This is it. This is the final step to create a habit.

Are you ready to plunge headfirst into the final steps of designing, installing and sustaining the habits that will help you transition from where you are to where you have long wanted to be?

If you have been following along over the past few weeks and have methodically employed all the steps than you are, indeed, as ready as you will ever be.

But first, Let’s Recap

Before we begin, let’s take a moment and recap.

You began several weeks ago by examining the story you’ve been telling yourself about yourself.

You then made a list of everything you would like, or would wish to be different about yourself. This was the list with no judgement. A broad, brainstorming session in which anything goes.

With list in hand, you began examining each statement and crafted a powerful, inspirational and uplifting statement that, in the present tense, addresses precisely who and what you would like to believe to be true of yourself as if it were, in fact, a fact.

Once you were satisfied with your own wordsmithing, the statements became powerful affirmations that you began repeating to yourself.

And then, to really bring these affirmations to life, you began immersing yourself in the emotions the affirmations invoke and, with daily practice, the affirmations became stronger and those strong feelings began replacing the early doubt you had felt when first reciting these sentences.

How to (finally) Create a Habit

And now it is time for the final step.

Most people begin the change process by starting with this step and, as we know from experience, we will enjoy short-term success followed by quickly reverting to where we were when we started.

Before we discuss these final steps let’s take a few moments and discuss the single most common cause of why we do not achieve our goals.

The data on the human ability for bringing out lasting change are extremely disheartening. Fewer than five percent of us humans are capable of sustaining change for five years.

Five percent!!!

That means ninety-five percent fail at their attempts.

As many can attest, failing frequently can easily lead to failure becoming a habit.

In fact, almost certainly failing repeatedly will become a habit because as we fail we begin to tell ourselves a story of expected failure and the story becomes an affirmation filled with emotion so that we have fulfilled all the steps in the habit-forming process, meaning that we have now habituated failure into our habit patterns.

As simple as it seems four small words lay down the foundation for success or failure.

Finish What You Start

Those words – finish what you start – need to be wrapped as tightly around you as your skin for without them you will most certainly not achieve the results you desire. There is no bigger cause for failure to change than simply not finishing what you started.

And now, with an ironclad, irrevocable commitment to finish you’re now ready to begin.

So, begin.

Whatever it is you wish to change, start doing it now. If it is losing weight, begin the process now; if it’s getting in shape, hit the gym today; if it’s writing a book, write 500 words today; if it’s making more sales calls, do 10 more today.

And then repeat, and again, and continue until … your new behaviours are supported by your new beliefs, and your new beliefs are validated by your new behaviours.

And after a brief period, this will become a habit that will stay as one for as long as you believe it to be true.

You’re Set for Success!

By allowing the new behaviour to become the final step in the process, and not the first step, you have now set yourself up for success.

And not much in life will ever feel better.

Nicely done!

Now let me help you to keep your new habit front and center so you can continue to manifest great things for yourself.

Let’s make a habit of meeting like this.