Mindset Monday - Consistency is King

This is episode 237 of the Empowered Team podcast. Welcome to the Empowered Team podcast where we explore how to optimize your performance in career, sport and life. And now, your host, executive coach and life strategist, Kari Schneider. Hello, super freaks with superpowers who are so empowered. Welcome to Mindset Monday. We are so glad to have you on and we want to kick start you into your day and your week in a way that gives you more that you can use to live your best life and help those that you serve and do all the things that you want to do in your life. So today's concept, our topic is called consistency is king. Right there it is. The most effective and efficient way to get where you want is using consistency, period. There. End of podcast, we're done. No, really, no. I'm going to give you three things that are imperative for reaching the outcomes. But spoiler alert, consistency is king. But here are the three things that we tend to do. Here's what we tend to do to get the outcomes that we really want. We tend to have impulsivity. So it's very reactive, it's impulsive. So we use impulsivity, we use intensity, and we use consistency. So when we use impulsivity, it's this tendency to act without thinking. I like to think of it as painful passing when you're driving on the road. So here's what's happened. Recently, I had a long road trip, a really long road trip. And when I'm on those remote roads that are curvy and windy and up and down, it's only a two lane highway. And you get these great scenarios where you can just throw on the cruise control. There's nobody else around. And you can listen to your podcast, you can listen to music, you can talk with someone who's with you. It's just, it's great. You can make a phone call. It's awesome. You've got your cruise control. That's the consistency. And then you come up behind a big wood truck or a tractor or a truck hauling a camper, and it slows you right down. So what do you do? You wait for the dashed line, or you wait for the passing lane, or you have a clearing and away you go. And you pass with some intensity because you got to put your foot on the gas to get beyond that other vehicle fast enough before there's a curve or there's an oncoming vehicle and you get around them and there you go, back into your lane and back to cruise control. Living your amazing life. And talking to your friend, listening to your music, listening to your podcast, and life is grand. That is an example of consistency with the cruise control. And purposeful passing is intensity. We've got intense purposeful passing. There we go. We've got the intensity. But here's where the impulsivity comes in. You're driving on that same trip, going along, and now you're coming closer to some city, some metropolitan area, and now it's not just two lanes. You've got four lanes, you've got six lanes, you got all kinds of lanes. And you still want to keep using your cruise control because your hips hurt and your back hurts, and you don't want to keep having your foot on the gas. And so you want to use your cruise control. You don't want to be stopping and starting and foot and brake and all of those things. So you've got cruise control on, and somebody comes to pass you, and they pass you, and then they pull in front of you and they slow down, but you're on cruise control, and you find that if you stay on cruise control that you're going to actually run into them. So you either need to put on the brake or you need to pass them, but they just passed you. This is painful passing. This is somebody who passed you with an impulse. They had an urge to get beyond you, but they didn't have any sort of structure to know what was going to happen after they passed you or to even have any awareness of how fast they were going. So they had the urge to pass you, they passed you, and then they had no idea that they slowed down enough to go slower than you were even going in the first place. That's impulsivity, and that's what we're doing in our lives and our work all the time. And it gets us a result, we get an outcome. It might even be a desired result that we were going for, but it's not sustainable because then we couldn't keep going, or we weren't aware enough of the surroundings to go at the speed that we needed to to sustain result. So that's what impulsivity does and what it looks like in real life. It looks like a scenario where if you're in a leadership role, you feel like you need to lead or be there for everyone. And so you impulsively react to what anyone's request is. You're trying to field all of the emails and all of the requests, and anytime someone wants something from you, you are giving it to them and in a leadership role. And that Type of impulsivity slows not only you down, but slows everyone down. But it feels like the right thing to do. You had this urge to respond to someone, just like the person had the urge to pass the car that they saw, but they didn't have the awareness to see how much that particular impulse to pass slowed them down, because they don't even know how fast or slow they were going in the first place. So the impulsivity in business, it looks like spending too much on product that doesn't get sold, because we're going to have the product, we're going to need it. But they don't really realize what the future parameters are, what the future is going to bring. And they haven't looked at that closely enough. It looks like being very reactive to situations versus relying on systems that were created. Whereas intensity looks like the scenario where, in the example that I gave, it's this purposeful passing. You know exactly how long you have to have your foot on the gas. And then when you get around and you've passed that other car, you still have your foot on the gas, but it's back into the structure of cruise control, the system of holding yourself in that same particular speed that's going to keep you in front of the vehicle you just passed? Because what's the point of putting all that energy and effort, what's the point of going so hard and so intensely if you're just going to slow right back down again to a slower speed than what you needed to pass, to a slower speed than what you were going in the first place, a slower speed than the car you passed, or in business terms, where you were before you went to go and do the intense move. So when you think about this, this is happening all the time for us. There are certain areas of our lives where we've got the consistency, what the consistency looks like. It's the systems, it's the structure, it's the routines, it's the rituals. What it is, is what we call is leaning on structure. It's having it there to lean on. So we don't have to rely on being reactive or impulsive. We don't have to rely on having to have the energy of the intensity all the time. There's an episode that I recorded many months ago. It's episode 177. It's called Lean on structure. And this is where the systems save us. This is where the consistency pulls us through to the outcomes that we want. When we can't think about it, when we don't have the energy for the intensity, and yet we still want to keep following through and we want to get to the result. So that's where consistency is king. However, consistency is not going to get you to a goal. If it's not of the. If you need to change, you need to move the pendulum, you need to get to a new spot and consistency is maintaining you. Then what happens is that's when you apply intensity. Intensity is so needed. The impulsivity or the reaction is going to still exist because things are going to come at you that you do not expect. But if we have consistency and we have some intensity and that are there, then we can handle any sort of circumstance and unknown that comes our way. So intensity is needed to make change. Intensity is needed to stir things up. In business, it would look like a project, a deadline. In tech, it's something like a new release, and the deadline for that new release, it might look like creativity, creation. That's all in the category of intensity. Implementing new systems, that takes intensity. But the systems themselves that people are using, the systems that are in place that hold the structure, that's what creates the consistency, the intensity, what gets us to a new place in front of the other car, a new goal, a new fitness level, a new business startup that takes intensity, but it cannot be sustained without a system in place to hold structure. That's what allows us to then create more intensity for something else. And you're going to find this in other areas of your life. So if you find that you've got system and structure around your dinner time and your family, then it doesn't take much intensity to get it done. They might be zero intensity, it's just a routine that happens. But if there is no system and structure around a dinner routine in your household, then it's intense every time. And you might find that you default back to something that's less intense. So if you find planning the meals intense, or not knowing what to make is intense, then you might default back to ordering out or going for fast food or whatever, something that maybe wasn't a system for you that you really wanted. If it's not working, if it's not getting you where you want to go, then there's probably not a system in place that works. And having that as a first and foremost rule is what's going to help you get to where you want to go. In any category. In leadership, in management, in business, in fitness, in health, in relationships, that consistency is going to get you where you want to go. The intensity is going to going to get you to a new level. Having the reaction or impulsivity is typically going to have you see things differently because you had to respond to something unexpected. So they all have their gifts, they all have their uses. And yet consistency is king. That is going to be if you have to have one place to get completely dialed in, it's consistency. It's going to be the most effective and the most efficient in the long haul. It is your cruise control. So the more you dial in those systems, those routines, that is going to be what's going to get you where you want to go versus feeling burnt out by trying so hard and then feeling like you can't maintain it and trying so hard again and feeling like you can't maintain it or reacting to all these urgent problems coming your way in business and knowing that it's not sustainable and not being able to get the work done, that's really going to matter. So that is why consistency is king. Now that's not super sexy, it's not super awesome to hear that consistency is king. But sometimes it's the reminder that we need to hear. Sometimes it's the thing that really we need to get pushed over in order to go back to the basics, go back to consistency, to go back to see where the foundational parts are that are needed to build the house that's really going to stand strong. So where do you need to get back to consistency? Where do you need to apply the intensity for a new level? And where is there too much reaction or impulsivity going on that hampers the direction that you want to go or your long term results? So that is your message, your mindset Monday for today. Hope this dials you in for this week. Just take a look in your week, see what's there. See where the consistency can be dialed in so that you can keep getting the results that you want. And if something's not working, it's no big deal. Just take a look and see where you can adjust. Here's to having a fantastic week. Here's to dealing with whatever comes at you and here's to continuing to be your best in order to give your best. Have a fantastic week everyone. If you enjoy listening to the Empowered Team Podcast, you'll love being on the Empowered Team. The Empowered Team is our group coaching and accountability program where we provide the tools, tools, skills and community for you to grow your self mastery as a leader and optimize your results alongside other leaders. The Empowered Team runs year round to learn more about our leadership consulting for business and our Empowered team group coaching head to www.theempowered.com. That's www.thempowered.ca.empowered. learn more. We can't wait for you to join us. Let's.