#12: Spark of Wisdom - Consistency: "How to Stay Consistent"
Sometimes the hardest part is keeping the pace, staying the course, and being consistent enough to realize our results. Tina Marie shares her tried and true secrets to making steady progress.
Hello, and thank you for listening to the spark of wisdom on the light, your life podcast. Today. I'd love to have a discussion around consistency, how to stay consistent. Despite distractions in life. I found that one of the hardest parts of my own journey is in reaching results is that desire and that need to stay consistent toward that and consistent in habits in those things that we measure on a day-to-day basis week to week basis, month to month basis to reach the result that we're going for. And so today I'd like to share some tips that I've learned along my own journey to help myself stay consistent. And hopefully these will also help you. I'll also be sharing some stories from my clients and, and things that they have also done to stay consistent toward their goals. We're going to have a little blend of business goals and personal lifestyle goals as well.
So thank you again for being here on the light, your life podcast. So with so many distractions in our life and the need that we know we need to stay focused toward outcomes. Staying consistent is the hardest part. And so how do we surmount those needs of staying consistent and keeping our word to ourself ultimately, right. I have three things here today that I want to share, and hopefully these will definitely help you. So the truth is giving up, especially for people like you and I, that have typically clear goals. We know where we're headed. We have a vision and understanding of an outcome that we'd like to reach in whatever area of our life be it, our health goals or relationship goals, our wealth building goals, building businesses, maybe your personal brand, those types of things that we have whenever we are aiming in those directions.
Usually at the very beginning, we have the clarity, we have the clarity, we have the want, we have the desire. We have that passion it's there. So giving out really isn't something that's in our mindset because the energy is there. However, if old patterns and I call them sabotaging behaviors or limiting beliefs crop in, and we're not aware of them and conscious of how they work, then we can easily just stack those maybe tomorrow, you know, like, or maybe I don't go for this, I'll go for this. The squirrel effect and our success driven minds and lives. Whenever these old patterns start to creep in, if we do not have strategies to combat them and to get ourselves back on our path, then it could be another addition to the pile of belief that
We are a failure and that's not who we are. And that's not what
We are. So staying consistent becomes this. I use it like a, like the bumpers whenever you're playing bowling, whenever you're bowling, I'm that person I'll ask the, when they're giving me my shoes, I'm gonna say, okay, where is the lane with the bumpers? I want that one. I don't care how old I get. I'm still young at heart. And I like to have the best chance of winning. And so I love to play and I'm going to have fun if I know I'm making some strikes. And so I'll get that lane that has the bumpers. What do I do that it's support. I want to have support to get that ball down the lane and score the points and having habits that sustain our daily rituals in order to create those goals and results is just like, it's just like having those supports on the lane on the bumpers and consistency is the number one bumper I want to have in my corner.
So let's take, for example, if we have a goal to get in shape. So getting in shape, usually at the beginning of the year, people have those health goals. And I know that for us it's every day is a definite understanding that our health is our wealth. However, if we give ourselves a commitment that we're going to work out three days a week, then if we only do two there's something back of mine, that's going, Oh, that was a slight failure. And the more weeks we don't keep our word door ourselves and keep that commitment that we had originally set out for, then drain comes in. I know this for myself, drain comes in. I can feel it. And then sabotage our mindset is going to say, it's too cold outside, or you didn't put out your clothes ahead of time. So maybe they're in the dryer.
Just that excuse mindset is so much always on the ready. Isn't it? The excuse mindset is just there. And I attended a Jack Canfield event a couple of years ago, and he had a quote that I, I couldn't get it in my phone for my notes fast enough, because it definitely has become a mantra of mine for decision-making and how I want to use my time. And it's this Jack said 90% is a and 100% is a breeze. So let's go back to that commitment to work out. What Jack was saying is if we give ourselves 90% of the week, we're going to do that thing that we say we're going to do. We're going to be consistent only 90% of the time. Then there's going to be the excuse mindset there there's room for negotiation. However, if we say a hundred percent of the time, I'm going to do what I say I'm going to do.
And there is no fudge factor. Then that passion, that resilience, the consistency is totally there. Can you see, do you understand the difference? This totally made a difference in my commitment, especially to my health goals, right? And so whenever I left Jack seminar, I said, okay, so my mindfulness toward my health and my health goals, it's not going to be workout three times a week, or maybe four times a week. I'm working out every single day. I'm going to do something every single day, 100% mindfulness and dedication and activity toward my goals for my health and putting that as a paramount, I got, it's just paramount that the foundation of my health and my life has to be there or else other things are going to take its place. And then I'm going to be back at the place where I go, yeah, you didn't put yourself as a priority and definitely not your health as a priority.
So that day it's been two years ago, 90% is a. And 100% is a breeze. I said, I'm doing something every single day, at least 30 minutes, every single day that is focused on my health and the improvement of my health. And that's a robotic activity, but yoga, stretching. I have a Peloton. I love my Peloton. I have a Peloton tread too outside doing walks with my docs, dogs and, and stretching. Right? So there's something every single day there wasn't going to be a day off. Now, some people say that's extreme to Marie. That's extreme to, to give yourself a hundred percent every single day of the week. And I'm thinking, yeah, but isn't my health that important to stay consistent with it. Why would I take a day off on focusing on my health? Why would that even be an option that's like taking a day off from breathing?
No, not going to take a day off from that or taking a day off from saying, I'm going to give my attention to being a positive person in the world or taking my mind off. I'm going to pay attention to the loved ones I have in my life. No, I'm not. So what I learned from myself as whatever is very important, I'm going to put as that foundational dedication and a hundred percent as a breeze that so helped me with my consistency completely helped me with my consistency and the aim for those things that are paramount for my progress. Not everything gets up there on that pillar level. Those things that are most important energetically for me do. And then what that also helped with is though, as soon as I'm more consistent with those things that are most important to me and making sure that my core values are important to me and in front of me, then everything else seemed to line up.
There was space for them. The excuse mindset was quieter. And at times not even there because I was putting myself on those core values as that foundational focus in my life. So that was step number one, step number two, giving my whole word. It definitely goes into the a hundred percent is a breeze. That's a little bit different spin when we give ourselves our word to a goal, our word to a plan. And yes, I know plans change. We give ourselves that, that want, I want this, I'm going to go for this. I'm going to say yes to this and start taking action toward this. Then that's giving her a word to something. We can even be giving our word to not doing something anymore because we've learned that it was bad for us and possibly not being a doormat, having healthier boundaries, not tolerating, things that we've tolerated before. When we give our word, we want to keep our word to ourselves.
The truth is most of us break our word to ourselves sooner than we'd ever break our word to someone else. And even when someone else breaks their word to us, we forgive them faster than we would forgive us, spreading our word to ourselves because we hold on to those in our back of our mind that, Hey, you're not as important as other people are to you. We start putting ourselves lower on our own totem pole. So giving your whole word as another example, if you've been in a relationship and I'm sure you have, where you have said, I'm going to be a hundred percent committed to you and I'm going to be faithful. I'm not going to step outside of our relationship and have a relationship with someone else. I'm going to hold our respect and love and honor and trust and our respect and our relationship as the most important thing, right?
So we give our word to someone else in our relationship and that faithfulness, what if your partner, whenever they gave their word to you about that, you have the assumption that their word of I am committed to you, and I'm not going to step out of our relationship. Your assumption was that's a hundred percent of the time, a hundred percent of the time that faithfulness is going to be there yet. When your partner gave that commitment, that their level of commitment was 70% of the time. I'm going to be faithful to you without even being spoken. Whenever you learned that that persons measure of faithfulness was only 70% and yours was a hundred percent. There's a mismatch there. When we give our word to ourselves, do we give our word to ourself that 70% of the time I'm going to keep my word to myself, or are we giving our word to ourselves that a hundred percent of the time I'm going to keep my word to myself, to myself, right?
In coaching I've I've had people come. And one of the things that they want to write or improve in their life is the ability to trust other people. I I've had my heartbroken. I've had some betrayal there. I've had people stab me in the back. They've talked behind my back. They've, you know, I, I can't trust people. You know, I'm, I'm really trepidatious on, on who I trust and let into my circle because of past pain. What I tell them is that we first want to take a look at how many times we lie to ourselves. How many times do we Trey ourselves? Because if we have a habit or at least it's okay to betray ourselves and not keep our word to ourselves, then we're going to also allow that with other people. And more than that, we're probably going to attract it into our lives until we get our own lessons to keep our word to ourselves.
So Tina Marie, how does this fit with consistency? Consistency is giving our word to ourselves and keeping it. And then if we fudge or don't keep our word to ourselves, or, you know, we just need to renegotiate. We need to have that conversation with ourselves and say, Hey, I gave my commitment to this. This is how it actually looked. And now I'm recommending, I'm either going to get back on the horse and keep that first level of commitment that I aimed at renegotiate, forgive myself, saying, okay, we're going to do better next time. Or we renegotiate our own terms and then recommit to, or say, this is what the new outlook looks like and give our word again. The same type of conversation that we'd want to have with other people, if they don't keep their word to us. So we also need to have that same conversation within ourselves. And I do. I sit myself down, I look at my plan. I see where things are. Have I not kept my word to myself? I forgive myself. I first apologize. I forgive myself course, correct. Have a new plan, give my word again and stay consistent. We're not going to have perfection yet the same way we would want to have other people treat us. We need to first treat ourselves.
So I want to tell you the story of a client. His name is David. It's awesome to be working with David because he pushes his boundaries and puts himself in his discomfort zone on, on a regular basis for growth purposes. And he lives what we call above the line and always going for true love and connection definite growth in himself and his business and the people that he surrounds himself with and supporting them. And then also contribution of all of that together for our higher order. Not only for him in his life and his family, but definitely for humanity, definitely that's his heart is just fully there. And so David gives his word to himself of what he wants and it's not frivolous once. It's, these are some really big, this is what I want, and this is why I want this. And you can feel the gravity of it inside of his soul.
You can feel the emotion, you can see that he is truly connected to a soul's calling and a purpose for this next level evolution of himself and his business and his team. And even the drawing in of a new clientele that he can serve through his gifts. So whenever I hear David, give his word to something, you could feel it in the resonance of his Boyce, the, the look on his face, that, that whole body energy fact that happens. And is it going to be hard to get to that result? Heck yeah, it's going to be really hard for him to get to that result because it's called a stretch and he loves to go for stretches because he becomes a different version of himself. And in that growth, it's just so fulfilling whenever he reached those levels. And is he going to know how he's going to get there?
There's going to be partial parts of our lives that we can prove and say, I've done this. So I believe I can do that. And since I've done this and I have the evidence that I can do that, and am I resourceful? Yes, I'm resourceful. I'll make it happen. And I hear David say that all the time. You know what? I probably don't know how I know what I know where it's at and I'm going to make it happen. He goes is full in hundred percent all the time. And he is, he makes things happen because I truly believe that the universe, the invisible substances answering our calling, when we align within ourselves of what we truly would love and stay committed to it and stay consistent with it, right?
It takes that it takes that are in our world to stay consistent. And I'm reminded of the scene in Indiana Jones and the temple of doom when the version of it, when Sean Connery was playing Andy's dad and Sean Connery in, in his character and his dad was being held ransom and was about to be severely harmed if not killed and indie needed to go across what is known as the invisible bridge. And if you have not yet seen this clip, you can go to YouTube and Google, Indiana Jones, invisible bridge. Right? So watch that on YouTube. And you'll see what I'm talking about here. But indie finds in his resourcefulness first, he is committed to the outcome. He knows what he needs to do. And he doesn't just give up. Even though there seems to be a whole lot in the way to make this happen, he's consistent about his approach.
He's consistent. And in his approach, he takes that leap and then he makes it happen. So I want you to go see that video. If you have not yet done it, consistency is mindfulness in action, staying consistent to the outcome and doing whatever it takes to make it happen. So another rule of thumb that I use for myself, and this is like to be right. Did I told you I'm sharing three things today to be, or not to be? I just had to say that. Okay. So to be is like commit to being a person of consistency. This was a game changer for myself committing to being a person of consistency. Meaning there was something inside of my character that I thought, well, people aren't always consistent. And then I'm like, well, I can tell myself I'm consistent. I can commit to being consistent. We live in a culture that so many different thoughts of saying the culture is now programming us to have short attention spans. And you know, we have ADHD and we have add, and we have distraction mindset and we have so much information coming at us. Yes, it's all true. And if culture can program us to have a distraction mindset, why can't we program ourselves to not have a distraction mindset? If our mind is programmable, who would you like to be programming your mind and programming your habits? Would it be you, or do you want culture to do it? And you're just a victim of the
Cultural norms that are out there.
Well, I hold my hand up and say, I am not going to be a victim to any cultural norms. I want to flush them out, go figure out where these things are and then do what needs to be done to get my power back and to program my own mind. Right? So I commit to being a person of consistency. I commit to being a person of my word. I commit to being a person who has measurable habits that I depend on to make progress in my life and to celebrate those progress points, as opposed to just making it all about work and check marks, right? So I commit to being a person of consistency and I commit to being a person of what I call micro celebrations. Because when we celebrate those outcomes, then we're more apt to take the measured steps to make that happen.
So that's like my two B is that I commit to myself to being a person of consistency. And once we dedicate that commitment, then things line up and our way of being in our behavior and our decision-making to make that happen. And I give you permission to reprogram yourself. We don't need to be the victims of the programming of society or culture. We can have it out there and we can be mindful that it is there. However, we ultimately have the power of our own life. Yes. So now that brings me to number three on our list today, and that is creating small measurable check bites, a check Mark and bites. I have some pretty big visions. I'm sure you do too. And in those visions, we have an outcome that we reach and it's going to be within a timeframe that, that happens. None of us on the planet have infinite time to make things happen.
There is an end date to our existence and we don't know what it is. Thank goodness, because it's going to give us a little bit more of a pressure cooker to make things happen. However, once you have that vision, write it down in your own handwriting, with your own words and your own explanation of what you see, feel and know is out there in the future. And then we need to chunk it down. We need to chunk it down into smaller, measurable check marks that we can keep a tag on for myself. My bigger goals I keep in front of me on my phone. I keep in front of me with vision boards, boards. I keep in front of me with people that surround me and my support because I've enrolled them into the higher vision. And I, whenever I lose track or forget my vision, I'll ask one of my team members, I'll say, remind me of the vision because it's no longer just my vision.
It's an entire team's vision. We are all moving together as a unified force toward many of these outcomes. And so just today, I did that with one of my team members and one of my master coaches that I depend on and love working with. And I asked her, I said, remind me of the vision, helped me see it through your eyes because sometimes we forget or we lose that passion. And I've allowed these people into my circle because they have the, they carry the same torch. And when I heard it from her words and saw her and the resonance in her face and her articulation of it, it went back into me and I said, thank you. Thank you. She said, thank you because it fueled her. It fueled me. And now we're back on the path. So these small measurable check Mark bytes, organize yourself, have a plan and put habits around the successes that you want to realize they will fuel you.
And then celebrate. Like I mentioned earlier, celebrate your wins and allow other people to help you celebrate your wins as well. Don't keep it in tears all to yourself because we are a world of a lot of people and we get to fuel each other. It's so fun. I love it. So if you want to yield great results, make sure you have the tiny habits to support that and do those consistently stay in connection with your bigger picture of your bigger, why, and surround yourself with people that also support and believe not only in your vision, but add theirs to it. So it's a cohesive unified movement that's happening. Remember to chunk it down and do the smaller bites and stay consistent with it, organize yourself, look at your plan. They'll just write it one and done and put it away somewhere in some drawer.
Keep it in front of you. Keep your word to yourself. Your word to yourself is more valuable than anybody. Else's word to yourself, especially within your psyche and your emotional center and the person who you're becoming and the person that you in this life with is the one that needs to be in love with you more than anything else, you definitely want to end whatever life we have on this planet with a smile on your way out. And that means that having a smile every single day, remembering who you are and why you are counts. And then also whenever you lose sight of things, just read it back to yourself. This is why I'm going for this. And it's going to have meaning to you. It doesn't need to have meaning to anyone else. Your consistency honestly, does not need to have meaning to anyone else.
And you do not need to prove yourself to anyone else or give permission to be consistent or have permission to have a goal or a want or desire or any particular passion. It is solely inside of you. It's literally between you and your higher power. I've learned this for myself and sometimes we can be called crazy and that's okay. Other people don't need to know what's inside of us. That fuels us and brings us joy and happiness. We'll share it eventually. However it needs to seed within ourselves first. So I ask you a couple questions here, as we conclude, where are you consistent? You get to start noticing that. What am I consistent and look for? What is working in your life? Because so often we'll look for what isn't working first. Gosh, isn't that painful? So start to count your blessings, count your consistency and give yourself a Pat on the back.
So first, where are you consistent and look at what is working? Yay. I've got this going on. Woo. And even if consistent is a week at a time, it's still consistent. Start with the wins. Then where in your life, what one area of your life would you like to have a new level of consistency? And right, it doesn't have to be a hundred percent perfection across the board. In fact, there is no perfection. Choose one area and say, this is where I would like to have more consistency to my goal, to the patterns and the steps and the actions that I take. I want to have more consistency and then set up a habit around that. Is it a morning ritual? Is it something you do before you go to bed? Is this something you're doing over lunch? Is this something you're doing every single day, just to prove to yourself that you can have consistency, look yourself in the mirror and claim.
I am a consistent person. I'm a person who has consistent patterns program yourself. You get to program yourself. Isn't that an awesome thing? I think it's awesome. Whenever we have that revelation and that ownership and that empowerment and take it on, right? So do that one thing, whatever that one thing is in that one area of life, where you want to have more consistency, do it within the next 24 hours. And remember what Jack said that 90% is a and 100% is a breeze. Give yourself permission to be 100% consistent with your word to yourself. Learn how to renegotiate. When we fall off the horse, we admit it. We look at what we can improve. We give ourselves our, again, we get back on the horse and we move forward. And like we say, here on let your life all the time. Progress equals happiness.
So find your progress. You'll find your happiness. Thank you so much for listening to this wonderful little talk on how to stay consistent, despite all the distractions in our life. If you'd love to have more resources in your corner, simply go to bonfire, coaching.com and look for those resources there. And we always offer a complimentary discovery session where you get to sit with myself or one of our coaches and learn more about your life. And you probably learned in a long time with new strategies that I guarantee you haven't ever seen. And you're going to want to know more about, so reach out bonfire, coaching.com. Thank you so much. I'm your host and the person in your ear for a little while. Tina Marie Saint seer do subscribe to light your life. And I can't wait to get to know more about you. So keep us in touch, reach out, stay on our list and communicate. We're always here for you. Thank you and have an amazing rest of your day. Bye-Bye.
