This is a guest post from Richard A. Cross, who was one of the winners of EMB’s #BloggerSupport Guest Post Giveaway.  He is a former Police Officer, Athlete and Restorative Justice Facilitator. Richard’s mission is to help others to recognize their potential and to empower them to go beyond their limitations to achieve their dreams.

His primary focus is our young people, but the information is relevant to adults who want to go beyond any limitations that they may have in regards to Personal Development, Attitude and Overcoming Adversity. He is currently a Professor, an Empowerment Speaker and a Coach.

In today’s post, he is daring us to be the best that we can be. Without further delay, here now is Richard –

What good habit will you start practicing today?

Being the best you is going to need from you good habits.

It was Charles C. Noble who said, “First we make our habits, and then our habits make us.”

As you embark on being the best you, don’t worry about structuring your behavior that it pleases everyone around you. Doing so will be more damaging to your well-being than anything else. However, you want to make sure that the behavior you choose to exemplify will be reinforcing positive progress and growth in your life.

Start today

Are you exercising? Are you reading and listening to motivational material? Are you writing a to-do-list? Are you taking time for yourself? Are you saving? Are you waking up early?

Those are just a few good habits that are practiced by many successful people. There are many more good habits that I could have mentioned here, but I’ll give you the chance to think of some other ones for yourself.

Back to you now, what new habits will you add to your life? The things you do are going to shape your life either positively or negatively, and the good thing about that is, you have the choice on what you are going to do.

“The freedom to be your best means nothing unless you are willing to do your best.” Colin Powell

Dare to be the best you

Challenge yourself

In regards to the above question I don’t want you to start thinking about the bad habits that you may have. I ask the question for one reason and that is for you to think about what good habit you would want to start doing.

In fact, what I have found out about creating new habits is that once I focus on the one I want to add to my already good habits the bad habit slowly disappears. Look at it like this, you have two pets and you only feed one. Just watch what happens after a while. You’ll notice that the one you stopped feeding will begin to die. It’s the same thing with habits.

The one you want to develop you have to feed it, pay attention to it, do it daily. If you don’t think you’ll remember have someone who wants to see you become successful be your accountability partner. What you’ll realize is that the new habit will eventually become a part of you.

“I want to challenge you today to get out of your comfort zone. You have so much incredible potential on the inside. God has put gifts and talents in you that you probably don’t know anything about.” Joel Osteen

Stay focused

To start a new habit is good, but to make it even better is to make your new habit become a part of your life. To do so will require you to be focused. You never want to leave being the best you to chance. What helped me to focus on new habits that I wanted to develop in my life was that I selected a specific time of the day when I’d be more efficient and stick with the time that I have set.

I also track what I am doing to see if am getting better or not, and with improvement I reward myself. One of the things I do find very helpful on staying focused is to ask someone to hold you accountable. That was one of my biggest challenges but the minute I gained the courage to share with others what I wanted to accomplish I realized that not only did I get the job done on time, but I became a more disciplined person.

“Successful people maintain a positive focus in life no matter what is going on around them. They stay focused on their past successes rather than their past failures, and on the next action steps they need to take to get them closer to the fulfillment of their goals rather than all the other distractions that life presents to them.” Jack Canfield

Learn to say NO

This is very important when working on being the best you. Not being able to say no can cause you to overextend yourself and when you overextend yourself you’ll not be able to focus on your specific task that you have set for yourself to do. You’ll be all over the place pleasing everybody else but yourself.

Sometimes we are our worst enemy and we do that by saying yes to some things that we were supposed to say no to. If you find it hard to say NO, make yourself a poster to remind you that NO is an option. Put it on your wall in front of you, on your desk calendar if you have to, but it is imperative that you learn to say no because if you can’t you’ll be doing things that you don’t even want to do.

“Learn to say ‘no’ to the good so you can say ‘yes’ to the best.” John C. Maxwell

Don’t feel bad about saying no. Pleasing everybody but yourself is not good for your well-being. You’ll get over it after a few times of saying NO, but always keep in mind that you always have the option of saying NO. Remember, being focused is vital for your success. Never be afraid of the challenge because that is the only way to improve on what you already know and the best time to start challenging yourself is today.

Richard A. Cross is the founder of Energize Your Thoughts. You can find him at:

Blog: http://richardacross.com

photos: Freedigitalphotos.net