M.J. Ryan - Habit Changers: 81 Game-Changing Mantras to Mindfully Realize Your Goals

What would you like to change in your life? Would you like to be more focused at work? Communicate more effectively? Have the time to strategize for the long term rather than simply putting out fires every day? Have greater work-life balance? Be more faithful to your health and fitness goals? Be more patient with your team or family? Have greater self-confidence? Less stress? Justbe happier? What if you could take control of your destiny and change your behavior, permanently, in ways that would help you become both happier and more successful?

The good news is you can change to have more of what you want. I know because I help people change every day. Nothing is more satisfying to me than to see someone articulate a goal and achieve it. Ive been obsessed my whole life with the human potential to transform, to become happier and more successful in the ways we want to be. Thats why, for the past fourteen years, Ive worked with executive clients at some of the biggest companies in the world, as well as entrepreneurs and individuals from sixteen to seventy-five. Ive written many books on growing positive qualities. And I give speeches and workshops on these topics around the world.

Through this work Ive been privileged to watch people learn to deal better with their anger; stop worrying; become more emotionally intelligent; be more caring, confident, and powerful leaders; delegate and influence more successfullyachieve whatever it is that they want to develop in themselves.

One thing Ive learned from all my work with clients is that behavioral change is hard, regardless of how accomplished or smart or disciplined you are. You probably know that as well. You vow to change, but your best intentions end up in the rubble of your deeply ingrained habits over and over again. So you vow againfor real this timebut find yourself a week or a month or a year later in exactly the same spotonly more discouraged than ever.

I get it. I used to be the same way. Then I had a wake-up call. Id been reading about a Tibetan Buddhist mind training called Lojong, or slogan practice, a set of fifty-nine one-line aphorisms you recite as antidotes to undesired mental habits. You start with the first, recite it until it becomes so ingrained that you no longer need it, then go to the second. Hmm, I thought, I wonder if this kind of practice could be useful for my clients. But I found the slogans so obscure that I didnt think they could be useful unless youre really steeped in Buddhist philosophy, so I abandoned the idea.

Or I thought I did. Apparently the concept was still rolling around in my head when one day I was working with a busy executive who was trying to learn how to get great performance from his employees without micromanaging. I was yammering on and he looked at me and said, Im busy. I need it boiled down to something simple so I can remember.

Without thinking, I replied, I am going to give you a slogan. Every time you talk to an employee, say to yourself: Give what and why, not how. And so he did.

His transformation was instantaneous and astonishing. Because the slogan was so simple, he could actually easily remember to repeat itover and over again. And each time he did, he was able to instruct his employees in a constructive way rather than micromanaging. His boss and employees all noticed the change, and within three months he received the promotion to director that had eluded him for years. As we finished our work together, he thanked me for what he described as a powerful course correction that he had not been able to pinpoint before.

It was then that I realized I could use the principle of slogan practice to help all of my clients, and many others too, by creating memorable one-line phrases that would serve as the habit changers they needed. I started coming up with phrases for the things they wanted to remember to do or be, and it turned out the simple act of repeating these over and over worked for them as well. Without exception, people found it easier to enact the change they wanted.