Consistency is key...it’s also freaking difficult
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Certainly feels like the only thing I'm consistent at is consistently making mistakes and messing up. Ain't that the truth?

Welcome to Chasing the Awesome Life, your weekly guide to making life a little bit more awesome. Because we all have goals and dreams, but yet the struggle is oh so real. So take a little time to equip yourself with the tools and the inspiration to be just a little bit more awesome in every aspect of your life.

There's no topic I won't cover in this podcast. From kids to college to the joys and the struggles, it's all awesome if you choose to chase it. So get ready to take some notes and take a little more awesome action. This is Chasing the Awesome Life. Welcome back friends. Nick DiStefano with the Chasing the Awesome Life podcast. We are here today to talk about consistency. I want to read you some quotes to get us started.

Success isn't always about greatness. It's about consistency. Consistent hard work leads to success. Greatness will come. That's Dwayne "The Rock" Johnson. In any team sport, the best teams have consistency and chemistry. That was said by Roger Staubach. It's not what we do once in a while that shapes our lives. It's what we do consistently. Tony Robbins said that. And lastly,

We are what we repeatedly do. Excellence, then, is not a virtue. It's a habit. That is Aristotle. Now, that is four consistency quotes that I just read to you. And I want you to know, I literally just Googled consistency quotes. And I read you all of those quotes because we all strive to, we all want to, and we all recognize the importance of consistency.

Whether that's consistently making good choices, consistently behaving a specific way, consistently doing something that makes us better. We recognize the importance of consistency. We want to be consistent in our lives and yet so many of us struggle with it.

myself included. That's why the intro says the only thing that I'm consistent at, that's right, the only thing that I am consistent at is consistently making mistakes, not showing up, messing up. It certainly feels like that is where I am consistent. And I said in the end of my last episode, where my tire fell off my car, that I was going to talk to you all about how coronavirus helped me to be more consistent. And

I want to tell you a quick little story that kind of got me started. So back in the beginning of April, my buddy Brian, he's got a kid the same age as mine and the same age as Calvin. So this little boy is five years old and Brian posted on Facebook.

And in the beginning of coronavirus, it felt like, and I'm sure throughout it, you felt the same way. All of us were on social media more than ever before. My screen time report from my iPhone was tripled what it usually was every Sunday when it came through. And I owe the fact that I was on social media more and the fact that Brian put this out there to the fact that I made some of these changes over the past two months. And...

what Brian did was he basically said hey I am thinking we've all got a little more time on our hands I thought well that's a little debatable but he posted we've all got a little more time on our hands let's let's let's all choose to be a little more fit I'm going to start a group at an event on Facebook if you're interested I'm looking to do for 30 days 100 push-ups and 100 sit-ups for

for 30 days, let me know if you're interested. And I thought, well, I can do 100 push-ups. I can do 100 sit-ups. Shoot, that sounds like a fun challenge. And I am a person who, when I hear a challenge, thinks, let's do it. I'm all about seeing a challenge and running towards it. So I thought, this is good. And I will tell you, I think for the first time ever,

I was consistent and did, and I say ever in my life because there have been so many times when I have taken on challenges, whether it's I'm going to, you know, in 2019, I took on a challenge where I posted for the year that I was going to rock the amount of miles that

that I got in terms of likes and comments on a Facebook post that I put out there in the beginning of January and I got 730 which I thought that is absolutely doable. Did I actually rock all 730 and consistently stick with it and do it? No, after two months I got bored of rocking and I started doing other things more often and lifting more and I didn't stick to it. I did about 400 miles for the year which was awesome but I wasn't consistent. I didn't develop a system or a process.

And this challenge from Brian, when I joined it, got me to do 100 pushups and 100 sit-ups for 30 days straight. And I developed a process in it and realized there's a couple things that if we want to be more consistent, we can do more regularly and more simply. And I shared all those quotes with you at the beginning because there are tons of things

websites, articles, guidebooks, resources, a million and one things out there on the internet. You could search how to be more consistent over and over again and you're going to find something different. I want to share with you from my own personal experience and it's what I'm going to share with you here today, how I learned to be more consistent because to do 100 pushups a day wasn't easy but there was

A couple things that I did that made me stick with it. And that's really truly what I think we all need to do is to whenever we've got a challenge of some sort, we've got to be able to say, hey...

This is my system to get this done. If I want to be the best version of myself, if I want to be awesome, if I want to be consistent, I can't just say I want to be consistent. I've got to have some type of a system or a process to get that done, right? So the problem that we all face is that we want to be consistent, but we don't necessarily know how to do it. Coronavirus has helped me to learn how to do it. So I will tell you about this wonderful app.

that I started using and the secret to consistency isn't the app. The secret to consistency is accountability and community as well as a certain degree of self-belief and I'll tell you how all three of those kind of come together. But for me, the app I used is an app called Done, D-O-N-E. You can download it and you

use that app to track a habit. So I use that app to track whether I needed to do my push-ups or my sit-ups each day. And it sent me a push notification like anything else. And you can set it up for yourself to do them. Now, one of the things that I did that made my life

little easier and I think all of us can do this when it comes to approaching a challenge and embracing something as difficult as I broke it down so I originally said I'm gonna do four sets of 25 sit-ups a day and four sets of 25 push-ups when I first started doing the push-ups y'all I was doing 12 and to do 25 and

I was doing 12, taking a break for like 30 seconds and then doing another 13 to get my set of 25. And I did that four times throughout the day. Um,

Now, the reason I say accountability and community are key in terms of consistency is because I was a part of this group and there were other people posting, "Hey, I got my pushups done." So every day, there wasn't a set schedule, but people would post it and it would pop up on my phone. Brian posted he's finished his pushups and I'm like, "Shoot, it's only 8:00." I was like, "I should do my first set." So it would hold me accountable. I need to do this.

And that was extremely helpful for me to know that there were other people that were doing it with me, you know, that I wasn't alone and that I had other people to remind me and hold me accountable. Megan, same sort of thing. Ask me, did you get your pushups done? And those two things got me going. Really that community and the accountability of the app. And what was really cool was by the end of it, by the 30 days,

I had really truly developed this habit of making push-ups and sit-ups, something that I did every day. I ultimately at the end of those 30 days did not continue the sit-ups, mostly because I don't find that much of a benefit personally from sit-ups. I would rather do planks or another ab exercise.

But the pushups made me feel really good and I've actually continued it. I'm actually currently, I'm actually gonna check my phone right now. I'm currently on day, I think 73. Today will be the 74th day that I have done pushups. So when you listen to this tomorrow, when this is released on a Monday, I will have done 75 days straight of 100 pushups. That's 7,500 pushups. And my goal is to keep that going for the rest of the year.

And the reason I want to keep that going all year, y'all, is because what I noticed is as I did this, it's good for me physically, obviously. But when I first started, I was doing 12 and 13. By the time I got to the end of it, I can knock out 30 push-ups in a row without stopping. By doing this, I'm almost now to a point where I can do 40 push-ups unbroken, which for someone who I always said I struggle with push-ups...

The only way that I've gotten better over these 75 days is to consistently do it day in and day out. You know, and it's boring, right? It's not exciting. I think that's a key piece of being consistent as well. Like consistency isn't anything sexy or exciting, but we need to do it.

So if we want to be more consistent, the solution to being more consistent is find some accountability, find some community, and then the biggest thing that you can do is to believe in yourself. What I think we need to do more of is tell ourselves who we actually are. So for myself, I tell myself that

And this is what I would tell myself at the end of the day, because there were many nights when it got to be nine o'clock at night and I would have only done two sets, right?

I told myself, I'm an athlete. That's what I told myself. Not, you know, I really need to do my push-ups or got to get my push-ups done. And I made it a priority and a goal that I was not going to go to sleep until I finished those damn push-ups. There were many nights where I would literally do 25 push-ups before I got in bed and then...

You know, right before that I would have just finished doing 25 pushups in the bathroom after I brushed my teeth so that I could get it done because I told myself I'm an athlete.

And as I relate this to, you know, my speaking journey and my business, I have to remind myself, I am a speaker. I am a leader. I am an expert in confidence and resilience. And I have to tell myself that I have to believe that because otherwise it's so easy to think, ah, you know what? I'm just doing my best or I,

I want to be a speaker. I want to be an expert. I want to be an athlete, right? I desire to be this. No, tell yourself that you are what you want to become. It starts with believing who you are, right? I am a person who makes healthy decisions. I am a person who is not addicted to sugar, alcohol, right? Saying what you are. And even, I mean, if we look at like, right?

AA groups right it starts with saying what what your issue is who you are you it's a belief in and like admit admittance of you know What it is that you are in your identity and who you are and you have to believe in yourself Consistently and you have to tell yourself that because you know what the biggest thing that prevents us from being consistency is self-doubt It's this idea that you know. Oh, yeah, I messed up so I can't do this again and

For example, one of the things that I try to do regularly is intermittent fast. One of my goals in my habit tracker and the done app is to not eat until it's 1130 in the morning.

And I had a 29 day streak going until Friday morning. Friday morning, my father-in-law went fishing just this past Friday. And he said, hey, let's stop at McDonald's and grab a bite to eat. And you know what? I knew it was going to break my streak if I ate. And I chose to eat anyways because I wanted to be with him and be in community and have that experience. And I was okay with it. I wasn't upset. And then the next day, I chose to eat again in the morning, a Saturday morning and Saturday

I woke up and didn't feel too great. I made some poor decisions on Friday night. You know, we've all been there. And I chose to eat. And then again this morning, it was Father's Day. And my boys and I went out and got donuts. And I chose to eat. So I've had three days where I wasn't consistent with what my goal was going to be. But I'm not going to sit there and beat myself up over it. Tomorrow, I'm going to get back on it. And I'm going to tell myself...

I am a person who intermittent fasts. I intermittent fast. It's what I am. It's what I want to be. So I'm going to tell myself that's what I am. You have to believe in what you're trying to be consistent about because otherwise you're just going to doubt yourself. And if you can't say what you are, you'll never become it. You have to consistently believe in yourself. That makes all the difference. Folks.

I hope that you will consistently believe in yourself and consistently make small changes. That's how you can start chasing the awesome life. I'm going to outline in my next episode the importance of despite the uncertainty in life, despite the fact that

We all have problems and we want to be consistent. And, you know, it's my challenge to you to be more consistent and to use community and accountability and self-belief to be more consistent. You're still going to struggle with it. And I'm going to outline how we can navigate that uncertainty using a GPS. And I'll talk about what that means in our next episode. So I hope you will like this podcast, subscribe, share it with a friend and subscribe.

More important than any of that, I hope you will use what we've talked about today and find some community, find some accountability for yourself and start working on self-belief so that you can be more consistently awesome as you start chasing the awesome life. I'll talk to you soon.