01 | Consistency
Transcript
Welcome to the inaugural podcast for Incremental Health. I’m Mandy, mother, sister, partner, daughter, friend. I play lots of roles. I’ve always been interested in all things wellness. I’ve been lifting weights since I was 16 and picked up yoga not long after. I started running in my early 20s and then trained as a fitness instructor. I worked in a corporate gym for a couple of years, running group fitness classes and coaching private personal training sessions.
I’ve done lots of research into health and, in 2019, I wrote a book on the subject because I couldn’t find one that pulled all the information together in one place. While there are plenty of specialist books around, my friends and colleagues were really looking for something that was a bit more generic and wanting to find out the basics of what constituted wellness, so I decided to pen it myself.
I launched right as COVID hit the world and the timing wasn’t right for me to dive into my own practice. Now, that time is right for me though. So, I’ve taken the bold leap and quit my day job to focus on my health and dedicate time to sharing all the great information that I’ve been researching for the last decade. I am equal parts excited and terrified.
If you are interested, you can find me at incrementalhealthbymandy.com where I have a bunch of blog posts on topics including hydration, journaling, the effects of blue light on sleep, meal planning and prep, walking meditation, the power of rest and many more. Alternatively, if you prefer social media, you can find me on Instagram. My tagline is incrementalhealthbymandy and I’ve also been encouraged by my daughter to sign up on TikTok so I’m also incrementalhealthbymandy on TikTok.
I’ve thought long and hard about the topic for my first-ever podcast and I keep coming back to the one thing that underpins everything for me and that’s consistency. Like Anthony Robbins says, “It's not what we do once in a while that shapes our lives, it's what we do consistently”. One salad doesn’t make us slim, a piece of cake doesn’t make us unhealthy. What matters is what we do day in, day out, how we show up year after year. We are, after all, the sum of our collective habits.
“It’s not what we do once in a while that shapes our lives, it’s what we do consistently”
In today’s episode, we’re talking all about consistency, why it matters, how to build it, where to start, depending on what you want to achieve. Will Durant’s interpretation of Aristotle’s words “excellence, therefore, is not an act but a habit”.
So, why does consistency matter?
It creates momentum. The more consistent you are at something, the easier it becomes. This is one of the reasons that habits are so hard to break. The more often you do something, the easier it is then you keep going and add to that over time.
Consistency has a compounding effect. Like interest earned on a bank account.
To reinforce your self-image and prove to yourself over and over again that you’re reliable. Consistency builds trust with both yourself and with others. By showing up day after day for yourself, you begin to see that you can rely upon yourself, you’re trustworthy and you’re capable of great things.
Consistency trumps motivation. While motivation can wane from time to time, consistency is what will pull you through. Your habits will lead to results. It’s the act of getting up every day and going something physical that adds to your cardiovascular fitness, for example. Consistency is the real power of repetition. What we do consistently, we get good at. Practice makes perfect, as they say. Whether it’s brushing our teeth or doing squats, whatever we do repetitively, we tend to get better at. For example, when kids learn to brush their teeth they do that then add in flossing once they’ve mastered that first skill. Or with squats, you can increase the number of reps or you can add more weight as you get better at it.
Consistency gets results. Goals are really achieved by showing up and putting in the work!
So, how do you build consistency?
I think the recipe for consistency is knowing yourself, planning and setting yourself up to win. Starting small and adding more then resetting.
A good place to start is to focus on sleep hygiene. One of the main reasons for this is that sleep controls hunger hormones. Sleep-deprived adults have higher levels of ghrelin which is the hunger hormone compared to those that get seven to nine hours sleep a night. poor sleep is also associated with increased stress and glucose intolerance which affects metabolism. With better sleep, you’re also more likely to be able to exercise consistently and safely.
Using the steps outlined earlier, you can work on sleep consistency by knowing yourself. Firstly, ask yourself the following questions. What time do I normally go to bed? What time do I need to get up to meet my obligations? Therefore, how much sleep am I getting? Is it enough? Like I mentioned earlier, depending on the individual, most adults need about 7-9 hours of sleep a night.
Look at the things that interrupt your sleep - young children, a snoring partner, a dog that barks, or a neighbour that works overnight. Once you’ve worked out the impediments to sleep, you can figure out what time you need to go to bed to get 7-9 hours of sleep and still get up to meet your obligations the next day.
The second step is to plan for success. Make sure you don’t make arrangements (whether they’re meetings or social catch-ups or sporting commitments) that will impact your sleep plan. Make changes to your bedroom, perhaps you need to invest in blackout curtains, or different bed coverings depending on the season. Maybe you need a new pillow.
If you are struggling with light and can’t afford curtains or you rent and you can’t make changes to your home, maybe you need an eye mask. Perhaps you need some earplugs to drown out some of the background noise. Do you need to think about the heating or cooling in your sleeping environment. Sometimes opening a window can help.
Next, you need to set yourself up to win. Perhaps you need to set an alarm 30 minutes prior to your sleep time to start ingraining habits that allow you some time to wind down before you go to bed. Establishing a sleep routine is really important to making sure that you’ve got really healthy sleep habits. Perhaps start with a cup of herbal tea, a warm shower and a guided meditation. There are plenty of free options available for meditation both on Spotify or YouTube and some are as short as five minutes. It doesn’t take a lot of time to really set yourself up for a healthy sleep. If you are prone to using your phone at night, which a lot of us are, put it in another room and use a standard alarm clock to wake yourself up in the morning.
Start small. If you’re only getting four hours of sleep a night and want to move to seven, it can feel overwhelming. So make sure you set up a routine that works for your and then just add another 15 minutes every night until you get to the desired duration of sleep. You know yourself better than anyone else does. It is really important that you set realistic goals as success builds on success. Prove to yourself over time that you are committing to the change. This will be a more rewarding and an overall positive experience. Starting small means that you are setting yourself up for a really positive experience. When you are ready, add more.
Maybe you want to start trying out a sleep induction mat and spend 15 minutes on that before you start your meditation. Or perhaps you want to do a short, slow flow yoga session before you go to bed or introduce half an hour of reading. It is really easy to anchor new habits to existing habits so find something you are already doing and start from there. If you’re brushing your teeth, maybe that’s how you trigger yourself to moisturise your hands before you go to bed.
Reset, reset, reset. No one is perfect. Aim for progress rather than perfection. You will improve over time. When you have a day that you didn’t quite meet your target, take a deep breath. Be kind to yourself. Acknowledge that this is just a small blip. Reassure yourself that you can try again tomorrow or later in the day even. Remind yourself that you have overcome setbacks before.
Yet, start again. There’s no shame in making a mistake. It’s how we pick ourselves up that really matters. So, when you trip up, just reset and play on.
As Dwayne Johnson says, “Success isn’t about greatness. It’s about consistency. Consistent hard work leads to success. Greatness will come”
I love to hear about what you’re going to work on building consistency with. Hit me up at incrementalhealthbymandy on Instagram and tell me all about it. I’d also love to hear your feedback on this podcast. This is all really new to me and I’m keen to ensure that I’m putting together content that resonates with my audience. You can provide feedback on this podcast or hit me up on Instagram at incrementalhealthbymandy. Until then, take care and stay healthy.
