Consistency

A very important factor that decides if an outcome is achieved or not, is consistency (simply doing something time and again and again and again). Do the following stories sound familiar?

  • A lady wants to lose weight, so tries a new diet on monday.  By Friday, there is no change in her weight, so she decides it’s not working, gives up and goes back to her usual weekend of wine and ice cream.
  • A guy decides they want to run a half marathon.  He finds a training plan and follows it for a couple of weeks before getting bored with it.  So goes out and finds a brand new, sexy shiny plan and follows that for a couple of weeks.  Then he talks to someone who has the “latest” training plan, so switches to that.  This carries on, he keeps switching plans, and never gets round to actually getting out on the road to run!
  • Someone joins the gym in January.  They go 3 times the first week, but after that they skip sessions because:
    • Its their friends party
    • They are meeting up with someone after work
    • The weather is bad
    • They feel too tired in the morning
    • Eastenders is on and they can’t miss that!
    • They don’t feel “in the mood today”
    • They felt “a twinge” yesterday, so it is best if they give it a miss today, just in case…

All the above stories show a lack of consistency, and so will end with a lack of results.  In fact, the first story shows the power of consistency…she was not consistent with her diet, so failed to lose weight.  She was consistent with her weekend binges, so she succeeded in gaining weight.  Most of the time, the things that work are not sexy, or glamorous.  They just require you to

“keep grinding on.”

  • If your goal is to lose weight, then pick a healthy diet and keep on it.
  • If you want to improve your fitness, then keep getting out of breath.
  • If you want to get stronger, then keep on moving heavy weights.
  • If you want to get better at your sport/hobby, then simply go to every training session.  Even if you end up doing just the warm up, at least you have gone there and you havent just “given up”.

UPDATE:  http://www.reesfitness.co.uk/2010/05/10/consistency-an-update