Replace Bad Habits with Good Habits

A tree’s fruitfulness depends on its root-fullness.

I love this thought. The quality of a tree’s fruit depends on the nourishment of the root.

What do you want the fruit of your life to be?

Great family relationships, good health, financial abundance, strong faith, and a legacy that ripples through eternity in all of the right ways are things that come to most people’s minds.

The real question is are you going to live your life and leave a legacy by design or by chance?

In my book, Choose to Win – Transform Your Life One Simple Choice at a Time, I identify the simple choices you can make today that will make tomorrow better, and allow you to design your legacy that will ripple through eternity.

A few years ago I was speaking in Melbourne, Australia. Before the first break I was asked, “What is the fastest way to success?” This was the first time I had ever been asked this question! What a great question. After all, who wants the slow way to success? After a brief “deer in the headlights” moment I said:

“The fastest way to success is to replace bad habits with good habits.”

And then we went to break. After the break, my host and mentor Steve McKnight said to the group, “Did you hear what Tom said? The fastest way to success is to replace bad habits with good habits.”

And just like that this simple concept became the core of my teaching for the last four years and the lynchpin of Choose to Win.

The 7 Choices Plan

At Ziglar we teach that whatever goal, dream, or aspiration you have in life will fall into one of these seven areas: mental, spiritual, physical, family, financial, personal, and career.

The 7 Choices Plan simply means you can transform your life by making simple choices to create the right habits in each of these seven areas. These seven areas, when nourished by the right habits, will create the fruits in your life that will leave a legacy.

To show you how this works, let’s look at Choice 1 which covers the mental area of your life.

CHOICE 1:

The mental input, what you choose to think about, determines everything about how you live.

The most important life lesson I learned from my father, Zig Ziglar, was to choose the right input into my mind. What you read, listen to, watch, and who you associate with all combine to determine your thinking. Romans 12:2 says we must renew our mind with the good, the clean, the pure, and the powerful and we must guard our minds against things that hinder us from becoming all that God created us to become.

I believe that you are born to win, created on purpose for a purpose! But first, you must Choose to Win, and the choices you make and the habits you create will determine who you ultimately become and the legacy you leave. Choosing the right input is the first of 7 Choices that will transform you into the person God created you to become.

Original article written for Steadfast by Tom Ziglar, author of Choose to Win.

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Your Turn

What are some good habits you can take up in your life to replace the bad ones? Does it empower you to know you have the choice to create positive habits — the choice to win? We’d love to hear your thoughts in the comments!