I spent last weekend in Prague visiting friends – what a lovely city, so much history, culture, architecture, just beautiful, a lovely place to visit 🙂
Anyway, that’s not what I want to talk about this week, it’s really about the conversation I had with my lovely hubby on the plane. We’d started to talk about how we as humans love to overcomplicate everything – I mean everything – and I’m a firm believer in making everything as simple as possible.  I don’t see the point in complicated, it’s usually to hide something, make things appear ‘harder’ than they are so we have to use specialist(s), make ourselves (or anything for that matter) appear ‘better’ ………I’m sure you get my drift.
So, those of you who know me well know I’m always wanting to keep things simple. However, the real biggie, the one thing that will transform and make a difference to all aspects of your life is CONSISTENCY!
Simply that.
We totally underestimate the power of Consistency, but it is truly magical 🙂
Let’s look at some examples, starting with weight loss. If we Consistently eat healthily, we would not be overweight. Or the other way around, if we Consistently overeat, even by one biscuit per day, we will end up overweight. That’s all it takes, eating one biscuit extra every single day for a year and you end up putting on around 10lbs! Of course, that’s scary to us, but, let’s bear in mind it works the other way around too, imagine if you consistently under-ate by the equivalent of one biscuit per day, how much less would you weigh in one year?!
Let’s think about money next: many, many years ago, at least 18 (!), I opened several accounts, a normal day to day account, a long term savings account, fun funds account, and, at the time, children’s savings accounts. Without fail, every month I would put the allocated amount into these accounts, no matter how small that amount was, AND not touch it.
This has changed my life, it’s allowed me to travel and still does, it’s allowed me to help my kids and still does, it’s allowed me to feel safe and still does. When you Consistently put money aside, it grows (read The Compound Effect), but it’s a long term plan and has to be done Consistently to get the real benefits.
So, what area in your life needs improvement? Relationships? Well, choose something you can commit to doing Consistently and stick with it. It might be going on a monthly date night, giving your child a hug every day, meeting with friends once a month, saying ‘I Love you’ to your partner daily, etc etc. It’s not what you are doing that’s important, but that you are doing it Consistently.
What about work? I see it all the time – people get a great idea, are very excited, do it once or twice and then stop. They stop because they don’t see instant results or it seems like it’s too much effort, but to me, that’s worse than not starting at all. Obviously, we all try things and they don’t work, we might have made mistakes, miscalculated etc, but things we know that do work, but we stop doing them because WE are inconsistent, is entirely different. Every week for 4 years I have sent this newsletter out on a Friday at 6am.
Health – those of my lovely long-term clients are so good at this – they commit every week to come to their Pilates and the results speak for themselves. You could apply this to your diet, your lifestyle, your hobbies, everywhere and everything.
Yes, it is slightly harder than a quick fix but the rewards are massive.
Now, when I explain this to various people, the feedback I often get is “that’s so simple, I could do that” ………..yes, I say…….but you don’t.
Consistency is so powerful and I guarantee it will improve every aspect of your life that YOU apply it to 🙂