7 Actionable Steps You Can Take to Become More Consistent and Reach Your Goals

July 26, 2021

Whether it’s reaching your goal of bench pressing 405 pounds, packing on 25 pounds of muscle, losing 20 pounds, building a successful business, or becoming an elite level athlete, musician, writer, or artists, consistency is a requirement. Without it, nothing great gets accomplished.

If you struggle with consistency, you’ll also struggle to get what you want in life.

To be consistent, you have to repeat positive behaviors day after day until they define you and become part of your identity. Those behaviors become part of who you are and what you do, no matter how you’re feeling.

This brings us to my first piece of advice…

Don’t Rely On Your Feelings

Many of us decide what we do and don’t do based on how we feel. This is a big mistake. If we always relied on our feelings to determine our behavior and decisions, we’d never get anything done.

Imagine if you only went to work, picked your kids up from school, paid the bills, cleaned the house, or went grocery shopping only when you felt like it.

You’d probably end up fired. Your kid would walk home alone and be pissed off you never picked her up. Your electricity and water would be shut off, and you’d have an extremely dirty home with barely any food in the house.

There’s lots of times you won’t feel like doing those things, but those things must be done.

Treat the steps that will get you closer to your health and fitness goals the same way. Treat them as non-negotiables. They must be done no matter how you feel. You’ll feel so much better knowing that you did the right thing, and got just a bit better by doing so. Plus, doing the little things that you don’t feel like doing, will likely make the much larger, more impactful tasks less challenging.

You won’t always feel like preparing your meals, going to the gym, doing your last set of heavy squats, eating nutritious foods and passing up dessert, or doing cardio.

Do them anyways. Your future self will thank you.

Don’t Wait for Motivation to Strike

This goes hand in hand with my first piece of advice above. Motivation is just a feeling that can quickly come and go in a matter of minutes.

It’s fleeting and unreliable. You can listen to a podcast, or watch a motivational YouTube video, and 30 minutes later all that motivation can completely disappear.

If you only take action when you’re feeling motivated, you won’t get much done.

Many people believe you need motivation to get started, but it’s quite the opposite.

Take action, and motivation follows.

Ever dreaded getting started on something, and then once you started, it wasn’t so bad and you actually picked up momentum and got more done than expected?

Maybe you didn’t feel like going to the gym, but once you got started, you felt great and unexpectedly ended up having an awesome workout.

That’s a perfect example. Motivation wasn’t there, you decided to take action, and the motivation soon kicked in.

If you’re having trouble getting started, use the 5-Second Rule from Mel Robbins.

Start counting down from five. Once you hit zero, take action.

Or as Nike says, “Just do it.”

One Small Goal at a Time

Some people start out with so much motivation that they set too many goals at once.

Or they lack patience, and they feel like they have catching up to do, so they set too many goals, and quite lofty ones, all at once in attempt to get to their end goal quicker.

This leaves you feeling overwhelmed, scattered, and possibly even discouraged. You might look at this enormous goal you’ve set, or multiple goals, and wonder how in the world you’re going to get there.

Your focus ends up diluted.

Diluted focus gets you diluted results.

Instead, focus on one, no more than two realistic goals at a time.

Break down your large goal into smaller goals.

Break down the steps that are needed to achieve it.

You achieve one small goal after another, putting together the pieces in order to achieve the larger goal.

Like putting together a puzzle. One small puzzle piece (smaller goals) at a time, and before you know it, the whole puzzle (your end goal) is complete.

Become Deeply Invested In The Process

This also goes hand in hand with my last point about breaking down big goals into smaller steps. It’s actually so similar I almost deleted this section, but I like my two examples below, so keep reading.

Those who succeed focus on the process, not the outcome.

Focusing on the process will lead you to the outcome you want.

Focusing on the smaller steps is focusing on the process. Those steps are part of the process.

If your goal is to win a football game, you focus on the process of building a team that works so well together. You take things one day at a time, building your players skills with each day of practice. You build relationships with your players, and have the players build relationships with each other. You make sure everyone is communicating clearly and is focused on the same mission. You break down the game into specific running and passing plays and know when to use them in different game time situations. You watch film of previous games in preparation for the next game to identify what went well, what didn’t, and what could be improved.

That’s the process. The outcome of carrying out that process successfully is winning games.

You don’t just focus on the scoreboard. You place your focus into mastering the process that will increase your chances of getting the outcome you want.

Let’s say your goal is to build muscle and lose body fat to build a leaner, stronger, and better looking body. Reframe your goal to shift your focus to mastering training, nutrition, and recovery—the processes that lead to a more muscular, leaner, and stronger body. When you master those processes, you increase your chances of reaching your physique goal.

You could then break that down even further by focusing on proper form and technique for training. Enough water, fruits, vegetables, protein, carbs, fats, and fiber on a consistent basis for nutrition. Improved sleep, reduced stress, and active recovery to improve your rate of recovery. Even those can broken down into smaller steps.

If you’re overly focused on the outcome, the end result you want, you may find it very overwhelming. Sometimes even discouraging because it seems so out of reach.

You may wonder how you’re going to get there.

When you break the steps down into smaller steps, and focus on the process, your goals don’t seem so out of reach anymore.

These smaller, less overwhelming, and more manageable steps are much more likely to be achieved.

Achieving goals, even small ones, is motivating and fun. It builds momentum, and you want to keep going. This all helps you be more consistent.

Build a Morning Routine

The way you start the day can determine the way the rest of your day goes.

We’ve all done it.

Your day gets off to a rough start. Unexpected and annoying things pop up. You’re rushing, you’re already making so many decisions, and it already feels like everything is going wrong. You get to work, and still, nothing seems to go as planned.

You’ve probably also felt the opposite.

You wake up feeling great and gave yourself plenty of time to get ready. You have a nice breakfast, do what you need to do, minimal decision making, and that momentum from a great morning carries over into your work throughout the day.

This is why morning routines can be so effective for setting you up for a successful day.

A morning routine provides structure for your day and gives you a sense of controlled focus from the start. Your day no longer has control over you. Morning routines also often consist of activities that are great for our overall health and well-being.

Some people like to read, drink coffee, meditate, and stretch. For others it might a couple glasses of cold water, a quick 15-minute workout, a cold shower, and journaling. You can add making your bed to both of those.

There’s no perfect morning routine, so find what works for you. If you don’t have one, start small. Pick one or two things to do in the morning. Stick with it for a couple of weeks, and pay attention to how you feel in the moment and throughout the day.

Morning routines also cut down on decision making. Lots of decision making early on in the day can lead to what’s called decision fatigue—the idea that after making many decisions in a short period of time, a person’s ability to make additional decisions becomes worse, including things like what to eat and what not to eat.

A solid morning routine that gets your day off to a great start increases your chances of making the right choices and doing the right things on a consistent basis.

A morning of chaos and disarray usually negatively impacts the rest of your day.

A morning routine may take a bit of extra time, but the benefits make it well worth it.

Planning and Preparation

If you have a plan and you’re prepared, you’re much more likely to be consistent.

Imagine if you went into each day with no plan at all. No idea what you were going to do and when.

No plan for when you’ll go to the gym and what you’re going to do when you get there.

No plan for what you’ll get at the grocery store and what you’re going to eat.

You wake up, start your day, and realized you haven’t prepared any food.

That’s not gonna turn out well.

Consistently plan and prepare, and follow that plan consistently.

Make a grocery list, prepare food in advance so you can eat well at home or take meals to go, and have nutritious on-the-go snacks on hand for when you’re short on time or aren’t prepared (it happens to all of us at times).

Tell yourself what days you’ll workout, where, what time, and follow a well-structured training program.

You’re much more likely to be consistent when proper planning and preparation take place.

Constantly Check In With Yourself

Be present and ask yourself a lot of questions throughout the day.

Your internal dialogue, the conversations you have in your head with yourself, can help you refocus and stay the course.

Am I doing things and behaving in a way that align with my values?

What’s holding me back?

Why do I not want to do this right now?

What’s important to me?

Why do I want this?

How am I feeling? Why?

What’s the benefit of doing this?

What are the consequences of not doing this?

I could go on and on.

But asking questions is great for helping you find clarity, clearing up any uncertainty, and helping you stay on track.

Be present, focus on a single task at a time, and remind yourself of the important of being consistent. Make a conscious decision to be consistent.

If you’re having trouble with consistency and keeping yourself accountable with your health and fitness goals, having a supportive and knowledgeable coach in your corner can make all the difference.

Fill out the online coaching application form below, and I’ll get back to you as soon as I can with the next steps!