How to Be Consistent: A Simple Secret to Personal Development

0:07Welcome to today's episode of the Mindset Mentor podcast. I'm your host, Rob Dial. If you have not yet done so, hit that subscribe button so you never miss another podcast episode. And if you love this podcast, do me a favor, share this episode or your favorite episode with one person today. All we're trying to do is grow and impact more people. And the more people that share it, the more people that we can impact. So if you do that, I'd greatly appreciate it. Today, I'm gonna talk to you about how to be consistent. And success doesn't come from something that you do sometimes. Success comes from something that you do consistently, something that you do every single day.

0:41And I'm going to be real with you, with most people that I see, most people don't have a motivation problem. Most people don't have a mindset problem. Most people don't have a time problem. When it comes down to their success in life, they really have a consistency and follow through problem. You know, you've probably, if you're like most people, started and stopped more things than you can count. Where you're like, I'm going to lose weight this time. This new year, new me, I'm definitely going to do it. And then four months later, you're still in the exact same place. You know, you've told yourself like, hey, this time it's going to be different.

1:18I'm going to do it. I'm going to follow through. And then you've watched yourself ghost yourself on your goals two weeks later, right? And it's frustrating, isn't it? Like it's frustrating to want to be somewhere, to want to be different, but feel like you're just self-sabotaging and spinning your wheels and keeping yourself in the exact same position. So why does this happen? And then how do we actually change it? Well, the most successful people that I know are usually not even close to the smartest people that I know. They're not the most motivated. They're not the most meditated. Some of them don't even wake up until 10 o 'clock.

1:56So it's not like they're the ones that wake up earliest in the morning. It's not any of that. They are the most consistent. That's what I found. They wake up and they do the same boring shit day after day after day until they finally hit the destination they've been working towards. Whether that's three months from now, whether that's three years from now, they have this mindset of, I will do everything that I need to do every day, day in, day out, day in, day out until I get to where I need to be. And that could be health and fitness. It can be business. It could be money. It could be success.

2:33Many different things. They are the most consistent. They do what needs to be done every single day, even when they don't want to do it. And so today I'm going to show you a very simple rule, a trick that you can use that psychologists say is one of the best ways to stay consistent. And it's called the 90-91 rule. So 90-91. And it's incredibly simple. and if you do it will actually reshape your identity of who you think you are. It'll change your brain and your entire relationship with focus and follow through. So let's go ahead and break it down. When you look at consistency, why do we struggle?

3:11It's usually not a discipline issue. It's more of a pattern issue within ourself. And so there's a lot more happening under the surface. Number one, one of the things that I find is that most people are addicted to novelty, not mastery. So your brain is wired to crave something new, new goals, new planners, new routines, new meditation, whatever it is that you're going to be doing. But if you're trying to master something, you have to be repetitive. Mastery requires repetition in the brain. That's how you master something. It's slow. It's boring. It doesn't come with, you know, fireworks and high fives.

3:50Like if I look at people who I know have mastered things, like first person popped into my head when I thought about somebody who does the same thing day in, day out. When you look at Steph Curry, who is arguably one of the top 10, if not five basketball players ever, 100 % the best shooter that's ever lived. For the past 15 years, he's been playing, he's been doing the exact same 90 minute routine pregame before every single game. the exact same thing for 90 minutes before a game starts for 15 years straight. Another example, I remember watching an interview one time with Dwayne Wade, and he was talking about one of the first times that Kobe Bryant came and played in Miami as a Laker.

4:31And he was watching him, and Dwayne Wade was watching Kobe Bryant do his routine. And Kobe Bryant would take it at the top of the key. He would go over to the left side, right at the elbow, and he would shoot the shot. He'd go back to the exact same spot, go to the left elbow, shoot the shot. Same thing, over and over and over. And he watched him do the exact same thing for 30 minutes straight. And Dwayne Wade was like, I got this. I know exactly what Kobe Bryant's going to do. And he said that even though he knew exactly what he was going to do, he still could not stop him. And the reason why was because Kobe Bryant had mastered that thing.

5:07He had done the exact same boring routine tens of thousands of times. And even though Dwayne Wade knew exactly what he was going to do, he still couldn't stop him. And so our brain likes novelty. It likes dopamine spikes and newness and all of that. So when the honeymoon phase of doing something new ends, your brain says, oh, let's find a new shiny object. I see this all the time with business owners. They just can't focus on doing the same boring thing every single day to grow their business. It's always new shiny. It's called SOS, shiny objects. and it's, oh, this new thing. Oh, I could try this marketing with.

5:43Oh, I could do this thing. And they try so many new things. What happens? Business fails because they never master anything. So that's the first thing. The second thing is that you might be using your feelings as a compass. You might be waiting for the feeling to show up, for the motivation to show up. Oh my gosh, motivation is what I'm waiting for. Oh, here it is, right? Like motivation is like a wave. Like it's in and it's out and it's in and it's out. And you can't rely on it. identity though, which is what we're going to be talking about today is how to change your identity around this identity is an anchor.

6:16Like I am the type of person who is consistent. Consistency is about never missing. It's about keeping small promises long enough to rewrite your story about yourself and to change your identity. You know, if you only act when you feel like acting and only take action, when you feel like taking action, your life becomes this like emotional weather report. Like you're just, it's unpredictable. It's unstable. You're, you're some days it's raining. Some days it's not. Some days it's shine. It's like, no, no matter what's going on, I'm going to do this thing every single day. You don't need to be the type of person who takes action when you feel like it.

6:54You need to be the type of person where you do the hard thing every day, no matter what. And so when you look at the 90, 91 rule, it's incredibly simple. And so don't confuse simple with easy though. This is what it is. For the next 90 days, spend 90 minutes, like the first 90 minutes of your day focused on one thing, which is your most important task. So 90 days, first 90 minutes, focus on one thing, which is your most important task for the day. It's quite simple. And it's not like, oh, this is just a time block in my schedule. know like this is a ritual for you. It's a non-negotiable appointment with your future self of the life you're building.

7:36And one thing that you need if you're a person's working on your own success or money or business or body, whatever it might be, is you need daily non-negotiables. Hey, if I get hit by a truck, I'm getting this done. This 90-91 needs to actually be a daily non-negotiable for you. This is what I'm going to do no matter what. So basically it looks like this. you wake up in the morning, you end up doing, you know, say your 90 minutes that you're going to be focusing on is in your business every single day. So what you decide to do is you say, okay, I'm going to wake up. I'm going to have my, I'm going to go to the bathroom.

8:10I'm going to brush my teeth. I'm going to have my water, my hydration. I'm going to do my 15 minute meditation, and then I'm going to be ready to start. And so what I'm going to do is I'm going to do my 90 minutes of deep work in my business. And you just do that every single day, day in, day out for the next 90 days. You could do anything for 90 days. You don't have to do it forever. You could do anything for 90 days. The deeper psychology behind why all of this works is beyond just like time management. One of the biggest reasons why it works is because for you, it's going to remove decision fatigue.

8:44Every time that you have to take a step back and ask yourself like, what should I do today? Or what should I do right now? You burn energy in your brain. You burn willpower. and the 90-91 rule, it just ends the debate. There's no negotiation. There's no chasing fires. There's no, what should I do today? It's, I know what I'm doing today. I don't need to think about it. And it's the same when you see people like, you know, sometimes those tech guys wear the exact same thing every single day. They're just trying to not have another thing to decide. They're trying to put all their brainpower into one thing.

9:16So what you're doing is you're creating focus within yourself. You're putting all of your brainpower into one thing and you're doing what Cal Newport calls deep work. And this is where discipline stops feeling like restriction and it starts feeling like freedom. Like this is really up to me and I can do anything that I want to in these 90 minutes to change my life. And whatever you decide is the right thing for you. The less decisions that you can make each day, the better. I remember reading an article years ago and it was saying that Jeff Bezos only makes three decisions every single day. He goes into the office and he has three decisions, but there are three really big decisions that he makes every single day.

9:52So that's number one. The second reason why it works really well is because it leverages your brain's peak state. So cognitive science shows that your prefrontal cortex, which is, if you've been listening to this podcast for a while, you've heard me talk about it many times. It's the part of your brain responsible for decision-making and planning. It is at its freshest early in the day. And we will be right back. And now, back to the show. Well, then I probably want to use it as when it's at its freshest, right? That means that you have fewer distractions, you have sharper thinking, you have less resistance.

10:26And so if that's the case, why would I want to wait until later on in the day to do my most important work? It's like trying to run a marathon after leg day. No, you've already exhausted your legs. You don't want to do that. And so what you want to do is you want to take action while you still have a lot of mental energy and mental bandwidth. And there was a study that was done in 2012 by Blakemore and Robbins that showed that the prefrontal cortex functioning is at its strongest in the early part of the day, especially for complex tasks involving strategy and focus, which is exactly why 90-91 is perfect for in the morning.

11:08Now, I'm not saying it needs to be the very first thing you do in the morning, like you wake up and immediately start working, saying once you get past your morning routine, your brain has woken up a little bit and now you're in focus mode, make it in that moment. It could be 9 a.m. for you. It could be 10 a.m. for you, whatever it might be. That's the second thing. The third thing that's really important about this is it builds identity-based consistency. So behavioral psychology is really clear in this. We act in alignment with who we believe we are. Not who we are, who we believe we are. So when you commit to the same action every morning, you're not just being productive, you are, but you're also saying, I'm the type of person who shows up.

11:48I protect what matters. I keep my word to myself. I follow through no matter what. And if you do this long enough, it changes who you think you are. So if you think that you're lazy and that you don't work hard, if you do this every single day and your brain sees you showing up every single day for 90 days in a row, your brain has to go, huh, maybe my lazy identity, that doesn't actually fit the narrative of what's going on here. Like it doesn't fit. There's some sort of cognitive dissonance here. Like I say to myself that I'm lazy, but I'm seeing myself show up and work really hard every single day.

12:30Yeah. I'm going to have to let go of this lazy identity. And so identity is just who you think you are based off of what you've seen yourself do in the past and identity shifts based off of what you do. So if you want your identity to be different in the future, you need to take different actions today and in the future. And then in the future, a year from today, whatever it might be, when you look backwards, your identity will be different because you will have taken different actions. So this is how you start really being consistent and actually change your identity of yourself. There's a thing that's called the identity-based habits theory.

13:07It's rooted in cognitive dissonance theory. And it shows that repeated actions shape self-concept. Self-concept is who we think we are. So when we repeat actions over and over again, it shapes our self-concept of who we think we are. And once that becomes part of our identity, here's the key part. Once that becomes part of our identity, the behavior becomes automatic and natural. Holy shit, that's pretty crazy. So in psychology, it actually shows that if we continue to do something over and over and over again, it will eventually become part of our identity. And when it becomes part of our identity, the behavioral becomes natural and automatic.

13:48And so that's pretty important. And if we think we're the type of person, eventually, if we could brainwash ourself into thinking we're the type of person who's consistent, we will continue to show up and be consistent every single day. And so let's talk about how to implement. Like, let's get practical with it, right? Let's do this without any overwhelm. The first thing you're going to do, this is super simple. Number one, you're just going to pick your one thing. Like this is your keystone habit that moves the dial, you know, in your goals and in your life. It is the, what I like to call the biggest lever in your life.

14:19Like if I could pull one lever that changed my life in my business or in my fitness or in my health or whatever it might be for you, this is it. That's the keystone habit that you want. And so you've got to ask yourself, like, what would make everything in my business easier or unnecessary? Or what make everything in my health easier or unnecessary? You know, what do I avoid because it's important and hard? What would I still care about if I didn't have any external validation? You know, what's the biggest thing that I can do every day for the next 90 days to move the needle in my life? So it could be something like writing 500 words for your book every morning.

15:03You do that for 90 days. What is that? 45 ,000 words? That's about twice what the average book is. That sounds like a pretty good idea. 500 words every single morning. It could be something like creating content for your brand every single morning. It could be learning a skill that you've been avoiding. It could be training your body every single morning. It could be training your brain every single morning. So it could be like a hardcore workout or a run or weightlifting, or it could be meditating and just training your body and your brain to just sit and chill. So that's the first thing is to figure out exactly what it's going to be.

15:40Number two, choose your 90 minute block, make it sacred, make it mean something. This is important. And then make it the first thing that you do on your work day before email and other people pull you went. And so what you're going to do, let's say it's 90 minutes, 9.30 a.m. every single day from 9.30 to 11. Cool. You get to the office, you say hi to everybody, you do what you need to do. And then everybody knows from 9.30 to 11, Jeff is in there, he's getting his stuff done, don't come in. And you're going to put your phone, you're going to turn your phone off, you're going to put in your desk drawer or put in another room, you're going to use noise canceling headphones, you're going to put on songs like, you know, just slow EDM songs with no lyrics in it or piano songs, whatever it is, use the same song, just that keeps playing over and over again.

16:31And then your deep work is your uninterrupted time blocks where you're going to sit down and make this a ritual. And this ritual is going to change your life. So that's the second thing. Number three is to actually track the days every single day. And so use a physical calendar. You could use Notion if you want to, but I prefer a physical calendar that you put on your wall. I got this from Jerry Seinfeld. He didn't tell me this, but I've seen, you know, they call it the Seinfeld calendar. When Jerry Seinfeld was, you know, really starting to become famous, another new comment came up to him and he's like, Hey Jerry, like I'm working on myself.

17:05I'm trying to become better. What do I do? And Jerry said, just write jokes every single day, every day. You're going to write a bunch of crappy jokes, but just write jokes every single day. Eventually you're going to get some good ones out of it. And then what you do is you have a calendar, you put it on your wall, and whenever you end up writing jokes for that day, you put a big red X on that day. And then what happens is you start to see a chain of Xs and you don't want to break the chain. And so you actually have drive to keep that chain going. So every day you just put a red X through it.

17:34And this creates this consistency chain in your, you want yourself to hate breaking the chain. And so, you know, Jerry Seinfeld's actually quoted saying, don't break the streak. And there was a study that was done in 2009 that showed that repeating an activity daily for approximately 66 days builds automacy, making it the action, making the action itself more habitual and effort free over time. So it actually becomes more automatic and natural for you. So that's step number three. And then step number four, just plan for resistance. You know, here's what's going to happen. You're going to get bored.

18:10You're going to want to skip a day. You're going to want to convince yourself that it's not working. That's your comfort zone, throwing a tantrum. Your job is not to avoid the resistance because you're going to feel the resistance no matter what. Your job is to expect the resistance, to normalize the resistance and to decide to do it anyways. You're not going to want to do it. Guess what? Nobody wants to do it. Join the club. Everybody feels this way. You're not out of the ordinary, but you need to be the type of person that does it anyways. Now, Now, you might ask yourself, like, what do I do if I fall off?

18:42Okay, you will miss days. That's not failure. It's feedback. That's the important thing. If you miss one day, fine. Investigate. Just don't miss two days in a row. You know, investigate. What did I do? What did I not do? How can I make sure I don't miss it tomorrow? These missteps where you miss a day, use as data so that you can make sure that you don't do it again. You know, revisit your why. Re-anchor yourself in your routine. Remember, the goal is not perfection. the goal is to be as consistent as we possibly can. Not to be consistent 100 % of days until the day we die, but to be consistent as we possibly can.

19:16And if you do this, you're going to start to notice your mornings are going to feel really powerful. Your focus is going to last longer. You don't need to motivate yourself because you're just going to do it anyways. You just do the thing. And you've collected enough data points over 90 days to go, huh, you know what? Maybe I can trust myself. Maybe I am the type of person that follows through. You'll have more confidence in yourself. You'll have built more self-trust. Consistency becomes who you are. And that's the most important part of it. If you can become consistent in your identity, you will change your world.

19:48So that's what I got for you for today's episode. If you love this episode, please share it on your Instagram stories. Tag me in it, Rob Dial Jr., R-O-B-D-I-A-L-J-R. And if you want to learn more about coaching with me outside of the podcast, go to coachwithrob.com. Check it out. And with that, I'm gonna leave you the same way I leave you every single episode. Make it your mission to make somebody else's day better. I appreciate you and I hope that you have an amazing day.