Facebook Live Challenge – Day 27 – Power and Mastery In Consistency

[embedyt] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MSvCC6IKkkg[/embedyt]

In people’s lives, especially in business the primary focus is on results. We focus on goals, daily weekly, monthly results, sometimes yearly results. Consistency plays a major role in an individual’s success. It also plays a major role in a team or businesses success. For me consistency ranks right up there with Actions and Attitude.

The primary definition for consistency is:

The achievement of a level of performance that does not vary greatly in quality over time.

Meaning that what you put in to a task, you get out the same result each time. This is all about repetition. The rule is that repetition is the mother of skill. If you do something enough times, you master the skill, and then you are considered an expert. I remember a commercial with Peyton Manning talking about once someone has put 10,000 hours into a task, that produces expertise.

People that are the most successful are the ones that can perform the same or similar tasks, day in and day out – AND – get a same or at least similar outcome.

I mentioned the other day, “SUCCESS LEAVES CLUES” – So does failure. One thing you can do to adjust this is stop looking at success or failure and simply view outcomes. Because when you put energy into a task, whether you get the result that you want, or not, you ALWAYS get an outcome. Look at the outcome and adjust accordingly.

So, this is one of those simple tidbits, if you are getting the results you want, either in your personal life, from the gym, with your family OR in business, at work, sales results for example. Then keep doing those things.

In turn if you are NOT getting the results you want, you MUST make changes. Being consistent in the wrong things still produces the wrong results, or least the wrong results at the time.

The key reason why most people struggle with staying consistent over the long-term is that they only live for the short-term. We live in a world of immediacy. If I want to know the answer to a question, I just “Google It” and heaven forbid if a multitude of responses don’t appear in under 3 seconds. In general, if people don’t get immediate results from their actions, they don’t see the point with continuing with those actions over the long-haul.

The habit of consistency isn’t about obtaining quick results. It’s rather about making incremental progress and improvements over an extended period.

Think about team sports. I like team sports, because to me, they parallel today’s business environment.

Most teams do not just start out winning because they WANT to, though a healthy desire can help propel you in the right direction. Sports teams practice, and they do it over and over and over again.

In fact, much more time is spent in practice than in competition.

THEN – They show up to play.

Are you doing the same thing in your life? Your business life? Are you spending as much or more time training to be great… or are you simply showing up to the game with desire and hoping.

Consistency takes commitment. Consistency takes repetition. Repetition creates habit. Habit creates skill. Skills repeated create mastery! When you develop the right, positive habits, those things in turn create similar results each time.

Be consistent, MASTER your skills through consistency, it really is more than just showing up.