My Struggle with Consistency -- and Becoming a Different Person

Do you believe that you can become a very different person, a more empowered person, a much more skillful person, someone who naturally creates a thriving business, whatever business you're in? Well, let me tell you this. A lot of people don't know. Growing up, I was extremely shy, in part because my family immigrated from one country to another when I was just six years old. We moved from Taiwan to the United States when I was six and a half years old. And so I was already trying to learn my mother tongue, Mandarin Chinese. And now I have to learn a brand new language. Not only that, I had a stuttering problem. A lot of people don't know this, so just talking to one person, I would be like that. You know, I would often I can't even do it anymore because I, it's been so long since I've had that stuttering problem. But talking in front of a group of people, even worse. I was completely terrified. Again, partly because of the language barrier, partly because my stuttering problem, partly because I am the youngest in my family, youngest of three boys. My two older brothers are close in age. And then like five or six years later comes me. And so naturally, given that my family was immigrating to another country and I was at such a young age, my brothers were already in fifth and sixth grade. And so naturally, being in a new country, trying to like make make life work, my parents needed my brother's help just to understand the language and, and interact in this new society. And I was always, you know, obviously didn't know anything. I was 6, 6, 7 years old. And so it's like, George, be quiet. You know, you don't know what you're talking about. And it was true. I didn't know what I was talking about. The adults needed to take care of life. And so I was trained from a young age, told to be quiet. You don't know what you're talking about. And so with all those factors, I grew up not being able to really communicate with other people. Extremely shy. He put me in front of a group. I, I couldn't even barely speak. And look at me now, right? Look at me now. I've made over 2000 videos now. If you literally put me in front of a, a, a room full of people, the bigger the crowd, the more energized I am, the more excited I am. And I would happily speak to any crowd, right? What happened? I am a completely different person than I was. My, my shyness went all the way through my teenage. Starting in the 20s and 30s, I started to Change. But most. The biggest change happened when I started my business in 2009, and I started practicing what I call joyful productivity. And now, 16 years later, I am such a different person than I was back then. Another example, actually similar example. I made my first video in 2010, I believe. And I looked at myself and I said, you look terrible and you sound terrible. I was very judgmental of myself back then. You don't look good, you don't sound good. You should never make videos. And I believe that. And so I didn't make another video for like four years until I started making videos again. Regular, I think. I think my first video was in 2009. I didn't make another video until 2013 or 2014, something like that, because I said I had all these judgments about myself, and I was very. I was not able to speak barely on video. It was very like, I think it was. I was being interviewed, and it was just a terrible interview. So, anyway, long story short, I'm a completely different person now. And so back to the original question that I asked you. Do you believe that you can become a very different person three years from now, five years from now, ten years from now? Do you believe that your skillfulness and whatever it is you're trying to do that would build a thriving business can be completely changed from where you are right now? You know, the older we get, the less we believe that's true, because the more we get set in our ways. But I believe, not just my belief, what's true about science, right, about the science of the brain, particularly neuroplasticity, is that our brain keeps changing until the day we die. It doesn't somehow just stay in place, and your personality and your skills completely just stay in place the older you get and that's it? No, you keep on being able to transform yourself until your last breath on earth. So with that perspective, again, I ask yourself, do you believe you can change dramatically in the next few years? And what's the secret of that? The secret of that is, you know, not to just do affirmations and hope. And those are all helpful if affirmations and, you know, writing down your goals and, you know, watching inspirational videos and filling your mind with good thoughts, all of those are good insofar as it gets you to practice on a consistent basis. Consistent practice leads to skillfulness, and then skillfulness leads to results. I'll say that again. Consistency of practice leads to skillfulness, and then skillfulness leads to results. So let me ask you, are you consistently practicing the Skills that you want to become extraordinary at, whether that is speaking on camera, whether that's writing, whether that is doing gentle launches in your business so that you can get the word out about your services, whether that's doing market discovery so that you can better understand what people want, that you can sell, that they would save, say easily, say yes to whatever. You know, you probably are already practicing skills in your modality, in your, you know, thing that you do with clients. You, you already practice that, right? Maybe you take courses about that. But when it comes to business, there's a bunch of skills too. And if you don't practice business skills, you won't get good at doing business. So all the time I'm trying to practice how to launch better, how to better understand my market so that I can sell what they want in incongruence with what I want too, right? It's gotta be authentic business. You know what I love providing, that's also congruent with what they want, what my market wants. That's a skill to practice. I call it market discovery. In case you're interested, I teach courses on all these different skills. I teach a course on market discovery. I teach a course on creating aligned offers. That's another skill. I teach a course on authenticity, authentic outreach, the, you know, the, the practice of gentle launching, et cetera, et cetera. But the bottom line is whatever you want to become extraordinary at, if you want great results, think about the results you want in business. And then you kind of look backwards from those results and say, what skills do I need to practice to be great at to have those results? Because if you got good at the skills, then the results become natural, and then more results become natural. And then it's very sustainable for you to keep producing great results. It's about the skillfulness. It's not about some kind of magical incantations you give to the universe, and the universe gives you a great business. Because if the universe gives you a great business, you don't have the skills to support that great business. It falls apart, right? So part of the skillfulness, you know, I told you, market discovery, creating aligned offers, doing authentic outreach, right? Creates a great business content creation, right? To gradually grow an audience and understand better of your message through content creation. So by having those skills, your business naturally thrives on a sustainable basis. Without those skills, it. You may sometimes get clients, sometimes don't, but it's haphazard, it's not reliable, and therefore your income can't be reliable either. And so practice is the key, right? Practicing the skills and keep continuing to get better, but practicing them, not just taking courses, but doing something with the courses, which is showing up for practice. And so showing up for practice. And I'll kind of conclude here with, with talking about this. Showing up for practice means a couple of things. That practicing is what changed me, right? Showing up again and again and again and again, to speak on video changed me. So that now showing up on video is no big deal at all. And I can even enjoy it. Whereas I didn't used to enjoy it. I used to be terrified about it. I used to judge myself about it. And on. Now showing up, I don't judge myself. I am, you know, able to really, because the skills are there. I'm able to really do the more soulful expression that I couldn't do when I was just trying to learn to look in the camera, right. Instead of looking at myself here on screen. All those little skills to creating content, whether you're writing or speaking or whatever, those are all skills to practice. And so the consistency of practice requires that you be consistent, right? And being consistent means what? In my opinion, it means that you need to carve consistent time on your calendar to show up and to practice these different skills. So there's three requirements. Okay, I'm going to share with you to, to become a different person through the consistency of practice. One, you need to carve time out on your calendar to show up to practice whatever skill it is you're doing. Okay. Now I'm going to practice market discovery to better understand my audience. Now I'm going to practice creating offers so that I can make something they want. On and on. You show up on your, you know, you, hopefully you follow your calendar. If you don't follow your calendar, that's also a skill to practice. How do you practice that SK skill? You set time on your calendar and then you check on your account you. Well, there's this two skills. You have to schedule self appointments. I've made videos. You might want to look up my videos about self appointments. Making appointments with yourself. Right? Don't be a disappointment to yourself by not showing up for those appointments. You, you make it. You make an appointment with yourself and then you practice showing up for it. Okay, so requirement number one, consistent time in your calendar to show practice. Practice. You gotta carve out time. And carving out time means you're not doing other things. That means you tell your family, your, your housemates, whoever you live with or whoever might want your time. I'm not available at that time. I'm Doing my work. Right? So, so, so carving out time means to carve out time for that and to say no to other things. All right, so that's requirement number one, carving out consistent time for practice. Requirement number two is once you show up for practice, it's going. Understand that when you are practicing a skill that you don't have, it means you're stretching outside your comfort zone. Right? Stretching outside your comfort zone by definition means you'll probably be a little bit uncomfortable. So I call it normalizing discomfort. Normalizing discomfort. To know that it's normal that right now as I'm showing up to practice this, it's probably not going to be easy for me. It's probably not going to be flow for me right away. But I'm showing up to practice stretching myself a little bit, normalizing discomfort. All great creed. All consistent creators do this. Did you think that consistent creators show up? I'm so happy to be doing this. Well, at some point you will be. Once you practice and get good at the skills, you'll be really happy showing up because you're really good at it. Okay, but consistent creators show up. And at the beginning, in the first maybe couple of years at least, first couple of months of showing up consistently, it's like, okay, it's not natural for me to do my writing. I still to this day, writing is still not really natural for me. I'm still practicing it, but I still show up for practice. You notice I keep posting blogs consistently. I show up for practice. Right? Speaking is more natural for me. Now, writing is still not quite natural anyway. So normalizing discomfort. You'll notice that at the beginning of the hour, if you say, I know it's going to be a little comfortable, I'm going to just play, try. We'll do whatever you need to to practice the skill despite not being good at it. So you might think of it as play. You might. You might do it because of a devotion to your higher self, devotion to your future self, devotion to yourself, devotion to your audience, devotion to your loved ones, whatever it is. Devotion, play. Those are some of the ways that I. Helps me to show up and go get through the beginning period of discomfort. Because if you get through the beginning period of discomfort, you'll then have momentum and you'll more likely keep going. So that's the second requirement. Normalizing discomfort. You show up knowing that it's not comfortable so you don't procrastinate because you. What's the point of procrastinating when you know you. You gotta show up and he's gonna be uncomfortable a little bit in the beginning. The first 15 minutes, some, maybe the first 30 minutes. Who knows? Maybe it's just the first five minutes. You show up, you do whatever you need to to move through that discomfort, Devotion, prayer, energy, reboots the. The perspective of play. Whatever you need to to move through that discomfort, move through it so you can find some momentum. And the third requirement is to publish it. To let it go right when you're practicing, particularly in business, you're not just doing stuff. And you never publish something, you never launch something, you never posted it out into the world. So I call this third requirement working lightly. Working lightly. Like we don't. We're not attached to the results of any one thing that we put out there. We're not attached. All we are attached to is. Is the process of showing up that, that I hope you are attached to. You're really, really. You care a lot about the fact that you show up for practice, normalizing discomfort and then working lightly, just putting stuff out there as. As much as you can. Okay? So I hope this is encouraging to know that if you do this with these three requirements, carve time out consistently to practice your business skills. Second, actually showing up and normalizing discomfort however you can. And third, working lightly, putting things out lightly, publishing lightly. Always put things out there. Not being attached to results. Sometimes there's nobody. Nobody cares. And sometimes a few people care. And sometimes, sometimes you'll be surprised, but a lot of people care about what you put out there. Okay, but you got to put things out there. Content offers, reaching out to potential clients, whatever it may be, reaching out to potential colleagues. Not caring about the results, results of any one outreach, but caring about showing up for the practice. I hope this is helpful. I look forward to seeing if it is helpful. Let me know in the comments below. Thank you for joining me on this journey. You essentially are part of. By showing up consistently, you add energy to the worldwide community of creators who are also aiming to show up consistently as well. You do your part that helps your business, but you also subtly contribute to the vibrations, to the sort of the. The collective thought form. You strengthen the collective thought form of the importance of showing up consistently, normalizing discomfort and working lightly. So I hope you join me on this journey. Thanks for being here.