Identity Over Willpower: Why Consistency Isn’t Discipline

Hey, everybody, and welcome to another episode of Unfiltered and Unshakeable. I'm Steve Lichterman, and if consistency feels like punishment, you're fighting the wrong battle. We're going to talk about consistency today. If you haven't figured it out by now, that's today's topic. When the consistency feels like punishment and you know that you're fighting the wrong battle, well, your willpower runs dry. But identity doesn't. So let's give you two examples of why consistency is identity, not discipline. Two examples here. One example treats posting like they're going to the dentist and getting root canal. Oh, I know I should, but they don't, right? It's always the I know I should. We all know somebody like that. The other example is I'm the guy who shows up on LinkedIn every weekday. Guess who never misses. Same effort, different identity, right? It's the way you position it when you say to yourself all the time, man, I know I should be posting. And look, I hear this, I hear this every single day from people. Sorry, Steve, I didn't get those posts done this week. Now, one of the challenges I give people often is to post without me, to post without somebody planning it. To post something real from your day, make that video, do the five minute content, make it, ship it, send it, however you want to say it, get that piece out. But so many people say to me every week, I know I should have, Steve, but I didn't get to it. But then I got the ones that say, yep, I'm here every day, every day in the office, Steve, I'm posting something at 10 o' clock from 10 to 10 10. Every day I spend 10 minutes, I spend five minutes looking at the news of my industry, reading one article. So they spend two minutes scanning titles, three minutes reading something, then they flip on their camera and they record something for two minutes. They watch it back and then they post it. I love those people. Don't get me wrong, I love them all. But the one that's treating it like root canal is going to be a huge uphill battle because I'm going to be fighting with them and not fighting fighting, but you know what I mean? I'm going to be battling with them. Oh no, I'm going to be fighting with them because, you know, I'm pretty direct. I'm going to be fighting with them every week saying, stop saying I know I should and just start doing it, man. Just like, get one done, get one done, get one a week done. Like, I've had to literally ask people to get one a month done just to get the ball rolling. Can you imagine? Meanwhile, here we are posting audio every day. It's about having that identity of I'm not the person that says, I know I should, I'm the person that says I'm here, I'm showing up. Let's rock, you know, horns to the sky, let's get this done. You, and for most people, you know, you don't rise to your goals, you fall to your identity. So it's a lot easier for people to fall back into what they identify with than it is to rise to that next step. And it's what commonly happens with people. So there's, there's a couple of moves you could do. You know, there's three in particular that I like. The first one would be changing the label. So if you stop and say I'm trying to be consistent like you're saying you're trying, right? You have to stop that. You just have to stop saying I'm trying to be consistent and flip it and instead start saying, I'm the person who shows up. Say it out loud. Hell, say it out loud every single day. Pick a time, put a. You know, I had a friend that put the same thing every single day on his calendar every day saying, thankful to be free from the corporate monotony that was my life. And he literally had that repeat every single day on his phone every morning at 10am when he woke up because he was done. He moved on with his life towards another universe where he's self sustaining. He moved out in the middle of nowhere and he's happy, his family's happy, but it was that reminder every day that remind him that he was the guy that was showing up for himself and for his family. So that's part one. Change the label. Part two, keep micro promises, right? Make yourself micro promises that you actually keep. So tell yourself, I'll post one line today, just a text line. One line of text on social media. Then do it. Stack that proof. Stack. Like I always say, stack it. We're stacking wins. If we don't stack the things that are successful, we do not gain the confidence and clarity to move forward, right? So we have to do these things. We don't have a choice. Or we could just disappear into the Internet and just be another watcher, viewer, listener and never actually create and do anything ourselves and never let the world know what we're all about and what we have to offer. I mean, that's fine if you want to live in anonymity your entire life, then by all means, definitely the wrong person to talk to and listen to. Because I'm going to want you to be successful in what your terms of success are. Whether it could be a show that you're doing, a website that you're running, a webinar. It could be anything in your life and in your business. It could be about your products that you're launching, it could be the services that you're offering. It could be anything. I always want it to be better for people. I want everybody's day to be better. So keep micro promises, make a promise to yourself and keep it stack to proof. The third thing, this is what would be called like environment design, right? This is the best way I could term it would be environment design, environmental design. Your phone goes on the dock. So stop keeping the phone next to your keyboard, put it on the dock and let it charge. Turn off the mode where it's giving you all the notifications so you don't see it glancing off to your corner of your eye every two seconds. It's super distracting. So phone goes on the dock. LinkedIn open and your template ready before coffee time. Like before you get that office coffee, have yourself ready to rock and roll. Make that one thing, make the identity the path of least resistance. If you make your environment easier to work in by taking away your own distractions and roadblocks, the physical ones that are in front of you, that's gonna help. It's gonna make a huge difference. Cause we always find excuses for why we can't do something, but we never make excuses for why we could do something more, right? Cause we just don't do it. So instead of that, just fix your environment, keep your micro promises and change the label that you identify as. That's really the biggest thing. And the riff of the day that goes along with that is real simple. Willpower runs out, identity doesn't. So your energy and your willpower that can run dry, right? You can feel like you're fighting up uphill battle and it's like, oh, I'm cooked. But if you hearken back to what your identity is, of going back from being the I know I should guy to the I'm the person who shows up every day person. Well, now you've made that change in your identity and willpower is not as critical because you always can fall to that identity. And when that identity is positive and moving forward, well then you always fall back into your routine, right? It is what it is. And remember this old friends will always treat you like the old you. That's what they remember. New room, new identity. So today is your day. It's your permission slip from Steve. Not that it matters, but here's your permission slip to build that new identity for the new room in which you want to be in. Because if you don't start building it now, you're never going to build it. And coming here to the unshakable AF universe and the podcast, the website, the community, the book, everything that's happening in the next bunch of months here, these are the things to help you unlock that and get the hell out on your own and do it your way, and to do it in a way where you're really loving your life, your dailies, your business, what you're doing, who you are and who you identify as and what that identity is. So, with that in mind, thank you so much. I'm Steve Lichtman. This was unfiltered and unshakable, and I will see you next time. Have a great day.