Here they are:

1. Commitment. Make sure this is something you truly want to accomplish. It’s wonderful to “talk the talk,” but you’ll need to back that up by “walking the walk” as well. Be honest with yourself. Do you truly believe that this is the right time to kick your bad habit? Remember, it has to be done for the right reasons.

• Don’t let yourself be pressured by others. Search your soul and be certain you’re doing this for only one person – you! It’s your time and energy you’ll be using to make your goal a reality, so make your decision carefully.

2. Start a journal. Jot down every time you practice your bad habit. This isn’t to be used as a punishment, but to give you more of an idea when your undesired behavior is occurring, so that you can better devise ways to break it.

• Include your thoughts and feelings that precede or accompany the behavior. This can give you an idea if you’re doing this when you’re under stress, bored, tired, and so on. Though it may seem time consuming at first, recording these thoughts and actions can be a wonderful tool to speed up your success in breaking the habit.

3. Choose an alternative behavior. This behavior can either remind you of your desire to quit or be a permanent replacement of your bad behavior with a desirable one instead.

• For example, a friend of mine once put a rubber band on her wrist when she was quitting smoking. Each time she had the urge to light up a cigarette, she would snap the rubber band on her wrist instead. Naturally, this was only temporary to remind her not to smoke.
• Some more ideas are to take a walk, read a book, sing a song, or cook. Any activity can be used as an alternative behavior. Of course, you don’t want to replace one bad habit with another one, but anything that can redirect your focus works well.

4. Start a replacement schedule right away. Start immediately replacing your bad habit with your alternative, but a gradual shift may work better for you than a complete change.

• You may want to start with once a week, then maybe twice week, then three times, until you’re consistently practicing your alternative behavior instead of the bad habit.
• Remember, this won’t happen overnight, so please practice patience. People learn different behaviors at a different pace. Don’t be discouraged if your best friend stopped smoking in three weeks and you’re on your fifth week and still craving a cigarette.

5. Don’t keep this a secret. If you’ve made the decision to break a habit, tell others. This is the time when you need the support of your family and friends to help you be successful.

• Whether you succeed or not, you’ve taken a major leap in a positive direction. That’s why it’s so important to share what you hope to accomplish with family and friends. Those who love you will be there to encourage you, offer support, and help you wherever they can.

Breaking a bad habit can be difficult, but it isn’t impossible. Use these techniques to make your journey easier, then celebrate your accomplishment when you’ve succeeded – you deserve it!

• I’d love to explore my passion, but I don’t have enough time for another hobby
• I want to start my own business, but I need a steady and secure paycheck
• I should start on my business plan, but there’s show coming on TV that I just can’t miss
• I scheduled a highly productive day but got interrupted by too many phone calls
• I was going to be on time, but got stuck in a traffic jam

“But,” according to motivational speaker guru guy Les Brown, “is an argument for your limitations; and when you argue for your limitations, you get to keep them.”

IF you are going to be a successful entrepreneur, you absolutely have to

reduce the size of your but.

True, I LOVE how that sentence sounds. (In fact, I loved it so much I bought the URL ReduceTheSizeOfYourBut.com!) But beyond my little love affair with that skinny little ditty, it sure rings true, doesn’t it?

Do you find yourself falling into your big “but”? Time is a valuable commodity, and if you fixate on your limitations, then that will be what you produce. What you focus on expands! And when you waste your precious time, you’re actually preventing yourself from achieving the things you desire.

Below is a list of the top ten time wasters. If you find yourself spending too much time on these activities, try changing some of your habits so your time can be more productive and rewarding.

1. Wasting Your Worry. Many people will worry until doomsday about every little thing in their lives. This is simply unproductive and bad for your health, mind, and spirit.

• If you have something worrisome coming up, craft a plan of positive action on paper, then let it go. After all, worrying doesn’t accomplish anything positive.

2. Television. We’re a couch potato society! We schedule our lives around our favorite television shows and we spend less time doing more important activities like attending social events that could strengthen our relationships.

• Record your favorite TV shows and watch them during your leisure time, or limit your TV intake to just a couple hours a week. Or better yet, cancel your cable subscription! I freed up YEARS of my time by doing just that.

3. Video and Computer Games. This is becoming such a time waster that gamers are actually developing what is called “gamers thumb,” a repetitive stress injury. You can spend hours a day conquering giants and going to levels that don’t even exist or you can set about changing the world and following your passions. One will serve your spirit, and the other will get you divorced.

4. Internet time. Are you constantly browsing the Internet, Facebook or Twitter? Are your kids hearing you say, “In a minute,” much too often when they ask you to spend time with them?

• Keep your time on the Internet short and get involved in life. Instead of chatting with your online friends, spend more time with your real-life friends and family! Schedule online networking (eg, 20 minutes a day, from 9:pm to 9:20pm), and then STICK TO IT.

5. Telephone Chatter. Sure, we like to call old friends and chat, but do you chat on the phone all day long? If you do, you may find that you get hardly anything done all day.

• Keep phone calls to a minimum or set a timer to go off after 15 minutes. This way you won’t feel deprived of a good conversation, but it won’t take over your whole day.

6. Traffic and Commuting. Some of us spend an enormous amount of time traveling to and from work. You can turn your commuting time into productive time!

• Try carpooling or taking the bus, subway or train to work. You can use this time to read, plan your day, complete paperwork, or even relax your mind before a productive day.
 If you drive, turn your car into a mobile university by listening to inspiring and informative CDs. Where do you think I’ve done most of my learning?

7. Hobbies. Yes, there are people who are so obsessed with a hobby (see above, if your hobby is surfing the web or gaming) that they don’t make time to do anything else. They rush home from work to their hobby, even skipping dinner.

• If this is you, schedule your hobby time so you’re not skipping meals, missing time with your family, or cutting into other productive time.

8. Daydreaming. It’s fun and healthy to dream about career ambitions or future aspirations, but when those dreams prevent you from taking action in your life, then you’re wasting time. Avoid getting bogged down with too much dreaming.

• Make a list of your goals or dreams, then take action to make those dreams come true.

9.  Meetings. Although necessary, meetings can be one of the biggest time wasters of our workday. If everyone is wiped out from sitting in long meetings all day, productive time will be low.

• If you’re in charge of meetings, set and agenda with timelines, stick to your stated time.
• Limit the length of your meetings: be a pro-active facilitator, and keep needless chatter and agendas out of the meeting.

10. Planning. If you don’t take the time to plan your day, the important things you need to accomplish may not get done.

• Write down your daily goals and tasks.
• Schedule your day in the order of your top priorities.

Listen to your self-talk and when ever you hear yourself saying I ought to ____, BUT, remember that you too can reduce the size of your but!

To your success, and to your skinny but,

Britt Santowski

Anyway, back in the real world, what I meant to write was…

In order to be successful as an entrepreneur, you have to overcome a great many things. These “things” can typically divided into one of two categories (can’t everything?): Internal, and External.

Internal obstacles, though usually the HARDEST to overcome, are also the ones that are the most under your own control. External obstacles you can respond or react to.

External Obstacles

The number one way to deal with external obstacles is to have CLARITY. Understand your vision. Know exactly what it is you’re trying to do. Have some goal. You can’t just run in without a plan of some kind. Take the time to plan out your goals and the steps you intend to take to reach them.

• Even with an exceptional plan, the reality is that things rarely go exactly as you’d expect. You’ll have to stop and make changes at times, and that’s okay! Be prepared for the unexpected with ideas on how to handle a situation if it arises.
• Identify the parts of your plan that may become problematic and lay out alternatives.

Good planning will help you deal with the external obstacles when you get there. That, and a great imagination. Remember that there are ALWAYS multiple ways to solve a problem. One of my favorite memory acronyms for dealing with external obstacles is TLC: You can Take it, Leave it, or Change it.

Internal Obstacles

Some of those obstacles are created internally. Doubt, fear, and self depreciation are some of the more common culprits. You can overcome these self-created obstacles with a little hard work and determination.

Trust yourself. You’re in charge of your journey to success. You set your goals and you’re the one making it happen, so you must trust yourself. If you truly have a great passion for what you’re going to do, then you’ll be the best judge of what you want.

• Follow your instincts. That little voice in the back of your head may very well end up telling you exactly what you need to succeed in your goals.
• Nix the nay-sayers. There is no shortage of these people. Even though they are typically coming from a good place in their heart (they either don’t want to lose your friendship and be left behind, so they hold you back; or, they are trying to “protect” you from disappointment and failure and don’t know enough that any entrepreneur fails their way to success), set them aside for the time being. Find the one or two people that champion your idea. That will nurture this newborn with as much love, care and enthusiasm as you do. Then, once you have momentum on your side, THEN bring in the nay-sayers. But sparingly. And sift through the emotion to get to the content. It’s YOUR job to maintain your vision, your dream, your passion, not theirs.

Also, get help. You will need it. No success is ever achieved in a vacuum (unless you ARE a vacuum, and then it’s a different story). If there’s something in your way and it’s too big of an obstacle for you to remove on your own, get help! You can’t do everything by yourself. As humans, we’re social beings and we need help from those around us.

• Get your friends, family or co-workers involved and welcome their input on how to get around an obstacle in your path. This will bring in new ideas and fresh perspectives on the problem in ways you may have never considered.

Remember to periodically step back (or aside) and gain a fresh perspective. There are times when, no matter how hard you try, things just don’t go your way. This is where you need to stop, take a step back, and look at things from a different perspective.

• You become used to your routine, so the fine details can easily slip past you. Take a break and walk away for a little bit. Change your focus for a time; then come back to the problem and you may see something you missed.

Finally, and I can’t emphasize this enough, never ever give up. Nothing has ever been solved or accomplished by giving up. Vince Lombardi said it best: “Winners never quit and quitters never win!” This is as true as it gets.

• Being too rigid on something can be counterproductive. In order to succeed, we sometimes have to change our approach completely. Keep at the problem until you find a solution. It’s there; you just have to find it.

Sometimes you may find you need to start again. Sometimes, despite all your efforts, you need to rebuild from the ground up. Maybe one of your fundamental ideas was wrong and had an effect on everything else. This happens, and while it’s a setback, it’s not the end of your dream.

With a little more effort and hard work, you can do it!

Being successful isn’t easy and it involves a lot of hard work, dedication and sometimes sacrifices. With these tips, a good plan, and positive people around you to help, you can accomplish anything you set your mind to.

To your success my friend!

Britt