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. Seeing the results of that consistency may be easy to see with areas like finances and health, but they’re also adding up when it comes to changes in your thinking that leads to healing a betrayal and shattered trust. A small step forward each day adds up to a lot of mileage over time.
Are the little things you do each day in regards to your actions, habits and behaviors adding up to something positive? Or have you noticed that not only is there no forward movement, but there’s been a slow and progressive slipping backwards?
With consistent action over the next 10 or 20 years, what could you accomplish? Five workouts each week/ 5 days per week equal 1300 workouts in 1 year! Five minutes of meditation each day over the course of a few years can add up to… a lot of meditation. You get the idea.
Are your consistent behaviors helping or harming?
Use the power of consistency to enhance your success:
- If you re-lived today for the next 10 years, where would you end up? Saving just a small amount of money each day would net you many thousands of dollars saved within a few years. If you overeat slightly each day, you’d eventually be many sizes larger.
- 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 TV.
- 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, emotionally, socially, spiritually, and physically. Where are your habits leading you?
- Realize that many changes in life come slowly. While some people advocate taking massive action to see massive results, that strategy can be difficult to apply and maintain.
- Consider something like weight loss for example. You can’t lose 25 pounds in a day. Small changes occur to your weight each day. Those small, regular changes to your habits, beliefs and behavior about food and eating add up to impressive results.
- Building a great company, the perfect body, or a great relationship all take time and consistency.
- Consistency requires habits and discipline. Use your discipline to develop useful habits. Use that discipline to get to the root of your beliefs and changing them because changing your beliefs will result in changing your habits.
- 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. You’ve probably heard that “someday” isn’t a day on the calendar.
- The only real discipline required is the discipline to act right now.
- 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. I’ve also heard that we overestimate what we can do in a year and underestimate what we can do in 3 years so set an expectation factoring in those 2 ideas.
- Use reminders or triggers in your environment to encourage consistency. Think about the things that you do every day that could serve as reminders. Getting dressed, starting your car, and turning out the light each night are a few examples.
- Each night you turn out the light, you could visualize your goals. After getting dressed, you could grab your gratitude journal for a few minutes of journaling and getting centered.
What you do once in a while doesn’t impact your life significantly. Rather, it’s what you do consistently. Consistency is a major predictor of success in any endeavor whether it’s in the realm of health, work, relationships and more. Develop habits and routines that guarantee success by changing them at the level of belief. Consistent behaviors determine your outcomes, so choose behaviors that drive you towards exactly what you want.
Dr. Debi
Founder and CEO, The PBT (Post Betrayal Transformation) Institute