When you first leave your Dale Carnegie training, you are filled with enthusiasm and energy, ready to meet your new potential. You may find that it’s easy to implement new habits and systems in your daily life, even enjoyable. But eventually momentum will slow and you will slip back into your old, established ways.
Changing habits is like tearing out an old garden and planting a new one.
- First, you have to dig up the old plants that are no longer producing flowers. For the best chance of success, you can’t just cut plants down or tear out what you can, you have to dig out the roots. For the best chance of success, you need to identify which habits and behaviors aren’t producing for you so you can replace them with productive ones.
- Now that the ground is clear, you have to prep the soil so that it is strong enough to support new roots. This step is your Dale Carnegie training, instead of throwing fertilizer down; you are prepped for new habits through education. The more you learn and understand about the Dale Carnegie principles, the easier new habits will take root.
- Plant the seeds. You have to take this step when you first finish your training. You are the only one that can put these principles to work in your own life.
- Water your seeds often in the beginning. New habits are born out of consistent, daily improvement. To many, this is the easy part, when you are fresh out of training, enthusiastic about your new potential. But it is the last step that cannot be overlooked, if this garden of flowering plants is going to grow healthy.
- Continual weeding is required. Any gardener will tell you, you can’t just spray some chemicals on your garden and call it good. You have to roll up your sleeves, get down in the dirt and yank them up, one by one. And you have to do it often. Those pesky weeds are just like our old habits, they die hard because their roots are deep and if you let them go, they will take over everything you have worked for. And before you know it, you’ll be tearing everything out again next spring.
This post is brought to you by the good folks at Dale Carnegie Training of Central & Southern New Jersey. We would love to connect with you on Facebook and Twitter @CarnegieJersey.
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