Habits Versus Goals

Jody N Holland
2 min readJan 10, 2025

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Image of a man hiking with the words, successful people have daily habits that drive their success.
Daily Habits Create Success Image

Every January, people tend to evaluate who they are, where they are, and where they want to go for the year. They set lofty goals and dream about how great it will be to have all those shiny accomplishments by year's end. This has definitely been true for me over the years. Looking back through dozens of journals from the last 25 years of my life, I noticed that I would write incredible goals down and even map out what life would be like with more success, but I didn’t focus on one specific thing that would have helped. I didn’t focus on the daily habits needed to succeed.

A few years ago, I began giving myself a break from the lofty goals exercise and started focusing on the habits of successful people. I noticed something interesting when studying what the most successful people were doing. They were executing on the things that mattered every single day. Many of the successful people I spoke with had goals as well, but they talked about daily habits more than they talked about goals. Think about the person that wants to increase their knowledge in a given subject. When they set out to master the subject, how will they know when mastery has been achieved? In contrast, the person who actually masters a new subject simply spends time every day studying that subject. Last year, my obsession was marketing my leadership services. I read 30 minutes a day, five days a week, on how to market my services. This year, I am studying body language, gesture clusters, and emotional microexpressions. I am just focused on learning something new every day. The habit of learning is more important than the goal of mastery.

Regardless of what you are trying to accomplish in your life, figure out the daily habits that have gotten others there, then do the same thing. When you discover the habits of success and replicate them, success chases you down. If you want to be in shape, create the habit of eating well and exercising every day. When you diet, you feel you are suffering. When you have healthy habits, you feel you are thriving. If you want to be a great leader, make it a habit to study leadership daily and to invest in your team daily. Every outcome we want is achieved through the habits we embrace.

What habits will get you where you want to be in the next year? Go get them!

Jody Holland, M.S. Psychology

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Jody N Holland
Jody N Holland

Written by Jody N Holland

Family, Focus, and Future… I love to write, speak, train, and coach on leadership and personal growth. Author of 23 books and keynote speaker 350+ times.

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