Why Consistency Beats Talent Every Time

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1:44Welcome 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. If you're out there and you want to learn and grow and improve yourself so that you can have a better life, that's what this podcast is made for. So make sure you subscribe. I put out episodes four times a week to help you with that. Today, I'm going to be talking about why consistency beats talent every single time. Because if you want success at anything in life, this, what I'm about to talk about today, is the biggest key to success.

2:20It's not hustle. It's not genius. It's not IQ. It's not talent. It's not the perfect plan. It's consistency. It's the slowest, the quietest, the most boring, not sexy thing that you can concentrate on. But it is the most powerful tool in your toolbox for anybody who's trying to build their life into something that matters. And so in this episode, we're going to impact a few things, why consistency always wins, even if you're not the best at what you do, why you struggle with being consistent, how consistency is the compound interest of success in the studies that actually prove it, and then how to finally become the type of person who shows up consistently.

3:01And so I'm going to teach you something called cockroach consistency, which sounds really weird, but stay with me. I'll explain what it means. So let's dive into it. Consistency, why is it the most underrated superpower? Well, let me set the scene for you just to kind of understand it, right? Consistency is like compound interest. If you've ever heard of compound interest, it is as Einstein said, the eighth wonder of the world. You got to think about it this way. It's like a bank account or an investment account that you deposit a little tiny bit every single day. And then what happens is over a little bit of time, that becomes a massive amount of money that's inside of that bank account or the investment account.

3:41So let's say that you invest$10 a day, right? That's the price of lunch into a basic S &P 500 index fund. Historically, that fund is going to get you about 8 % annually. So if you put in$10 a day, that's$3 ,650 per year. If you do that for the next 20 years, well, you will have saved$73 ,000. But with compound interest, that$73 ,000 turns into$172 ,000. If you keep going for 30 years, that$10 a day turns into $340 ,000, all from doing one simple, tiny thing every single day. And so I want you to understand it's not magic, it's compound interest. And that's the same thing that consistency does.

4:24Same thing with your investment account, with your body, with your mindset, with your relationships, with your business, the effort looks really, really small today. You don't feel like you completely moved the needle today. But over years, it multiplies. Boom, it's exponential payoff. And so think about it. You know, if you work out once a week, you might feel good for a couple hours, but you're not going to see much difference in your body. But if you work out four times a week for a year, your body, your energy, your identity, your mindset, all of them are completely different. It's the same with everything in your life, with the content that you need to create, with your business, with your relationships, with your mindset.

5:07It's the difference between 10 reps and that's just done one time and a thousand reps that are dripped out over weeks. It's exponentially better. And it's like Tony Robbins always says, most people overestimate what they can do in a year, but they underestimate what they can do in a decade. And so the part that most people are not willing to admit when it comes to consistency is that it's not some big flashy thing. It's not sexy. It's not, it's kind of quiet. It's mundane. It's like repetitive. It's showing up day in, day out, not seeing the reward immediately, but knowing that in the future that reward is coming for you as long as you don't stop.

5:47And so we're so trained on immediate gratification and consistency is not an immediate gratification thing. It is a delayed gratification thing. And so when you look at the people that you admire, the people who are doing the biggest things in the world, they didn't just do something once. They are consistent as hell, like brutally consistent. You know, if I was a betting man, I would always put my money on the most consistent person, not the most talented person, not the smartest person, not the person with the highest IQ. None of that. Talent's overrated. But the person who does not stop cannot be beat.

6:23So let's talk about why you probably and most people struggle with consistency because I always hear, oh, I'm really good at starting something, but I always fall off at some point in time. If you're like that, you're not broken. You're not lazy. You're just like everybody else. But let me tell you what's actually happening in this situation. The first thing it could be is perfectionism, right? If you can't do it perfectly, you tell yourself it's not worth doing it at all. And that is just an unconscious tactic that your brain uses to keep you stuck. That is classic self-sabotaging inaction right there.

7:00And so you never finish and complete something because you're constantly trying to make it better. And that is really, more than anything else, if you're the type of person that's a perfectionist, you're really somebody who's being driven by fear is what it is. You're afraid of something if you're a perfectionist. You're afraid of judgment or you're afraid of failure. You're afraid of success or you're afraid of other people's opinions. And so what you need to do is you need to figure out if you're a perfectionist and that's what's holding you back from consistency, what's the actual fear that's holding you back?

7:32Remember this, done is better than perfect. I would prefer 80 % effort a thousand times more than 100 % effort three times. So if you feel like you're a perfectionist, remind yourself that you don't want to be perfect. You just want to get it done. Done is better than perfect. The next thing that holds people back from being very consistent is this all or nothing thinking. You know, you start a gym routine, you go for a couple of weeks, you miss a day and you think, oh, well, I blew it. That's not discipline. That's shame pretending to be disciplined. It is another classic self-sabotage tactic.

8:11So you turn one skip day or one skipped workout into a story. Oh, I always mess up. I'm such a screw up. I'll always be fat. I'll always be such a loser. I never stick to things. Whatever it is that you say. That's not truth. That's just your trauma loop. And your trauma loop is trying to keep you in the exact same place that you've always been, which is where you currently are. What's really happening is that your brain has become addicted to extremes and it thinks if it's not perfect, it's pointless. But once again, that's some sort of fear that's driving you in some sort of way. So you need to become aware of the fears, a fear of judgment or opinions, fear of success, fear of failure.

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12:04The reframe that you want to kind of take is, yeah, you missed a day, but just because you missed a day doesn't mean you failed. When you miss a day, you make micro adjustments. That's what you do. Missing a few days and not getting back up. That's the failure. Failure is not messing up one time. Failure is messing up and not getting back on the horse, not figuring out how to bounce back. The real flex is bouncing back when you do screw up. Success is not this perfect streak over years of your life. It's the speed that you recover after you screw something up. And so let the new rule that kind of guides you to be, hey, it's okay to mess up one day and to miss the gym one day, but never miss two days in a row.

12:50For whatever it is, It's okay to not write one day, but I'm never going to miss two days in a row. So you can at least make sure you're batting above 500. You're more than 50 % of the time you're showing up. What's another thing that holds you back with this, you know, trying to be consistent? Emotional avoidance, right? Most people think that they have a consistency problem, but in reality, what they really have is a feelings problem, you know? So they avoid consistency because it triggers emotions that they haven't learned to sit with. Like what I've been saying, the fear of success. What if I become successful and I can't keep it up?

13:27Or the fear of being seen. What if people actually notice me? And then when they notice me, they judge me. Or the fear of failure. Like what if I try and it still doesn't work out? It's just easier not to try. If I'm not going to succeed in the first place, why would I try in the first place? Like let me just not try because it's not going to work either way. Or the fear of not being good enough. What if I try and then I'm exposed as a fraud? And so, you know, like you say you want to post content every single day to grow your business, for instance. But what happens when you don't get as many likes as you want?

13:59You start questioning your worth. You don't think that you're good enough. That's the emotional risk that I'm talking about. And your brain doesn't like emotional risk. It's easier to not put yourself out there. It's easier to do nothing than to do something and then to be disappointed by it. And so that's why people always choose the easy route. But the truth of all of this is that consistency, it's not just about the structure and the plan to execute on it. It's also about emotional regulation. You have to learn to feel discomfort and still keep going. Discomfort is not going to kill you. I promise you it won't.

14:35There might be little alarms going off in your brain of, no, we don't want to be out of our comfort zone. We don't want to be out of our comfort zone. Discomfort is not going to kill you. Feeling fear and doing it anyways is not going to kill you. consistency requires that you step out of your comfort zone. And so you just got to ask yourself, like, can I keep showing up even when it feels unsafe, even when it feels uncertain, even when I don't see the results? Can I just keep showing up? That's how you'll eventually get to success. And then the last thing is you might just not trust yourself yet.

15:04That might be the other thing that's really holding you back from being consistent. This one hits deep for a lot of people. You've probably, if you're like most people, broken promises to yourself over and over and over and over again. So your nervous system, it doesn't actually believe you anymore. It's like being in a toxic relationship. But this relationship is you being in a relationship with you. You say, oh yeah, I'll start Monday. But you know, deep down, you know that there's a voice that says, ah, you said that last week. It's like if somebody says, I'm going to take you out to date, a date on Friday.

15:36And then they cancel and they take it. I'm going to take you out next Friday. And then they cancel. I'm going to take you out next Friday. And they cancel. Aren't you going to lose trust in them? You're not going to believe them anymore. And so even if you want change, your body doesn't feel safe or it doesn't believe in you. And so once again, it's not you being lazy or being broken. It's self-protection from the pain of disappointment. And so I want you to understand that you don't need more goals. You need to rebuild trust within yourself. And you start with micro-consistency. You think to yourself, what's the smallest promise that I can keep to myself today?

16:10I'm going to meditate for 60 seconds. Cool. That's a win. I'm going to drink a glass of water first thing in the morning. Cool. That's another vote for I can trust myself when you do it. I'm going to write one sentence for my book. Still counts. You see, as you stack these little teeny tiny wins, these little promises to yourself, and you keep your promises again and again and again, and eventually your nervous system learns we're safe now. We're safe to grow. It's not big wins that build your life. It's these little teeny tiny wins that build the foundation of your life and your own self-respect.

16:47And so when you look at consistency, I want to show you how I did some research on people that are very successful, that were extremely consistent in how it shows that it's not about being the most talented person. It's about being the person who just never stops, right? So Stephen King has written every single day, even on Christmas, and has written over 65 novels because of it, because he has written every single day, four to six hours a day for over 50 years. Holy shit, right? That's a lot of writing, but it's just brutal consistency that has made him successful. When you look at Jerry Seinfeld, I would say probably the most successful, at least financially, comedian ever.

17:31He has this method called don't break the chain where he puts an X on a calendar. He started this in, I think it was the early 80s. Puts an X on a calendar every single time that he writes. And he started doing this in the 80s, like 1980, I think is when I was reading it. 1978, 1980 was when he started it. He goes, I'm going to write every single day. And when he would write, he would put a red X on his calendar. And he started doing red Xs and red Xs and red Xs. And his goal was to basically keep the chain going. And he just realized that he, after five days, 10 days, and he saw the chain going, he's like, well, I don't want to break the chain.

18:07So I got to keep writing, even if it's just a little bit, even if it's just crap. And so he has written every single day for over 40 years. And he says most of his jokes that he writes because he writes every single day are trash. But somewhere in there, he finds some gold that's hidden in there. Written every single day for over 40 years. And so I remember when I first started this podcast, I thought, okay, I just need to be brutally consistent. That's it. Like I'm not as big as Stephen King and I'm not as big as Jerry Seinfeld, but I've never missed an episode of this podcast since 2015 when it first came out.

18:41And so that's what I call cockroach consistency. And what do I mean by that? When I first got into business with one of my friends, one of my other friends was like, hey, why are you guys getting into business with each other? And my friend who was getting into business with me was like, I want to get into business with Rob because he's like a cockroach. Like he cannot be killed. If he makes his mind up on something, he is so consistent and just will not give up. And that's not something that I've always been. It's something that I had to build into myself because I know I'm not the smartest person in the world.

19:09I'm not the most talented person in the world. So if I can just be the most, like I can't make myself the smartest person in the world. I can't make myself the most talented person in the world, but I can control being the most consistent person in the world. And so I just want you to understand that if you try to be as consistent as you possibly can and you do it and you show up as often as you possibly can, especially when no one's watching day in, day out. If you do that, you cannot lose. You will always win because everybody else gives up at some point in time. What you're doing when you actually start to look at being consistent is, of course, you're building a skill of consistency, but you're not just building a skill.

19:50You're actually building an identity. You're building a story about who you are. You know, when you go to the gym, you're not just lifting. you're showing I'm the type of person who shows up for myself. When you say I'm going to do something and you do it over and over again, you start showing yourself I'm the type of person who follows through. When you write daily or post daily or meditate daily, you're slowly becoming the type of person who follows through. And eventually, once you do it over and over and over again for an extended period of time, that becomes your identity. That becomes part of who you are.

20:25And when it becomes an identity, it's unshakable. You don't have to push yourself anymore. It's just who you are at that point in time. It becomes something that you naturally do. Right? And so let's talk about how to become more consistent, even if you've never been consistent your entire life. The first thing you need to do is you need to lower the bar. And I mean like way, way down. Like if you want to write every single day, instead of saying, oh my gosh, I want to for four to six hours like Stephen King, write one sentence, like start with one sentence. If you want to meditate every single day, sit for 60 seconds or two minutes.

21:01The goal is not to be like to hit a home run. The goal is to become someone who does the thing, not somebody who crushes the thing. You know, if you become the type of person who does it, then you can always build upon the habit after it's created. So that's the first thing. The second thing is to anchor it to something that's real. This is called habit stacking. You want to tie your habit, your new action to something that you're already doing in your routine. So like after I brush my teeth, I do a hundred pushups. That's how you get a hundred pushups into your day. After I have my coffee, I sit down and, you know, write two sentences for my book.

21:36And so once again, this is called habit stacking. It creates something called a neurological cue loop. And your brain loves that. And so try to anchor it to something that already exists in your life. The third thing is to track it visually. Like you can use Seinfeld's Don't Break the Chain where you put an X every day that you follow through. Or you can just put a tick mark and you just see it all the time. And what you try to do is make it visual so that you see it, so that you don't forget about it. And as you start to watch the chain grow, humans hate breaking streaks. And so you're gonna wanna use this visual cue to keep you on track.

22:10The next thing you wanna do is focus on the reps, not the results. Forget how good it is, Forget how good it looks. Forget writing the perfect paragraph. Just do the thing. Do the rep. You don't need to be perfect. You just need to finish. So take messy action if you have to. And then the last thing, the fifth thing, is forgive yourself fast. You will 100 % mess up at some point in time if you're like most people. Maybe you're like Seinfeld and you go for 40 years. Or maybe you're like Stephen King and you go for 50 years. But if you're like an average person, you're going to screw this up at some point in time.

22:46So if you miss a day, cool, no big deal. Use it as a chance to recalibrate, not beat the crap out of yourself. And you ask yourself, did I mess this up? I did. Okay, how did I mess this up? And you figure out what you did that made you mess up. And then you ask yourself, how can I make sure to not mess up again? It's not a moment to beat yourself up. It's just a moment to recalibrate. And so the goal is to never not miss, like to not miss. That's not what I'm trying to do. The goal is to never miss twice. to be as consistent as I possibly can be. And so you don't need to be the best. You don't need to be smartest.

23:18You just need to be the most consistent. Talent fades, motivation fades, perfection doesn't exist. But consistency, consistency is what builds empires. And so what I want you to do is I want you to pick your challenge for this week. Pick one thing that's so small it's laughable. And do it every single day for the next week. Do it every single day for the next 30 days. Go for one walk. Read one page. write one post, do one rep, start so small that it becomes easier to show up. And what you're trying to do is you're trying to build yourself into the type of person who does what they say, who follows through, who does this thing.

23:56Because consistency isn't just about what you do, it's about who you become. So that's what I got for you for today's episode. If you love this episode, please share it on Instagram stories, tag me in at Rob Dial Jr., R-O-B-D-I-A-L-J-R. If you wanna learn more about coaching with me outside of this podcast to make your life better and to become a high performer, go to coachwithrob.com. Once again, coachwithrob.com. 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.