Tag: philosophy

Consistency, intensity, and reaching your full potential

Consistency trumps intensity, but you will never achieve your full potential without both.

If you do something once, you can’t reasonably expect results to come from it immediately. If you cold call one person, don’t expect one sale. If you work out one time, don’t expect six pack abs. If you make a one-time stock purchase, don’t expect to be able to retire tomorrow…

Consistency is about continually doing the bare minimum that you need to do in order to improve 1% that day. You have to consistently do the right things to achieve great results.

Intensity is another tool we should utilize to achieve the best results though…Sometimes it’s OK to stay up late and cram in a study session, but it’s not sustainable. If you do that every night, eventually you’ll crash. If you push it hard in the gym that’s great, but if you’re so sore that you can’t workout for a week afterwards, how much good did it really do? So many people follow diet programs or participate in 30-day challenges, which again, can be great, but when you stop following that, are you keeping the majority of the good behaviors or falling back into bad habits?

Intensity can help you achieve amazing results, but you need to have a stopping point. If you’re always doing things in an unsustainable manner, you’re going to burn out. It’s almost like redlining an engine for a car…you can ramp up to RPMs to pass somebody, but if you’re only driving in the redline, you’ll burn up you engine and do more harm than good.

When you decrease the intensity, you need to think of it like turning down the dimmer on a light switch. You’re not flicking a light switch on and off, just like you are not turning your intensity on and off. Because what usually happens there is you become an all-or-nothing person. You either work out really hard or you don’t work out at all. You eat extremely clean for 30 days, then you fall off the wagon. You invest a couple of times, then you don’t touch or even look at your retirement account for a year…you will yo-yo with manic highs and lows, and you’ll never reach your full potential.

Consistency needs to be the foundation of your success. That needs to be your number one goal – find something you know you should be doing everyday and do it. Don’t break the streak, but if you do, get back up and start it over immediately. Once you’ve found something that you can consistently do, focus on turning up the intensity more frequently. The more often you can do this, the better results you’ll get in a shorter timeframe.

You become your thoughts

Everything hangs on one’s thinking…A man is as unhappy as he has convinced himself he is.
“Everything hangs on one’s thinking…A man is as unhappy as he has convinced himself he is.” – Seneca

Seneca, like many other stoic philosophers, had it right when it came to their attitude towards mindset, beliefs, and feelings. Basically, we control how happy or unhappy we are with our thoughts. When something happens, we can convince ourselves that we are lucky or unlucky, that something is happening to us instead of for us, or that it’s a failure versus an opportunity to learn.

We are what we tell ourselves and we become what we consistently think. Think positively and you will become a more positive person. Think negatively and you’ll become more like Eeyore from Winnie-the-Pooh. For those who are unfamiliar with this character, this is how Wikipedia describes him: “He is generally characterized as a pessimistic, gloomy, depressed, anhedonic, old grey stuffed donkey who is a friend of the title character, Winnie-the-Pooh.”

Now, if you were picking who you wanted to hang out with for a day, would you pick the person who is chronically pessimistic and gloomy? Of course not! And guess who is the only person you hang out with 24 hours a day? (Hint: it’s yourself)…why would you choose to be anything, but happy?

The key to having less conflict in relationships

“In every good marriage, it helps sometimes to be a little deaf.” – Supreme Court Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg

If you want to have less conflict, don’t go looking for it. Choose not to be offended and you won’t be. Stop trying to listen for things you don’t want to hear. If you’re on edge (in marriage and in life), and looking for things to be upset about, you can always find them. Let the little things go. Forgive more. Nobody is perfect – including you. So get off your high horse and accept your significant other as they are.

How to get ahead

Do you know how to get ahead? Here are a few tips:

1. Try your best in everything you do. Don’t half-ass anything. If you’re going to take the time to do something, you might as well do the best you can. The time is going to pass anyways, so why would you choose to do anything less than your best?

2. Be interested. The more curious you are, the more you’ll enjoy learning. If you’re interested in something, you can spark someone else’s interest as well and have friends take part in the activity too.

3. Don’t think that you’re above something. If you are asked to do something at your current job, then do it. You’re not entitled to anything. And if you don’t have a job but are offered something that most would consider being beneath you in the eyes of others, really weigh your options before saying no. If you need the money, take the job and keep looking for something better. Don’t rely on unemployment or your parents to take care of you when you’re fully capable of doing so yourself.

4. Have a great attitude. There are a lot of things you can’t control, but one thing you can control is your attitude. Choose to be happy. Choose to see the best in every situation and in everybody. Nobody likes being around a complainer.

5. Look for opportunities. Keep your eyes open. Don’t be afraid to think outside the box. Keep learning, planning, practicing, and taking action. Opportunities are all around us if we just look for them.

Controlling your responses to negative stressors

Everyone feels the same emotions…fear, insecurity, heartache, hunger, tiredness, anger, joy. What separates our role models and heroes from those who we do not look up to is how they respond to those emotions.

If you want to be the best version of yourself, take a look in the mirror. How do you respond under stress? Do you take out your frustrations on others or treat them poorly? Would you want your kids to act like you do when you’re stressed?

If you want to be more like your role model(s) or to become a role model, the first step is to be aware of how you’ve seen others react under stress. Are there people you would like to emulate?

After you’ve seen the responses of others and determined which actions you deem commendable, the next step is to be aware of how you currently react under stress. What behaviors, actions, or words do you say/do that you’re proud of and what do you want to stop doing?

After taking note of what you already do, start monitoring how you’re doing from this point forward. Be strict, but forgiving with yourself. You want to start taking the right actions right now. But if/when you mess up, own your mistakes/actions, apologize if necessary, and move forward.

Cut yourself some slack, especially in the beginning, because it takes a while to form a new habit (of responding appropriately to any/every situation). But remember, if we want to be the best version of ourselves, if we want to be a role model to our kids, if we want to make others around us feel better about themselves, and if we want the world to be a nicer place, it all starts with us. We can’t control what other people think, say, or do, but we can control ourselves. It just takes practice.