7 Habits for Sustainable Success

Building a business that has a real positive impact in this world isn’t just dependent on identifying your purpose. To allow your purposeful business to flourish, you need to create and maintain habits and actions that keep you on a sustainable path. One that ensures you can last the distance.

Without these helpful habits, we can easily lose sight of what’s important – we stay stuck in an anxious state on the edge of burnout, and we operate with less focus and intention, even integrity. That’s why, at foundher, we believe if you are leading change – a real change-maker – creating ongoing success is less about what you do and even more about how you do it. 

Not sure how to shift from doing to being? Here are seven habits to start integrating into your life and business today to help you spark changes within you, in order to create greater ripples of change with what you do.

Plan with intention

How do you plan your days, weeks and months? 

Do you wait for others to give you deadlines and then make your schedule work to their timelines? Do you start the day by checking your inbox to see what requests have come in, thinking about how far behind you are, or do you create your own priorities? Do you include your state of mind as a consideration for productive capacity, or is the only focus on work deliverables and actions?

It’s time to start planning with intention. Decide how you want to structure your days and weeks, then add in your commitments and other people’s deadlines to fit in with that schedule. When creating project plans, intentionally create space and time in the lead-up to the product launch or event to ensure you can be who you need to be on that day. For example, rather than racing towards a launch event or implementing a new product line and all the actions for it, make sure your plan includes time in the lead-up to the event to reset and recharge – you’ll be far more effective.

Practise internal disruption

We are conscious beings who have the ability to change our habits, mindsets and beliefs – what a gift! This is rapid-pace evolution and it is key to being a maker of change. We must keep evolving who we are, what we believe and how we operate, because what was the right approach last year may not be the best approach for next year. 

So, how do we practise internal disruption? We check in with ourselves regularly to see if our daily habits and routines are truly serving us. We monitor our mindset and whether we need to make adjustments to shift the stories we are telling ourselves. And lastly, we continually reassess whether the beliefs we hold are still helpful, because as we learn, the truths on which we may have initially based our beliefs may change and evolve. The lesson? Put your systems on autopilot, not your beliefs.

Embrace uncertainty

We live in a complex and ever-changing world. Nothing is black and white, and we must recognise, accept and embrace the nuances that exist in everything. Problem is, though, as humans, we love knowing and familiarity – we lean into the safety of sameness. This becomes unhelpful, even detrimental, when trying to succeed and be productive in a world of complexity and chaos. 

Did you know that in complexity science, our actions and approach for more complex times requires us to activate a different behaviours and new skills and use more sophisticated EQ practices?

To begin navigating uncertainty and nuance, it’s important to take the time to consider the wider system over rushing toward an (any) answer. It’s about accepting that we will never know everything, yet acting anyway. It means being agile: ready and open to adjust our plans as often as necessary as new information and situations arise.

Encourage greater conversations

Being comfortable with uncertainty and the complexity of our world also means embracing tough conversations, often. Whether they’re with our team, customers or a stranger with a conflicting opinion, it’s important to embrace these opportunities to understand another perspective.

Some leaders tackle tough conversations with a clear script of what they want to say and how they want to say it, but this inflexible approach simply sidelines connection. After all, this isn’t a chance for you to present a TED Talk, it’s an opportunity to truly understand the other person’s view, while also sharing your own perspective. Conversations like this are a gift – they allow us to expand our worldview, change long-held opinions and expand understanding on pretty much everything.

Create morning and evening rituals

How you start and end your day creates a rhythm for who you can be during the day. It’s easy to feel like we don’t have time for rituals or to sacrifice our routines as soon as a challenge or deadline arises, but these daily frameworks are crucial to our ongoing success and capacity to create change. 

Aim for more days with intentional time for yourself, whether that’s scheduled exercise or meditation in the morning, or a wind-down routine in the evenings to shift your brain from work mode to rest mode. Our cognitive function needs downtime, even more so when operating in complexity. These two times are important containers for our EQ, IQ and our ability to last as leaders. Brushing them away or deprioritising you is not the recipe for curating your best self.

Schedule some recharge time (it’s not just for your phone) 

Building on your daily morning and evening routines that play a game-changing role for your business (and your sanity), it’s vital to schedule in time to regenerate. Remember, your actions and impact is dependent on your energy and wellbeing state 100% of the time.

Regeneration looks different for everyone – and you already have a sense of what works best for you. Perhaps you have a recurring appointment with your local massage therapist every month, family time each night or an afternoon a week that you have dedicated to mental wellbeing and rest. Scheduling this time in might feel luxurious, but it’s the best way to start creating habits that energise you so you can avoid burnout.

Choose a new response, not the same reaction

People who meditate regularly often talk about the space that meditation creates between action and response. These people have honed their ability to pause, reflect and then respond – a key skill when leading and navigating constant change, roadblocks, unexpected outcomes and a sustainable pace. The ability to develop your sense of self and create moments of pause that then elicit choices rather than reaction will lead to more thoughtful outcomes, and take way less energy from you. 

Developing this skill requires the ability to tune in and reflect on how the situation is making you feel, the impact it’s having on others and your business, and what the best course of action may be. Being able to practise this is one of the most integral aspects of sustainable high-performing leadership. 

Our eight-week PACE program teaches you how to create a sustainable success rhythm, and supports you as you put these habits into practice. Take a deep dive into transformative learning, step into your leadership potential and create greater results. 

Let’s create ripples of change together.