Skyrocket Your Success with This One Thing
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If you know me at all, you know I am a goal-setter! I can set goals all day long. I love to write them out in a pretty notebook with lovely colored pens. But more than setting goals, I love achieving goals and that amazing feeling of accomplishment that comes from marking a goal off my list.
There’s only one problem: sometimes I set a goal down on paper, and, well, life goes on. I come back to that goal months later and am dismayed that I’ve made little to no progress on it. Yikes. I immediately feel the guilt of not working harder on that goal.
But, I’ve been realizing something lately. Maybe, just maybe, I’m not the lazy procrastinator I call myself when I don’t make progress on a goal. Maybe I’m going about the process all wrong. There has to be a better way.
If you ever experience guilt when you don’t achieve a goal, I hope you’ll dive into this post. It may just change everything!
Take It from A Guru…
Enter my good friend, Tony Robbins. Ok, so maybe I’ve never met him before, but I still consider him to be a genius in the personal development and success world. Seriously, if you’ve never read anything of his, I recommend you start with this oldie but goodie and then check out this book of his on financial freedom.
This quote from Mr. Robbins is really powerful. Be sure to read it a couple of times to let it sink in.
It’s not what we do once in a while that shapes our lives; it’s what we do consistently– Tony Robbins
Simple? Yes. Totally life-changing if you actually apply it? Absolutely.
The key here is one little word: consistency. This word, and even more important, the action behind it can change your entire life.
C is for Consistency and Change
If there is something you’d like to change about your life or improve, there is no better way to make that change than by introducing the superhero of consistency in your life.
I’m going to be really blunt here: if you want to see change, you have to work on that change more than once if you expect to see results.
Real life example: say you hate how late your kiddos go to bed every night. Because they are so late going to sleep, you end up going to bed late yourself, never having any downtime before it’s actually time for you to sleep. This in turn, makes you grumpy the next day, and you hate being a grumpy mom. The vicious cycle goes on and on.
The change you want is to make your kids’ bedtime earlier so you can have some downtime and go to bed on time yourself. Let’s say you come up with the perfect plan and the perfect time to get them to sleep. You gear up for the complaints about turning in early, and magically, your kids go to bed early! You do a little victory dance before figuring out what it is you do with all of your newfound free time.
Then tomorrow comes, and bedtime goes back to being late again. You berate yourself for failing. How could you be so weak? How did your kids outsmart you yet again?
The problem, friend, is not that you are weak. I’m here to tell you that you are an amazing mom (I don’t even have to know you to know that). It’s that you lack consistency to enforce your new schedule. You have to consistently work the plan if you want to see it start to work all the time, not just the first time you try it.
I used the example of children’s bedtimes because that’s something we definitely struggle with in this household, but you can apply the consistency technique to…well, anything.
- Want to drop the baby weight? Consistency in healthy eating and exercise will get you the hot bod you want.
- Want to reignite your love life with your husband? Consistently spending quality time with him will eventually rekindle that fire you had when you were dating.
- Want to accomplish that dream that feels so big it makes you uncomfortable? Consistency in working on that dream, even if it’s in little bitty pieces will get you there and keep you fired up along the way.
Girl, consistency applied to any dream, goal, or process will get you headed in the direction you want to go! You just can’t stop, especially when it gets hard or monotonous.
3 Ways to Jumpstart a Habit of Consistency
When I’m working on a goal, I’m ready to see results of it about an hour ago. Unfortunately, that’s not how it works for me, and I’m betting it doesn’t work like that for you either.
If you’re looking to develop more consistency in your life, here are 3 ideas to help:
- Track your consistency habit. I love following the #debtfreecommunity on Instagram. Many people are working their tails off to get out of debt. One of the tools I see used by many of these people are debt-free charts where they color in a section of the paper every time they pay off a debt. The charts are colorful and motivating. Why does this work? Because, when you focus on something and track your progress, you get constantly fired up about the visual cues that you are, indeed, headed in the right direction. Whatever habit you want to develop, figure out a way to track it. Then keep that reminder in front of you daily as motivation!
- Introduce a reward system into your goals. Developing more consistent habits and getting a prize? Sign me up! Currently, I’m working on losing the vanity pounds of my baby weight. I have about 10 pounds to lose, and I’ve decided that every three pounds that I lose, I get a reward in return. If you’ve never tried building in rewards in your process of working on a goal, you have to give this a try! Your rewards can be as simple as that new nail polish you’ve been eyeing at Target, or as lavish as a cruise with your man when you’ve finished that big project. Find rewards that make you smile, and sprinkle them throughout the process you’re trying to establish.
- Divorce yourself from the end result. I don’t want this to sound contradictory to everything else I’ve written in this post, but you’ve got to stop focusing on the end result. (Preaching to myself here.) Focus instead of developing the consistent habit you’re working on and try to forget about what will come from it. Become the person who follows through no matter what. Before you know it, you’ll start getting results, but if they’re slower in coming than you like, don’t give up. Just keep going.
Just Keep Swimming
I can’t help but think about Dory in Disney’s Finding Nemo and her catchy chant, “Just keep swimming, just keep swimming…” All together now!
Seriously, that is great life advice. Whatever you’re working to improve or accomplish right now, challenge yourself to work at it consistently. Day in, day out. Even if it’s just a few minutes here and there. Keep being consistent and before you know it, the results you seek will follow naturally.
Get Real
I want you to know that I didn’t just write this blog post to make you feel good and spur you into action. I’m writing it just as much for myself as well. The consistency habit I’m working on developing is writing blog content at least 5 days a week so I can ultimately grow this blog. Some weeks, I miss the mark, but overall, I’m starting to find my daily groove.
If this post encouraged you and you have an area of your life you’d like to develop more consistency in, would you be brave enough to share what it is in the comments? We can do this, friend!
Kristin
