I came across a podcast episode a few months ago titled “If you want to Succeed, Slow Down”. The theme of this was consistency, not just in not slacking off, but also in not overdoing things. It’s easy to go all out when starting/learning something new in the hopes of getting results fast, but it will quickly backfire when you can’t keep up with doing as much as possible every day to achieve your goal. It’s easier to stick to your goals when you choose to limit yourself to do the same (realistic) amount of work everyday, even when you feel like you can do more.
A good example of this being challenged and/or inspired by Brett Ullman’s family weekend sessions and wanting to apply everything you’ve learnt to make lot of changes to your life. However, when you’re out of that happy place, (say you had a difficult day) it’s easy to give up because you’re overwhelmed with life and difficulties in trying to better yourself.
Brett gave out a very helpful quote for moving forward after the weekend: “when you’re challenged, choose one thing [to work on]”. I know all of us have at least one thing that stood out from the sessions, so we will at least have some direction on what to work on.
The next step is figuring out how we will work on the thing(s) we want to improve. In Monday’s session, someone said “I’m not at putting my phone out of the bedroom yet”. However, he/she put their phone away one hour before bed. It’s a simple step, nothing drastic, but it’s a change in the right direction, and probably one that the person can stick to.
If you’re trying to implement what you learned, remember to be realistic. Slow down if you need to. Good things take time to build. This it isn’t a race, and if you can do little things consistently, you will eventually get the big things done too.