Show Notes:
Do you have a big, ambitious goal but feel overwhelmed by what it will take to get there? You’re not alone. This episode is the first in a new series all about consistency. You’ll learn why breaking down big goals into manageable, consistent actions is your key to making lasting progress and living with intention.
In This Episode, You’ll Learn:
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The Power of Small Actions: Why those seemingly insignificant daily actions are the very ones that lead to remarkable, long-term results.
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The Compound Effect: How consistency works like a snowball rolling downhill—each small action builds on the last, creating unstoppable momentum and powerful change over time.
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Progress Over Perfection: The key mindset shift to focus on showing up regularly instead of trying to be perfect every day.
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The Science of Habits: How consistent action creates new mental pathways, making it easier to stay on track and build positive habits.
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Getting Back on Track: Why a slip-up or a missed day is just that—a slip-up. Learn how to quickly start again without losing momentum.
Resources Mentioned:
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The Compound Effect by Darren Hardy
Your Next Step
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Identify: Think about one big goal you have and identify a single small action you can take today to move closer to it.
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Commit: Commit to taking that small action every day for the next week.
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Track: Write it down and put a check mark next to each day you complete it. Don’t break the chain!
Episode Transcript
Hello, my friend, and welcome to episode 10 of the Claim your day podcast. Today we’re starting a fresh series. It’s going to be all about consistency. So glad you’re joining in today. You know, it’s a. Let’s dive right in because I really, truly believe that developing consistency with the small actions, you know, that is going to be your key to lasting progress and ultimately being able to direct your life to go where you want to go, to live intentionally and make the absolute most of the days that you have.
So with that, let’s start the first episode of the consistency series. Look, we can see the benefits of consistency everywhere that we look. You know, if you look at any athlete, you know, it’s not like they just showed up one day and were that good. If you look at any business virtually, it’s not like the business just grew to that point overnight. Even the ones that come up real fast, you know, you hear that overnight success, well, I’m gonna go ahead and let you know.
Almost always it’s, it’s a, what you could call it, an overnight success that was many years in the making. It was honing those skills. It was the previous failures that nobody sees. It was what they did to learn those skills leading up to it. It’s the power of that consistency over time that, yeah, you might not notice any progress, but it’s that breakthrough that comes years later that we see, you know, with the athletes with, in business, with learning a new skill, a new trade.
It doesn’t really matter what it is. It’s all that work that goes up into it. And then when that breakthrough happens, that breakthrough didn’t happen that night, that day, or, you know, so quickly. It happened from all the work that was done beforehand. So what we’re going to talk about is a lot of times it’s these little, almost seemingly insignificant daily actions that over time lead to the remarkable results that you want.
A simple little example could be someone that’s reading just 10 pages a day. By reading just 10 pages a day, it doesn’t really seem like that much. It’s not like you sat down for hours and hours and cranked out a whole book of learning. But with 10 pages a day, a year later, if you did this 10 pages a day, a year later, you would have read dozens of books, gaining a wealth of knowledge with new skills and abilities.
That seemingly small habit of just 10 pages a day really could ultimately lead to the massive transformation that you’re looking for. And I’m not telling you, you Got to go read. Maybe you’re looking for something different besides learning a lot of information about a new skill or a certain topic, and that’s fine. But whatever your goal is, when you have a big goal, I don’t want you to feel overwhelmed by it.
Has that ever been you? Have you ever had a really big goal and you just felt overwhelmed by all that it’s going to take to do it? Maybe it just seems so far away. Well, if that’s ever been you or it is you, then this series is perfect for you. Because I believe we’ve all had some dreams or aspirations. Just about anybody. I haven’t met anybody otherwise. But you can see, hey, what they really want.
Some goal, they have some aspirations. It might be just a dream because it’s so far away, because they don’t believe that it’s really a reality. But we all have dreams and goals and sometimes it’s. It’s hard. It’s hard to know where to start and it’s hard to, to really take action to it because when it seems far away, we forget that there’s just the power of consistency, that consistent daily action can really take us a great distance.
You know, small steps will take you a great distance, but oftentimes large leaps, they don’t work. That’s the day. That’s what we’re talking about today. Simple and powerful principle and the power of consistency in small actions. Consistency is not about being perfect really at all. It’s just about showing up regularly, you know, especially, especially when you don’t feel like it. You know, I want to highlight a little bit more on that.
You know, that consistency is not about perfection. If wanting to get it just right is holding you back from taking the action that you need to take. You know, just remember, you’re not going to start great, but you got to start in order to become great. So it’s those reps that you get in when you’re practicing, when you’re taking action, when you’re being consistent, that’s going to help you.
It’s going to help you to improve. Consistency is not at all about doing everything perfect every day. It’s the regularity. It’s. It’s doing it again and again and again. And that’s what’s gonna, that’s what’s gonna help you to get better. Never perfect, that’s fine. But it’s gonna help you to get better so that your consistent action is gonna actually get better and better and better and more efficient, more effective as you Maintain that consistency.
There’s an old saying, it’s about, you know, about making progress, not achieving perfection. We claim progress, not perfection. So if you’re gonna keep, if you’re gonna be consistent, then you’re going to keep getting better and that’s going to help you to make more and more progress. You may have heard of something called the compound effect. And I’m not just talking about the Darren Hardy book, which is a great book, check it out.
But the compound effect is where those small consistent actions accumulate. They build up over time to produce those significant, significant results because they just stack day after day after day. There’s a whole lot of benefits to this consistent action and one of it from a psychology perspective. In fact, I briefly mentioned it in the last episode, episode nine. And I briefly mentioned it when you’re practicing something. But when you have those consistent actions, it creates those pathways in your brain that actually make it easier to maintain.
That’s how we develop some good habits, if you’re intentional and you do those small things on a regular basis and it makes it easier in your mind to do it because you’ve practiced it and those connections in your brain get stronger. But then you also develop the momentum physically by doing the same thing. So you get some of that muscle memory and you just get into the groove of it.
Then it makes it easier to do. But the benefits and the results build on themselves better, while all at the same time, like I mentioned a few minutes ago, you’re actually getting better at what you’re doing. There’s so many ways that consistency makes its, its own self more, more effective, more efficient, greater progress. But you gotta start and you gotta definitely be willing to start. When you don’t see those results come at you immediately, it’s like that snowball rolling down the hill.
We used to see it in cartoons as kids all the time. And it starts off nice and tiny, but as it, as it goes, not only does it gain momentum, you know, by going faster and faster and faster, that mass is moving, but it’s also growing. It’s also growing and getting larger, more impactful. And that is a perfect analogy for what consistency can do for you.
See, consistency is all about achieving those long term goals. You know, if we break these long term, these big goals down into manageable steps and then we develop the consistency with the manageable, even small, tiny steps, then that’s going to help you to create the momentum that you need, making it easier to stay on track and making progress. You know, that’s going to help build confidence, it’s going to help you to reinforce those positive habits.
And that’s, as you’re doing that, the consistency of these small habits, it’s going to help you to live out your values, pursuing your priorities, ultimately creating that sense of purpose and direction. So right now, right now I want you to take just a minute and I want you to think about your goals. Now once you think about your goals, your priorities, think about those things, maybe even think about some of the larger ones.
Identify the small actions that you can take to help you to move closer. What’s the small thing that you can do maybe on a daily basis that would help you to make progress toward those big goals and just to live according to your values, not the massive steps, the small ones. Now I want to challenge you to identify one small action that you can commit to taking every day on a daily basis.
For this next week. I want you to think through these things, whatever it is. Maybe the earlier example was about reading. Maybe it’s reading for 10 minutes every morning. You know, for me I read before I go to bed, actually lay down in bed, get my book out of the nightstand, and that’s when I read. I want you to do whatever for one of your goals. What’s something that you can do on a daily basis that’s going to help you to move towards your goals?
You know, maybe it’s an exercise and you’re just going to exercise for a few minutes. Maybe not a huge hour and a half workout session, but maybe it’s exercise for a few minutes every day and that’s gonna help you towards your health goals. We’ll see there. I just told you two of the things that I do on a daily basis and they made a big impact on my life.
But now for this next week, I wanna encourage you to write it down and to track your progress. It might even just be like a little sticky note next to your bed. And you just write Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday, Friday, Saturday, Sunday down it’s. And you write what your big goal is, you write what your small daily steps are gonna be. And then you just put a check mark next to each day.
Just knock it out and see that, see that consistency, you know, don’t break the chain. See that consistency where you can really begin to make progress towards your big goals and what’s important to you. Look, I might be breaking it down here so it sounds all nice and easy. Being consistent is not easy. There’s going to be days when you slip up. I hate to tell you, but you’re human, you’re not perfect.
Join the crowd. But a slip up or a missed day, that’s all it is. It’s just a slip up. You know, it doesn’t need to derail your progress. A big thing with consistency is that sometimes when people break that chain and they, after like a month or two, you know, they miss a day or something happened, things went sideways and they miss a week when they feel like all is lost and then they don’t get back on track.
The key is just being able to get back on track and start again. It does not matter, just start right back up again and you’re going to jump right back in to making the progress that you want. This has happened for me plenty of times. I’ve gotten derailed off track. It happens. It’s not fun, it kind of sucks. But you know what? It’s about owning it and just starting again.
Because if you start again instantly, you’re in a better place instantly. Now it might take a little bit for the progress to get going, but instantly, as soon as you get back up and you start again with developing that consistency once again and getting on track, doing that small daily task, the moment you start doing it, you’re instantly in a better place. Now like I said, it might take a little bit for the further progress to jump back in.
But don’t worry. The power of consistency, the power of the compounding results of that consistent action, they will serve you. They will help you to move closer towards your goals. They will help you to live according to your values and pursue your priorities. You have the power to create lasting change in your life through your small, consistent, consistent actions. You can do it. Believe in yourself and you will have the ability to make that progress.
You know, consistency is truly the key to achieving your goals. You know, through small actions done on a regular basis, it really can lead to those significant results that you’re looking for. And remember to focus on the progress you make on a daily basis. Focus on that consistency that you’re developing. Not perfection, not perfection. Don’t worry about that. All right? Remember, consistency is going to help you to achieve those long term goals.
It’s going to help you to build momentum. It’s actually going to help you to develop motivation. You know, remember, motivation is not going to hit you on the couch. You know, motivation shows up after you do well. You can show up with some small, consistent actions and it’s going to help you. And that’ll help you to develop that motivation so you can keep going. Consistency can help you to live aligned with your values, pursuing your priorities, and ultimately create the lasting change that you want for you and your life.
Consistent small actions start today and make a plan, track your progress, and I’d love to hear about it. You can comment if you listen on Spotify. I know that there’s comments on Spotify that you can do that. Love to hear about it. Hey, make sure you stay with us for the rest of this series. We’re talking a whole lot about developing consistency and how it can serve you.
It can help you to live intentionally and claim your day. All right, here’s to you, my friend. Join us in the next episode and make sure you claim your day. Take care.