If you’re reading UFP, the odds are you’re growth-minded and have specific career goals you’d like to achieve in 2023. But will you follow through?
After all, most of us abandon our New Year’s resolutions by February. So, how can you defy the odds and maintain the discipline you need to keep working toward your goals throughout the next year? These three books can help.
1. “Atomic Habits” by James Clear
This book offers a proven framework for improving – every day. James Clear, one of the world’s leading experts on habit formation, reveals practical strategies that will teach you exactly how to form good habits, break bad ones and master the tiny behaviors that lead to remarkable results.
If you’re having trouble changing your habits, the problem isn’t you. The problem is your system. Bad habits persist not because you don’t want to change, but because you have the wrong system for change. As Clear puts it, “You do not rise to the level of your goals. You fall to the level of your systems.”
2. “The War of Art: Break Through the Blocks & Win Your Inner Creative Battles” by Steven Pressfield
What’s keeping you from living the life you want? According to Steven Pressfield, that enemy is within. It’s called “resistance,” and you must wage an ongoing war against it if you’re going to have a shot at achieving your big goals.
In this book, Pressfield arms you with the mental weapons you need to keep resistance at bay so you can pursue your goals.
3. “How to Fail at Almost Anything and Still Win Big: Kind of the Story of My Life” by Scott Adams
We’re wired by society and our upbringing to fear failure. But failures can become steppingstones to success if you view those temporary setbacks from the proper perspective. That’s the premise of this book by Scott Adams, who you may know from his Dilbert comic strip.
Adams challenges you to dream big, learn from failure, and then develop systems (or habits) that put you on the trajectory toward what you want to achieve.
The common theme across all three books? Habits begin with small daily actions that build one upon the other. “Every action you take is a vote for the type of person you wish to become,” Clear writes. “No single instance will transform your beliefs, but as the votes build up, so does the evidence of your new identity.”
