Relentless Consistency
The Difference Between Wanting Something and Actually Pursuing It
There's something I've come to believe after nearly two decades of developing leaders, years of bodybuilding, and now working with people through coaching.
One of the biggest differences between wanting something and actually making progress toward it is consistency.
Not motivation.
Not occasional bursts of extraordinary effort.
And not the ability to give 100% every single day.
Consistency.
Think about how many things we tell ourselves we want.
We want to lose weight.
Build muscle.
Start a business.
Become better parents, partners, or leaders.
Develop a skill. Improve our health. Create a more fulfilling life.
And I believe that, for the most part, people genuinely want those things.
But wanting something and consistently participating in the behaviors that move us toward it are two very different things.
You can have an extraordinary amount of ambition and very little follow-through.
You can work incredibly hard for two weeks and then spend the next two months doing nothing.
You can know exactly what you need to do and still struggle to do it with any regularity.
And that's where I think the difference begins.
What we want establishes a direction. What we repeatedly do determines whether we're actually moving toward it.
You Don't Need 100% Every Day
One of the biggest misconceptions about discipline is that it requires us to operate at maximum capacity all the time.
It doesn't.
We're human beings.
Some days we have tremendous energy, focus, and enthusiasm.
Other days we're exhausted, distracted, overwhelmed, or simply not feeling particularly motivated.
And that's okay.
You might have 100% to give today.
Tomorrow, maybe you have 60%.
And on another day, perhaps 20% is an honest reflection of what you're capable of giving.
The objective isn't to pretend those differences don't exist.
It's to develop an approach that accounts for them.
Because if your commitment only survives the days when you feel your best, it probably isn't going to survive very long.
But there's an important distinction here.
Giving yourself grace doesn't mean giving yourself permission to indefinitely avoid the things you've committed to.
Sometimes we genuinely need rest.
Sometimes our circumstances require us to adjust our expectations.
And sometimes, if we're willing to examine ourselves honestly, we recognize that what we're calling grace has gradually become procrastination.
That doesn't mean we need to shame ourselves.
It means we need to be willing to ask a better question.
Am I giving what I can reasonably give today, or am I finding a comfortable explanation for avoiding something I know matters to me?
The answer won't always be pleasant.
But it can be useful.
And the more often we're willing to examine our behavior without immediately defending it, the better we become at recognizing the difference.
Build Systems for the Days You Don't Feel Like It
For years, I worked long hours in leadership while also pursuing bodybuilding.
There were plenty of evenings when I'd finish a demanding day and still have a training session ahead of me.
And I knew that if I waited until I got home to decide whether I felt like going to the gym, I was making the process unnecessarily difficult.
So I built systems around it.
I'd have my gym clothes laid out.
I'd establish a routine for transitioning out of work and into training.
I'd prepare ahead of time so that when the moment came, there was very little left to negotiate.
I didn't have to feel particularly motivated.
I had already made the decision.
That's something I've learned about discipline.
You don't build systems because you're always motivated. You build systems because you know you won't always be.
And those systems don't have to be complicated.
If you want to improve your nutrition, make the foods that support your goals easier to access.
If you want to write consistently, establish a realistic time and place to do it.
If you want to become a more present parent, protect time that doesn't have to compete with every other demand in your life.
If you want to develop a skill, create opportunities to practice it regularly rather than relying on occasional enthusiasm.
The purpose of structure isn't to eliminate flexibility.
It's to reduce the number of times you have to convince yourself to do something you've already decided matters.
Because there's another person affected by the decisions you make today.
Your future self.
I used to think about that frequently during training.
I might not see the results of today's work tomorrow.
I might not see them next week.
But I understood that the person I would become months or years later would benefit from the effort I was willing to put in now.
Your future self inherits the decisions you're willing to repeat today.
Reliability Matters More Than Occasional Brilliance
During my years in leadership, I worked with people who had tremendous natural ability.
Some could produce exceptional results when everything aligned.
But their performance wasn't always predictable.
You never quite knew which version of that person was going to show up.
And then there were people who weren't necessarily the most naturally talented individuals in the room.
But they were reliable.
They showed up.
They listened.
They asked questions.
They accepted feedback.
And they were willing to take the information they received and do something with it.
I watched people like that become extraordinarily capable over time.
Not because they were always the best on any given day.
But because they consistently invested in becoming better.
I think that's an important distinction.
Consistency creates reliability. Adaptability creates development.
Because simply repeating the same behavior isn't necessarily enough.
Someone can consistently make the same mistake for years.
Someone else can show up with the same regularity, recognize what's not working, make adjustments, and gradually become more capable.
The difference is what they do with the information available to them.
And this applies to almost everything.
In bodybuilding, showing up matters. But so does the quality of your training, your recovery, and your willingness to adjust when something isn't working.
In business, effort matters. But so does recognizing when your approach needs to change.
In leadership, being present matters. But so does learning how to better support the people depending on you.
Relentless consistency isn't mindlessly repeating something because you've committed to it.
It's staying engaged with the process long enough to learn how to do it better.
When Consistency Breaks
I want to share something about my own journey because I think it's important to understand that consistency doesn't always look the way we imagine it does.
My bodybuilding journey has not been a straight line.
Not even close.
At one point, after getting extremely lean, I made the decision to see how big I could get.
And I gained far more body fat than I intended.
It was a poor decision.
One that I eventually spent roughly four years working my way back from.
I knew what I'd done.
I understood the consequences.
And I was discouraged by how far I'd moved away from where I wanted to be.
There was nothing particularly inspiring about that period.
I wasn't making uninterrupted progress.
I wasn't demonstrating some extraordinary level of consistency.
I'd made a mistake, and I had to live with the consequences of it.
But eventually, I had to make another decision.
Was I going to allow what happened to determine what I did next?
Or was I going to acknowledge it, learn from it, and get back to work?
I chose to get back to work.
And I think that's a part of consistency we don't discuss enough.
A period of inconsistency doesn't have to become a permanent identity.
Maybe you've followed your nutrition plan for three weeks and then spent two weeks completely off track.
Maybe you stopped training.
Maybe you've neglected something important for months.
Maybe you've spent years telling yourself you're going to make a change.
The time that's passed matters. Your choices may have had real consequences.
But those consequences don't eliminate your ability to make a different decision now.
You don't have to pretend the setback didn't happen.
You don't have to convince yourself it was somehow beneficial.
And you certainly don't need to punish yourself indefinitely for it.
You can acknowledge what happened.
Take responsibility.
And decide what comes next.
Grace Without Abandoning Accountability
This is something I think about often when coaching people.
Let's say someone has been making progress with their nutrition.
They're following the plan, developing better habits, and beginning to see results.
Then life happens.
Work becomes demanding.
Family responsibilities increase.
Their routine gets disrupted.
And suddenly, they're not following through the way they had been.
My response isn't to make them feel worse about it.
We're not superheroes.
We can't operate at 110% seven days a week, 365 days a year.
Sometimes things happen.
And that's okay.
But once we've acknowledged that, there's another conversation to have.
Where do we go from here?
That's the question I care about.
Not because the setback is irrelevant.
But because understanding what happened should help us decide what to do next.
Maybe the original plan wasn't realistic.
Maybe we need to simplify the structure.
Maybe someone needs more recovery.
Or maybe they've been avoiding something difficult and need to recognize that honestly.
The answer depends on the individual and the circumstances.
That's why coaching, leadership, and self-awareness matter.
The goal isn't to demand perfection.
It's to help someone understand their behavior well enough to make better decisions going forward.
Sometimes that means encouragement.
Sometimes it means adjusting expectations.
Sometimes it means having an uncomfortable but necessary conversation.
And sometimes it simply means saying:
Hey, shit happens. That's okay. Pick yourself up, dust yourself off, and let's get back to work.
Not because the last few weeks didn't matter.
But because the next few weeks still do.
Relentless About the Commitment, Flexible About the Process
When I say relentless consistency, I don't mean pushing yourself beyond your limits every day.
I don't mean refusing to rest.
And I don't mean continuing to do something that clearly isn't working simply because you started it.
I mean remaining committed to the things that genuinely matter to you while being willing to adjust how you pursue them.
Some days, the work will be substantial.
Other days, it might be smaller.
Sometimes progress will be obvious.
Sometimes it will be difficult to recognize.
And sometimes you'll realize you've been moving in the wrong direction and need to change course.
That's part of the process.
But here's what I want people to understand.
You don't have to begin with extraordinary capability.
You can develop it.
You don't have to have everything figured out.
You can learn.
And you don't have to turn every difficult day into evidence that you're incapable of following through.
You can get better at following through.
Maybe today, you genuinely only have 20% to give.
That's where you begin.
Over time, as your systems improve, your skills develop, and your circumstances change, perhaps that becomes 30%.
Then 40%.
Not necessarily in a straight line.
Not without setbacks.
But through repeated opportunities to learn, adapt, and improve.
And eventually, you may look back and realize that the person you once struggled to become is simply the person you've grown into.
Not because you gave maximum effort every day.
But because you kept returning to the things that mattered.
Where Do We Go From Here?
I think about the difference between wanting something and actually pursuing it.
And I keep coming back to the same principle.
Relentless consistency.
Not perfection.
Not intensity for the sake of intensity.
Not an uninterrupted record of good decisions.
A commitment to continue engaging with the work, to learn from the information available to you, and to make adjustments when they're needed.
Because there will be days when you don't feel like doing the thing.
There will be periods when progress slows.
And there may even be chapters when you find yourself further away from your goal than you ever intended.
That doesn't mean the story is over.
It means you have another decision to make.
You can acknowledge where you are without pretending it's where you wanted to be.
You can give yourself grace without abandoning accountability.
And you can recognize that your next decision still matters.
So if you've fallen off, lost momentum, or found yourself wondering whether it's worth trying again, I want you to consider something.
You don't need to make up for every missed opportunity today.
You don't need to punish yourself for the time you've lost.
And you don't need to promise that you'll never struggle again.
You need to decide what you're willing to do next.
Pick yourself up.
Dust yourself off.
And ask yourself:
Where do we go from here?
Because the goal was never to be perfect.
The goal was to keep becoming more capable of doing the things that matter to you.
Consistency Is Easier When You Have the Right Systems
You don't need another burst of motivation. Sometimes you need a better understanding of what's holding you back and a structure that helps you follow through.
That's what I help people build through My Disciplined Mind.
If you're ready to take a closer look at your habits, your goals, and where you might be getting in your own way, start with my free Disciplined Mind Assessment.
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