fluent you will be.

Use the same technique when listening to others. This will help you concentrate on the words the speaker is expressing and force you to transform those words in your brain to understanding, and perhaps action that supports your own goals.

Reliability

When the stresses and strains of modern living began to change our concept of politeness, we got out of the habit of always being on time. As soon as we had excuses like traffic, kids, and holiday shopping to deflect attention away from our tardiness, we used those words to elicit sympathy for our rat-race lives.

But you do not have to operate under those excuses. To avoid being late, leave earlier. Give yourself enough time to get where you are supposed to be. This applies to the meeting down the hall, as much as the dinner across town. When you have an important meeting with a senior executive or investor, you strive to be on time. The same reliability should apply to meetings with friends or subordinates. You know how long you will need to get there, make a point of preparing ahead.

This is not a trivial matter. Sometimes you are running behind the whole day and never find the scope to catch up. In that case, start your whole day earlier. If other people are late to meet with you point out their faux pas, perhaps in front of others, as a reminder that people are waiting. But do not be the one who others are waiting for.

Thrift

Money comes in, and money goes out. How can you keep any of it around for the times when you really need it?

We like to spend money, especially if we grew up with little and learned fear and scarcity about money. Or we feel an obligation to purchase items for others or in recognition of our own virtue.

But loosely spending money is detrimental to your chance to have a comfortable and secure future. You can discipline yourself to protect money by making sure you put a portion of your earnings away immediately. As soon as you are paid, have an automatic deduction taken and transferred to another account you do not touch.   Put the account in a different bank so when you go online to check your accounts you do not see money accumulating that you think you should be spending. Make that designated percentage disappear so that it is available to reappear when you really need it to exist.

You can make good habits part of your DNA by focusing on these six abilities: desire, effort, progress, consideration, reliability and thrift. Once you have implemented the practices that turn your fortunes around, you will realize you are exactly that person who lives in success mode, all the time.

Disclosure: Links to ebooks or physical products are affiliate links to Amazon.com meaning Ready Entrepreneur may be earn compensation for purchases made through the link

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