Consistency: How You Win the Race

We often will see someone’s success that just seems to come out of nowhere. We’ll look at what they’re doing and wonder, “What’s their secret? How did they get so successful?” What we see is the result of their hard work. Work that could’ve taken months or even years for them to finally reach that success. This week in Deeper Thoughts we’re going to discuss the biggest secret to success, consistency.

What a lot of people do when they set out to achieve a goal is they try to do too much, too fast, and all at once. A great example of this is someone who wants to get into the gym. We see this especially at the beginning of every year and many of you reading have witnessed this, or been the one who has done it.

Every January every gym in America is flooded with new members who are eager and excited to start working out. They’re gonna get in shape and improve their health! Day one they go all out, they’ve got a plan and hit the ground running! But the next several days they’re sore as all out. So instead of going and working out a different muscle group, they just skip the gym. But they’re still sore on that next day so they skip again. The day after that they might go again, but they’re once again sore for several days after that workout. By about the third or fourth actual work out they start making excuses to not go and before January is even over they’ve given up.

So what went wrong here? Well for starters, odds are these people haven’t ever worked out a day in their life before. When that’s the case there’s going to be soreness even with a lighter workout that gets you into the groove. But many people go all out trying to push themselves right off the bat, which is going to increase that soreness and it’s going to last for several days. This process is unsustainable.

If they had started out with lighter work outs in the beginning along with working out different muscle groups each session, that soreness and pain would 1: not be as intense, and 2: would be spread to different parts of the body so by the time it got to working out the same group at the beginning the soreness would be gone. After a few weeks of this they could start upping the weights and continue on with minimal soreness that usually only lasts partway through the next day. This process allows them to achieve consistency. They keep showing up and as their body adapts to the soreness and builds strength they’re able to keep going.

Let’s look at another example. Many times someone finds a hobby or passion that they decide they want to make a career out of. For instance, Steve stumbles into woodworking and loves the process. He finds it calming and loves to be out in his garage building things. Steve decides “You know what? I want to do this for a living.” So what does he do? He takes all his extra money, including savings into a ton of high quality tools. He buys top of the line drills, a circular saw, a router and router table, sander, miter saw, table saw, a jointer and a planer, a band saw, drill press, tons and tons of clamps, bits, and squares. He’s got everything he needs! He even quits his job so he can solely focus on woodworking.

But he’s struggling to get customers and make sales. Bills are coming due and now he’s stressed because he spent all his money on tools but never built up clientele. Now he’s having to go back and find a job to start bringing in an income again. Now he feels like a failure and gives up on woodworking and starts selling his tools he bought trying to recoup his losses.

Now what could have Steve done differently? For starters, he should have started off buying just basic tools he needed to get started. He could’ve started building furniture customized to his home that he wanted and showcase those to friends and family and even post them on his social media to let people know he can build those items. He could have built other small projects for gifts such as bird feeders, keepsake boxes, serving trays, etc for friends and family and ask them to show them off to guests they have and slowly but consistently start building up a reputation via word of mouth. Slowly and overtime he would start getting orders trickling in and start getting paid commissions. Finding ways to build things consistently like this not only gives him a portfolio to showcase but also helps him hone his skills, learn new techniques, and learn to build items more efficiently, even if it’s something new.

As he starts getting more clients he can start taking those profits and reinvesting them into bigger tools to add to his shop, and over time start easing out of his main income job as his woodworking side hustle starts to grow. Working around his schedule might make for long days, but he’s still showing up and making steps toward his goal. That consistency, though slow growing, will overtime lead to success.

Many of the success stories we hear about start out from humble beginnings, often as something done on the side and slowly built up. Slow and steady wins the race. That consistency helps you perfect your skills and learn how to become a top performer in your craft. Keep showing up for yourself and your goals and over time you’ll reach success. You don’t sprint in a marathon. Consistency is key.

Thank you for reading, and I hope you all have an enlightening day.