Monday, January 15, 2007

Behavioral Congruency

Last Sunday I was writing a special report for the upcoming launch of The Ultimate Fitness Professional’s Business Success System while periodically checking my e-mail. Somewhere toward the middle of the day Dax Moy sent over some sales copy he wanted me to review. Somewhere during our correspondence, I asked Dax what he thought most fitness pros we’re doing while we were working on a Sunday afternoon. I think he said watching TV.

That would be my guess too.

The same thought popped into my head yesterday (Sunday) while I was working on some new program design software we’re creating for our training company. “I wonder what everyone else is doing?”

Please understand – I think you should have some down time. Holly and I went to the movies yesterday and I watched part of both football games. But I have deadlines to complete projects and goals that I want to achieve. They aren’t going to happen on their own.

I have to make them happen.

Everyone thinks about being rich or achieving whatever they have defined as their “ultimate goal.” But thinking doesn’t get it done.

‘Doing’ is what separates the successful from the unsuccessful.

So here are two things I picked up from Dan Kennedy:

Make your behavior congruent with the behavior of people who are already achieving the goals that you want to achieve. Identify who they are, see how they spend their time and model them. If you want to achieve the success that Alwyn Cosgrove has achieved, don’t think that you can skip straight to writing books and articles without putting in the ‘in the trenches’ work training thousands of hours. You need to spend your time like he has in order to get where he is.

Make your behavior congruent with your goals. Don’t bullshit yourself and say “I’ll do it tomorrow.” If you want success, do ‘it’ today. Simply journal how you are spending your time and your money. Are they congruent with what you say your goals are?

If you want to make more money as a fitness professional are you:

Studying business every day?
Buying and listening to, watching or reading products?
Getting coaching and taking action on it?
Modeling those who have achieved what you want?

If you want to write a book or e-book are you:

Writing every morning?
Studying what Craig Ballantyne and Tom Venuto do?
Deciding where your starving market is?

Those are just a couple of examples but I hope you get the picture. If you only do things that move you closer to your goals when you feel like writing, have spare time or ‘it’s convenient’ – you’ll never get there. Get up earlier. Block off an hour during the day, spend a couple of hours in the early morning on weekends. Before long you’ll be reaping the rewards of your efforts.

P.S. – One other exercise I started doing years ago that helped keep me on track was at the end of each day I marked off the day on a calendar and said “another day I’ll never get back – how did I spend it?” Maybe it’s corny, but it kept me from procrastinating.