. There are several chapters written by a man named John Burley, who I am not familiar with, but his writing style is nice and direct, and I like that. Habits are defined as "the routine behaviors that define what we do on a regular basis and dictate how we will react to a given situation." It makes sense that one needs to develop good habits in order to be successful, financially or otherwise. In fact, some of the most financially successful people I know have only achieved that success after developing good habits in other areas of life; physical and mental habits for instance. Taking this advice to heart, I am working on developing good physical and mental habits. Since your thoughts create your emotions, taking control of your thoughts automatically allows you to respond rather than to react. So I have decided that a good mental habit for me is to avoid the news. I don't really need to hear all the bad news out there and have it cluttering up my brain. I have also cut out caffeine and alcohol. Caffeine was incredibly easy, I have not had caffeine in several weeks, in fact I have lost count. I drink green tea and water instead. Those are the only two beverages I drink. If its not green tea or water I won't drink it. They say that you can set or break any habit in 21 days. I have been running on a daily basis, no matter how tired I am at the end of the day. Instead of grabbing a glass of wine to relax after a day's work, I go jogging instead. I figure if I can stick to it for 21 days, I will have broken a bad habit, established a good one, and replaced a bad one with a good one. Thats three things to celebrate! I know that the increased clarity will help me in refining my vision and developing a clear plan. For now, the focus is good habits and tracking my spending.
