“Every action you take is a vote for the type of person you wish to become. No single instance will transform your beliefs, but as the votes build up, so does the evidence of your new identity.” -James Clear
As a part of the Z-Health brain-based training community, you know how much we value consistency in everything:
- Education
- Training
- Nutrition
- Sleep
- And more!
In fact, our first email of 2022 was about the VITAL need for two things to build success: consistency and patience.
With that in mind, we wanted to share some practical tips on building consistency in all the things that are important to you and your clients in 2023.
Win the Day – For the first quarter of the year focus on “winning the day” as your most important sign of progress. If you are trying to build in some fantastic new habits, the first quarter should not be focused on reps, load, time, speed, completed workouts, “perfect” eating days or anything else. Instead, we want you to focus on making consistent progress every single day by using…
Elastic Habits – If you’ve been through our 9S: Sustenance course you will have heard about this brilliant concept from the work of Stephen Guise. It’s one of the most powerful ways we’ve ever found in working with ourselves and clients to ESTABLISH and MAINTAIN progress (aka – winning the day).
Here’s a short introduction to the concept.
- Pick the habit you want to ADD to your day.
- For that habit create 3 horizontal and 3 vertical options.
- The horizontal options should be relatively similar in difficulty but offer different options for meeting the overall goal.
- The vertical options offer different levels of “win” ranging from ridiculously easy to challenging to achieve.
- Here’s an example for someone who is trying to establish CONSISTENCY in building an exercise habit and PATIENCE in making progress.
Key Points for Elastic Habits Success
- Every win – mini, plus, and elite is of EQUAL VALUE!
- Mini wins should generally take 1 minute or less to complete.
- Tracking progress DAILY is critical. (We prefer using actual paper and colored dots to make progress evident.)
The power of this approach lies in its focus on building consistency regardless of HOW YOUR DAY IS UNFOLDING. On those brutal days when everything goes wrong, your brain can still celebrate a win and you can drive neuroplastic change in a positive direction.
