The One You Feed - Essential Concepts: Consistency and Taking Small Steps

Episode Date: March 10, 2019

This mini episode is about the importance of taking small steps and how being consistent is not about being perfect. See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

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Hello, everyone. And I am here with a sort of a mini episode. I want to start doing a few more of these and I'm kind of in my mind, I'm calling them sort of essential concepts or essential skills. Things that come up on the show over and over again, things that I work with coaching clients on over and over again that I'd like to talk about a little bit more explicitly than them being weaved into the episodes. I want to make them a little bit more explicit. But before I jump into that, if you're interested in learning more about the coaching program and working one-on-one with me, you can go to ericzimmer.coach application, fill out just a very short form that tells me a little bit more about what you're looking for so I can come to our call prepared. And I'll tell you about the

coaching program. I'll tell you whether I think I can help you. I will give you some piece of valuable information, even if we decide that working with me is not a good idea. And I promise I won't try and sell you on why you have to do the coaching program. If it's a good fit for both of us, we'll explore moving forward. If it's not, you'll get something valuable. So ericzimmer.coach slash application. Okay, so the concept I would like to start with today is consistency. So we often talk on the show about taking small steps, you know, one step after another. And I'll do another episode on why small steps works and why it's so effective as a way to get started. But today I want to talk about the idea of consistency. And I want to talk about the idea of compound interest, so to speak, on the habits and

the things that we do. We tend to see success as an event and we hear about somebody else as having done something. We see it as this event versus this series of small steps that are taken day after day or series of choice points that are made over and over. So we could look at somebody getting sober. We can go back and say, oh, well, that was the date, right? That was the date that they got sober. But what we don't see necessarily is what were all the times before that, that they made some success. Maybe they didn't achieve complete abstinence, but they learned something. And then we learned something else. And then we learned something else. And eventually the day came where what we saw was sobriety. But even after that, it's a series of choice points made

over and over and over and over again to choose sobriety. So same thing if we see somebody who has written a book or launched a podcast or a business, there are a lot of steps taken over and over and over again before we actually see the thing. And the metaphor that's given most often for this, right, is bamboo. And so Chinese bamboo tree seeds are said to be cultivated for four years before the bamboo even shows up above ground. And then sometime in the fifth year, they break ground and sprout up to 90 feet within six weeks. So those first four years, it was developing its root system and preparing to hold a 90 foot tree that would eventually come out, right? And so our life is often like this. There is a lot of preparation going on behind the scenes of us doing something over and over and over. And the

problem that a lot of us have is when we don't see success quickly, we tend to give up. We hear about the value of meditation. So we might meditate a few times and suddenly we don't feel different. Our life isn't different. And so we stop. Or we hear about, well, boy, deep breathing sounds like it really could help me with my anxiety. So we try and take a couple of deep breaths a couple of times. We don't see any big difference. We stop. Right. And so it's so easy to overestimate one defining moment, but underestimate how important it is to keep making small improvements. In the beginning and day by day, there's not a huge difference between making a choice that's a little bit better or a little bit worse. But if you follow that over a period

of time, big gains or big losses occur. And so what's so important is to pick a path and to just stay with it day after day after day as the gains accumulate over time. And often then you find yourself three months, six months, nine months later, and you look back and you're in a completely different place. But each day, the scenery didn't look that different. And that's where a lot of us get really caught up is we're looking at the scenery every day. Is it different? Am I better? How's this working? This doesn't seem to be working. And we stop. And so what we're after is this idea of continuing to make small changes in the direction of what matters to us. And so that concept is so important. And it's

what I work with coaching clients to do so much is let's set the course, let's stay on it. Now, the second place that we get in trouble with this is we confuse being consistent with being perfect. That's a James Clear phrase. He says, it's really easy to confuse being consistent with being perfect. And this is so true because the other thing that we get ourselves into trouble with is we start taking these small steps and we were doing well, and then we get off track. And very often we get into an all or nothing mindset. And if we fall off track, we give up. But it's much more useful to realize that is inevitable. You are always going to get off track. You're going to make a plan. We're going to set a direction.

And yet there are going to be days that you fall off of that track. And so in the same way that we realize that it's small steps lead us towards a good thing, we also realize that a couple of steps that aren't taken or a couple of steps in the wrong direction do not spell disaster. It just means we take the next step as soon as we can. This reminds me of a phrase that we usually use in a negative sense. People say, well, it's two steps forward, one step back, which you could look at as really a negative thing. Or if we look at it as just the reality of the way things are, what we realize is that two steps forward, one step back is still a step forward. And that's the nature of progress.

It's small steps forward, and then occasionally we make a misstep, and then we take a few more steps forward. That's we make a misstep and then we take a few more steps forward. That's the way this goes. And expecting perfection gets us into real trouble. And what happens for a lot of us is we're doing well and then we fall off track for a couple of days. And it could happen for any number of reasons. You get sick, your kids get sick, your dog gets sick, your mom gets sick, right? Throw it out there. Any different number of things can happen that take us off track for a period of time. And some of them are absolutely legitimate. And some of them we need to deal with. And that's the nature of it. So we get off track, but we want to get back on track as soon as possible.

And that's really the key here. And accepting that we're going to get off track and then planning for how we get back on track, knowing it's going to happen and having a plan. And that's another thing that I work with coaching clients on is, okay, you're going to get off track. The key is to get back on. What do we do? How do you get back on track? What's the mindset that you need to get back on track? And so what I'm looking for in my

own life, and we're often looking for with my coaching clients, is about an 80 to 90% success rate over a long period of time. So for myself with things like meditation and exercise, what I'm looking for is about 80 to 90% of the time I take the action that I want to take. But I do that day after day, week after week, month after month, year after year. And it makes such a huge difference. Again, it's that small step, a little bit better, a little bit better, a little bit better. And then, oh, okay, lost a couple days, not a big deal. Back on track, a little bit better, a little bit better, a little bit better. And then, oh, okay, lost a couple days, not a big deal. Back on track, a little bit better, a little bit better. And so those two ideas, this idea of consistent small steps, and that it's going to take a little time, but we're going to see big results with small steps, and then not getting discouraged when we miss a couple steps because

it's inevitable. Recognizing that it might very well look like two steps forward, one step back, but that is still a step forward. And you string together a series of step forwards and life begins to look very different. So that is essential concept series number one. I hope that is helpful to you. If you're interested in learning more about working with me one-on-one to work on these principles and many others, you can go to ericzimmer.coach application, fill out a very short application. I just want to know a little bit about you so I can come to our call prepared. We'll have a 30-minute call and we'll talk about what you're trying to do in life. See where I can help. If I can help, I'll tell you about that. If I don't think I can,

I'll point you in the right direction. In no case will it be a sales call where I'm trying to convince you that you have to work with me and I'll give you something of value in that 30 minutes, I promise. So ericzimmer.coach slash application, or just show back up for the episode on Tuesday, and I'll try and get another one of these out there sometime soon. No promises. But thank you so much for listening. Talk soon. Bye.