The power of habit—success is a by-product
A thought to ponder—that our consistent daily habits create our reality. My reality right now is that I’m employed full-time as a graphic designer, and I create designed products in my free time too. I’d like to believe I’m a competent graphic designer as that’s what pays my bills. I’ve done some cool things in my career so far but they weren’t really goals, they just happened randomly or by accident. But why? I didn’t set out to have a goal of designing a Charity exhibition at the House of Commons. It happened as a byproduct. A byproduct of what? Turning up every day and doing my graphic design work. By doing mundane and sometimes interesting graphics work every day without fail. By messing up. By going into my first job and not even knowing what CMYK stood for and looking like an idiot in front of my boss and design colleges. By circulating work with glaring typographic errors and getting completely roasted by more experienced designers. I still mess up all the time and learn and grow from that. Honestly, if I didn't need to get paid I probably would have thrown the towel in at various points in the past.
When I review where I am now, to where I was 13 years ago at the start of this journey, my first day sat in a classroom ready to study the fundamentals of Graphic Design at Central St Martins, it’s a pretty unbelievable progression. Literally, everything I designed for about 2 years looked awful because I was clueless. Easy Canva templates didn’t exist back then, no cheats, no shortcuts. I had access to a really slow early version of Photoshop. I didn’t actually want to study Graphic Design, I wanted to study Fine Art. Thankfully my parents steered me towards Graphics, that although still competitive, was a more client-serving discipline, and therefore it was easier to find opportunities and employment.
After 5 years of doing design every day I got my first big breakthrough. A job as a junior designer in publishing, and shortly after, my first book which I designed and art directed. Eventually, I improved. Mostly by designing badly and reflecting on my mistakes, but also through education and by learning from some incredible bosses. I designed every weekday. This was my habit, even if I didn’t consciously choose it.
My question to you is this—what do you show up for every day? Where are those habits leading you? Perhaps we can reverse engineer here. In the story I’ve just told, I was fairly unconscious during the process, and perhaps a little passive. During my Yoga Teacher training, we were encouraged to cultivate a daily Yoga practice, which was transformative to my education in the subject and also to my health, strength, and flexibility (though I do overdo it a little!). Since then I’ve applied this idea to other things in my life. I was getting very bad back pain. What habits would help me be someone who is free of back pain? I began exercising for 20 minutes a day and getting a monthly sports massage. My back pain reduced. We all know the concept of this on some level but it’s difficult when we just want to be at the goal or end result immediately. We aim on the goal, get dejected when it doesn’t happen, and then completely give up. I love how Seth Godin touches on this and explains this idea of just showing up so beautifully, that success is found through showing up.
This is where habit trackers come in for me. I want to make sure I’m doing the bare minimum to keep well physically, and as a byproduct mentally, every day. I put these self-care activities into the design for the Serenity & Solace Journal for Wellness and Balance. Here are habits that you can track in the journal:
Exercised
Stretched
Meditated
Kept hydrated
Healthy meal
Supplements
Medication
Early Night
Plus room for more habits for you to track of your choice. For me, it’s writing and spending time with my family.
This is also the concept behind Julia Cameron’s ‘The Artist’s Way’ in which she encourages a daily writing practice, even if you don’t feel like it or think you have nothing to write about. The reviews of this book speak for themselves about the creative results practitioners experience through doing this.
Imagine yourself five years from now if you were to make these things a daily habit. What might the results be? What might your life look like? You would most likely be feeling a lot healthier and a lot calmer, your relationships would improve as well as your energy and ability to be present. Make a list of the daily habits you could cultivate to improve your life. They might be health, business, career, or family-related. Make that tick box list! Track your habits. You may just be surprised at the things that happen as a by-product…