5 Simple Things to Remember About Consistency: Nothing Happens By Accident

New Year, new resolutions and goals. And rightfully so. A New Year is a new slate. An opportunity to start fresh with a clear mind and rested body. Quite a few studies out there, if you search indicates many people have similar goals and resolutions each year. Why? If you are honest with yourself, you probably fall into this category at times as well. I know I have. Over the years, I have missed on some goals and not achieved them as planned. These days, my main goal is to not miss and be consistent.

Dial up your purpose.

A primary reason many goals fail and people fall off with consistency is they do not have their purpose dialed up. The concept of purpose can sound easy and you see the messaging around it everywhere: find your why, find your purpose. It is easier said than done in doing. I struggled with it for many years and even today still make sure I think hard and often to make sure mine is congruent with where I am and where I am going. It has to be. Your purpose is that burning fire inside you that keeps you going and MAKES you want to achieve your goals and hit your commitments.

However, your purpose is also not only about now and the future. It is forged from your past as well. Our pasts don’t define our decisions now nor our forward path - our goals, attitude and intentions do that. Nevertheless, our pasts do define our character good or bad. The trick is to really embrace it and not shy away from it even if it was not always easy or pretty.  

In my case, it was a mix of both, fortunately a little more for the good. Early struggles in my life led me down certain paths that seemed so difficult at the time but looking back, they had a tremendous influence both positive and negative that built me into what I am today. Pain, happiness, turmoil, - it all can build the architecture that defines your purpose today. For years, I tried to shy away from it, not talk about it, or forget about it. It was not until I embraced it that it helped stoke my fire and guide me to my purpose. Embrace your past including the pain, learn from it, do something with it as Dr. Eric Thomas says. He is right. Your past is a key input to your purpose and critical if you want to be consistent and achieve your goals.

Be accountable.

Nothing does happen by accident. Things happen, good or bad, through intention. Be accountable, which is the second point, to yourself and others on your goals and commitments. Believe in yourself and act with intention. If you learn to live with the hard edge of accountability, it can forge the discipline in life to drive honesty with yourself and others around you. This in turn can make you more decisive, a better leader, and a better teammate in general. A high degree of accountability can elevate the team around you; it is almost incredible how it can be contagious.

Accountability is hard because you have to own it when you do screw up. Usually ego gets in the way here, and prevents us from owning things properly when they go sideways. That is your external accountability with others around you. However, you also have internal accountability with yourself, with your mind. If you missed something or did not do what you were supposed to do such as working out, do you often try to downplay it to yourself or minimize it? Essentially, make excuses to yourself? This is our lack of internal accountability to our self. Learning to overcome this is key to being more consistent and learning to not miss.

Develop habits and be persistent.

How do you not #%$!*& miss? It starts with you and your ability to be consistent and more accountable to yourself. Consistency is built around self-discipline and self-discipline is cast from your habits and routines. Habits, even good or bad, create rigor and discipline. They can create wagon wheel grooves in your mind like the Oregon Trail. Discipline sounds so rigorous, so hard, and maybe even a bit scary. But it is almost ironic; discipline is one thing in life, in business, in sports that can truly set you free.

You have to be persistent to be consistent. Consistent means showing up all the time, doing what you are supposed to do, and meeting commitments to yourself and others. Persistence is about continuing to act in the face of challenges and showing the endurance to keep going. Persistence can create “luck”, persistence and consistency together builds experience.

Take for example Jerry Seinfeld, one of the most successful comedians of our time who has amassed a fortune, over $800M in his career. A lot of it from the hit show, Seinfeld but also in continuing to deliver entertainment content long after the show ended. His secret? He was persistent and therefore consistent. He wrote jokes every day he told interviewers, when he felt like it, when he did not feel like it. Some days he wrote good jokes, some days bad ones. Some days only one. However, he always wrote and “kept the chain” going. That is persistence and the third key point to remember. Be persistent with your positive habits.

Heed the compounding effect.

If you are consistent, the compounding effects of your habits and the incremental rigor and improvements cannot be denied. If you set out to improve yourself just 1% a day every day for an entire year, imagine how much can be gained. The math says roughly 38X better than January 1.  If you compare two people who are competing, and one is being consistent in improving themselves daily versus the other who is not consistent and looking for sporadic improvements here and there, whom do you think will come out on top after a year?  

The example of Seinfeld is just one, - many people can attest to the power of compounding behind habits and incremental improvements. In his excellent book, The Compounding Effect, Darren Hardy talks about the power of compounding in our lives, and refers to consistency as the key to success. Habits, good or bad, form an operating system for our lives. Incremental changes, decisions, and habits we take daily form the foundation of this operating system. This can be used to great advantage when practiced in a positive way. Likewise, it can be damaging with negative habits.

We all want the big, breakthrough changes that will transform our business or us quickly and easily, but these in reality are hard to come by and rely on outside factors such as time and maybe some luck. Compounding improvements with regular consistency are the path to success. Is it easy? Nope. But anything really worth doing usually is not.

Maintain the right mindset.

This brings us to the final key point to remember when it comes to consistency and goals: mindset. Your mind and your thinking control so much of what you actually experience in life and the various situations encountered. In fact, many challenges or feelings that we experience are made up in our head and therefore control our emotions, which therefore affect our actions or words. In some cases, this ends up with us regretting the outcome of words spoken or actions taken. In other cases, our thinking leads to actions or even inaction that hinders our consistency and move us away from our goals.

A positive mindset is a critical piece to being consistent and incrementally improving. Just a day or two of negative thinking is enough to throw one of the course of consistency, and just like the positive compounding effect mentioned earlier, the compounding effect can happen the other direction in a negative way. Mindset is key and developing the ability to stay positive and focused is a critical point to being consistent and getting where you want to go. Many others including myself have found having a daily dose of gratitude helps keep the mind focused on positive and try to stay in the green. Starting the day with gratitude and ending with it as well helps “bookend” the days with gratitude and help keep positive thoughts flowing.

A New Year can mean new goals and achievements. The New Year provides all of us 365 opportunities to do something different, start a habit, or execute towards a goal. Just improving yourself physically or mentally each day can reap significant benefits in one’s life. Take advantage of the many opportunities you have in front of you and are blessed with. Learning to adopt a mindset of gratitude helps orient this view of opportunities instead of merely problems.

Nothing happens by accident. I have learned this and believe it deeply. Embrace the motto that discipline does equal freedom and adopt the always-improving mindset. Find your purpose, be accountable, be persistent, act with intention towards your habits, and maintain that positive mindset. I guarantee you will not regret it if you stick with it.  

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