You decide you want to get your sleeping under control. 

Or for you, maybe the new habit you want to create is not better sleep, but perhaps it’s diet or exercise. But for our example, let’s stick with sleeping.

You already know that studies reveal how sleeping is a lynchpin habit (it unlocks a host of other good habits). So, you focus. You try multiple lifehacks to create an optimal environment for sleep:

• You eat dinner earlier because you heard that it’s not good to go to bed on a full stomach. (No luck). 

• You go to bed earlier. (Still no luck.) 

• You try meditation before bed. (Nope.) 

• Stretches before bed. (Uh-uh.)

• Yoga. (Once.)

• Camomille tea (Nada.) 

• You decide to keep your phone downstairs. (Ha.) 

• You even quit drinking (shock, dismay, but …. zilch.) 

• You spend several hundred bucks on a sleep-tracking watch to tell you what you already know (that you’re not sleeping well).

In frustration, you are just about to give up when suddenly, one night, it clicks. Everything falls into place. One night of rest turns into two, which turns into a week, which turns into a month. 

And just like that: A new habit is born. 

What happened? 

Evolutionary biologists have a fancy term for it: Evolution by jerks. (I kid-you-not, google it.)

Or you can call it by its cooler name, which sounds like a Ramones spin-off: Punk-Eek.

But its scientific name is “punctuated equilibrium” which means, you experience a season of equilibrium (no change) followed by sudden, radical, rapid change (the punctuation part).

Even Yo-Yo Ma believes this and he’s the greatest cellist in the world. 

In his Masterclass (Yo-Yo Ma Teaches Music and Connection), Ma said that “basically we change very slowly, incrementally, but every once and a while, there’s a huge amount of change that happens very quickly.” 

In our industry, big wins fall just like punctuated equilibrium. Ma basically described the same process we go through when we’re trying to land new business. We launch multiple campaigns: email, self-promo kits. We connect via social. We research our prospect’s business. Send them notes. Calls. Emails. We try multiple tactics. 

I can’t tell you how many frustrated salespeople I’ve sat across from, people who are doing all the right things but are not yet breaking through and are about to give up, when suddenly one final tactic opens the door, gets the prospect’s attention. Often I would hear, “That mailer to the prospect did it, they finally called, I got a project.” It wasn’t the mailer; it was multiple mailers, multiple reach-outs. 

Everyone wants to know the fast-fix to growth, the simple step to landing six-figure sales, the easy pill to swallow to ensure success, lose weight, win big.

There is no one secret.

To read more, click here.

Bobby Lehew is the chief content officer at commonsku, this article is courtesy of commonsku, the work-from-anywhere platform that powers your connected workflow enabling you to process more orders and dramatically grow your sales. To learn more visit commonsku.com.