The Power of Consistency

While many believe that knowledge is power, knowledge is only powerful when it's consistently applied. Consistency may be the most important component of success. A small step forward each day adds up to a lot of mileage over time.

Are the little things you do each day adding up to something positive? Or is the quality of your life slowly slipping away?

With consistent action over the next 10 or 20 years, what could you accomplish? Five outreaches per day / 5 days per week equal 1300 exposures in one year! Five small pieces of chocolate over the same schedule is roughly 25,000 calories, or the equivalent of 7+ lbs. The principle of consistency works in either direction.

Are your regular behaviors ushering you closer to or farther away from your goals?

Quick Self-Evaluation:

1. If you re-lived today - THIS ACTUAL DAY - for the next 10 years, would you be pleased with the outcome? If you saved just a small amount of money each day, you'd eventually create stacks of cash. Compare this to slightly overeating daily and eventually tipping the scales to over 400 pounds.

* An effective way to predict your success is to examine your average day and project the likely outcome into the future. An hour each night spent practicing the piano would give different results versus spending an extra hour watching television.

* Your teeth aren't clean because you brushed them for an hour straight. They're clean because you brushed them for 3 minutes for 3,000 days straight.

* Consider where your daily habits and behaviors are leading you financially, socially, emotionally, spiritually, and physically. What are the logical conclusions of your daily activities?

2. Realize that many changes in life come slowly. Many success gurus advocate taking massive action to see massive results, but that is a "hot-cold" strategy that can be difficult to apply and maintain.?

* Consider weight gain. You can't throw on 25 lbs. of muscle in one workout. Small changes occur to your frame each day. Those small, layered changes add up to impressive results.

* Building a fortune, the perfect body, or a great relationship all take time and consistency.

3. Consistency requires building firm habits and creating a disciplined lifestyle. Military personnel quickly come to understand that there is not a lot of wiggle room in the conversation, when learning discipline in the service. It is most easily refined by building habits around performance. Here's a clue - discipline looks like staying locked into to the outcome regardless of the circumstances.

4. Learn to act in the moment. The greatest barrier to consistency is the belief that you can postpone an action to another day. Each day has the power to bring you closer to your goals. Each day lost is lost forever.?

* The only real discipline required is the discipline to act right now.

5. Have reasonable expectations. When your time horizon is unrealistic, it's not easy to be consistent. When you ask too much of yourself too soon, it's just as challenging. Be positive and enthusiastic, but be reasonable. Put your focus on regular and consistent improvement.

Perfection isn't required, but showing up is. Show up and give your full self, in that moment. The funny thing about the act itself, is that it can be something that takes less than an hour - sometimes just a few minutes. We often spend more time in anxiety about the thing, than the actual time doing the thing.

Get out of your head and start doing activating your disciplines with consistency. You don't have to be excited or even passionate about them - all that is cherry on top sentiment, which usually starts surfacing as the results begin to manifest. But in the beginning, it's you, in the dark, in the freezer, with Rocky, hitting the hanging meat - surely not a picture of glory days.

But if you stick and stay, over time, that proof in the pudding result, will surely be worth not your sacrifice, but rather your investment. You will discover that consistency is a major predictor of success in any endeavor. Pick a project and show up for it, for yourself, for 90 days - and do share the outcome with me. I want to celebrate with you!