The other day a friend I haven’t seen in a while posted a picture of herself in a bikini on Facebook. She looked amazing; ripped and totally rocking. Of course people wanted to know, “what’s your secret?!” “how did you do this?!”, “did you give up carbs?!”. I’ve got to tell you, I was wondering myself and I started to kick myself for eating a bagel the day before.
My friend Aimee knew she had a captive audience and so she started to tease us a bit. She said things like, “oh… I’ll tell you but it’s top secret stuff” OR “I’ll tell you but you can’t tell anyone else!” Then finally she spilled it… she said she was consistent.
It was simple:
- She made up her mind that she wanted to loose weight, get fit and rock out a bikini like no one’s business;
- She got a coach that would help her;
- She did what the coach told her to do (eat veggies, eliminate the crap, exercise — surprise, surprise!);
- She was consistent—this hit me like a ton of bricks (no, not the veggies and exercise part… give me some credit).
“It’s not what we do once in a while that shapes our lives, but what we do consistently.”–Tony Robbins.
So why aren’t we being consistent?
#1. We get bored. Trying new things can be fun and exciting but us humans tend to get bored quickly. Doing the same thing over and over doesn’t get us excited. Once that initial rush wears off, it can be tough to put in the extra work, get up earlier, push ourselves harder.
#2. We’re afraid it’s not working. Sometimes we don’t give things enough time and we jump to the next thing hoping it will get us to our end goal faster.
#3. We thing the grass is greener. We see someone else doing something and it looks like more fun or easier. I hate to break it, but it’s not always going to be easy. Goals are hard to achieve. They take time, work and commitment. If achieving goals were easy everyone would be skinny. ?
There are lots of reasons why consistency is key, but here are three to get you thinking:
#1. It builds self trust. Achieving a goal takes a lot of willpower and when things get tough, as they alway do, it takes steely willpower to keep going. When we have a history of starting and stopping, we start to see ourselves as someone who doesn’t finish things—even if it is a subconscious belief—it will still impact our ability to trust ourselves to make it to the finish line.
#2. It creates momentum. When you see yourself taking the steps to achieve a goal consistently it starts to create a momentum that starts to move you along much faster. Kind of like the snowball effect. Or Jerry Seinfeld’s Don’t Break the Chain productivity hack.
#3. It provides valuable data. When you commit to taking consistent action to achieve a goal you can start to see patterns in what works and what doesn’t. As an example, want to loose weight? When you track the basic details, what you’re eating, how you’re exercising you’re able to see what works, what doesn’t and adjust accordingly. This is really the magic in getting to real results.
We often take consistency out of the equation but that’s usually the ONE thing we’re usually missing.