The Fantastic Life

Consistency

Living a Fantastic Life requires a lot of natural and developed attributes.  One of them is consistency.  Why?

  • Change requires time AND consistency. Creating a habit cannot be done overnight. That is why starting small (very small) and being consistent is way more powerful than trying to change everything at once.
  • Who I am today is a sum of the many choices I made in the past, big and small. And I would argue that 80% of who I am is based, not on the big changes, but the small daily choices I have made over my lifetime.
  • I personally know how frustrating it can be to check your progress daily or even weekly and see only small changes. But if we can just stick to the new habit, the differences will add up and you will be someone new.  
  • As the old saying goes, “No pain, no gain.”  In this case, small pain on a daily basis leads to big gains.

Consistency. Be the word.

PS: I was recently a guest on “The Trust Doctor,” a podcast hosted by relationship and communications expert, Dr. Patty Ann Tublin. In this episode, we discussed building business relationships with the persistence and grit of an athlete. Please click the image below to listen to the podcast.

 

Rule # 5   from my book The Fantastic Life: Make Sacrifices
What could you accomplish in five minutes? What changes might you see if you gave up sugar once a week. Small sacrifices, like small habits, compound over time to build the life we desire. 


The Small Steps of Giant Leaps


By: Jeff Olsen | Published on December 2, 2021

 

 

One of the most beneficial skills you can learn in life is how to consistently put yourself in a good position. The person who finds themselves in a strong position can take advantage of circumstances while others are forced into a series of poor choices. 

Strong positions are not an accident. Weak positions aren’t bad luck. 

Telling someone they need to put themselves in a strong position is useless. Everyone knows they need a strong foundation to build a house that can weather a storm (or a wolf, thank you Three Little Pigs) but not everyone knows how we can create that foundation.

The answer is as simple as it is frustrating. The position you find yourself in today is the accumulation of the small choices that you’ve been making for years.

If that’s the case, why doesn’t everyone make choices that will put them in a good position in the future?

The ordinary choices that guarantee a strong future go unnoticed. There is no pat on the back for doing the right thing just as there is no slap on the wrist for doing the wrong thing.

Eating a chocolate bar right now won’t make you unhealthy. Just as not eating it won’t make you healthy. Saving money today won’t make you rich, just as not saving it won’t make you poor. Reading a chapter of a great book today won’t solve your problems just as not reading it won’t make them worse.

Not doing the obvious thing you know you should do — the thing that positions you for future success — rarely hurts you right away

The small choices we make on a daily basis either work for us or against us. One choice puts time on your side. The other ensures it’s working against you. Time amplifies what you feed it. 

On the first day, the difference between the choices that help us and the choices that hurt us isn’t noticeable. But as the days turn to weeks, weeks into years, and years into decades do the small choices create massively different results.

Whenever this idea is brought up, people are quick to interject. “But … I do these things and I don’t get the results.” And it’s true, most of us make the right choices most of the time. But most of the time isn’t the same as all of the time. 

For your choices to compound, you need to be consistent. Intensity will only carry you in the short term but if you want compounding results you need consistency. In the absence of immediate rewards, we can keep up the intensity for a while but most of us become intermittent. 

A lack of consistency keeps ordinary people from extraordinary results. It’s like we’re Sisyphus rolling a boulder halfway up the hill, only to throw our hands in the air and go home. When we show up the next day, we see the boulder at the bottom of the hill. Not only did this undermine our progress but it makes getting started even harder. 

Excelling at the small choices that compound over time perpetually leaves you in favorable circumstances. No matter what happens in the world, you’re never in a position where you are forced into a bad decision.

If you want results you need to be willing to pay the price. The price is both easier than you imagine and harder than you think. The price is consistently doing the small choices that put you on the path to success for years. The price is knowing that time is working on your side even when the results don’t show it … yet.

When you look below the surface, giant leaps aren’t really giant leaps at all. They’re a series of ordinary choices that suddenly become noticeable. If you look for the magic moment, you’ll miss how ordinary becomes extraordinary. 

 


 

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