it’s boring, but it’ll make you dangerously consistent (for life)

The Greek philosopher Aristotle said,

"We are what we repeatedly do." Put

simply, anything you could ever possibly

want to achieve in this life is always

going to be on the other side of the

consistent action you have not yet

taken. It really is that simple. At its

core, it's not about focus, discipline,

or motivation. What you are

fundamentally missing is consistency.

Now, of course, consistency as a concept

is actually quite simple to understand

yet simultaneously

so incredibly difficult to do because

you cannot observe consistency without

becoming it. Think about it. You cannot

observe yourself or somebody else being

consistent without also yourself being

consistent. In this way it is uniquely

difficult because you can have other

attributes like focus or confidence

where you can observe confidence without

also having to be confident and

therefore you can get a direction in

terms of where you should be going.

Consistency we do not have that luxury

but that is almost the exact thing which

makes it so powerful. The staying power

that consistency requires is the exact

thing that allows your small actions to

compound to grow a huge amount of corn.

But the problem here is the vast

majority of people don't stick around

for long enough to see their actions

bear fruit. In fact, most people set a

rational intention on achieving whatever

it is they want in life, whatever they

desire. They set a rational intention to

take consistent action towards that

goal. It's not controversial to say that

consistency is required to achieve

success or money or health or whatever

it is that you are trying to achieve.

But the vast majority of people, I would

say more than 99% on the things that

they actually care about, the things

that matter to them, they turn around on

that initial intention. They become

inconsistent. And if you're

inconsistent, you have failed. you if

you're inconsistent you quit and

therefore you have failed and so the

vast majority people turn around they

are not consistent. This is h this

happens because of a confluence of three

factors.

Firstly consistency when every single

cell in your body is telling you to turn

around is incredibly hard and so most

people turn around. Secondly when you're

being consistent for the mo for the

majority of the time you will have no

sign of results. you won't see anything

that warrants that your consistency is

paying off. And on top of that, you have

no guarantee of results. No one's

guaranteeing you anything. This could

all be a waste of time. And those three

things together compound to convince the

vast majority of people to turn around

on the thing that they want the most.

And so it is compelling and it is

difficult to be consistent consistent,

but it's not impossible. The question to

end all questions really is how does one

become dangerously consistent despite

every cell in your body telling you to

turn around despite not seeing any

results and despite not having any

guarantee of results? How do we continue

to be consistent? Well, for the

remainder of this lesson, that is the

question we are going to be answering.

The answer may be boring, but it

certainly is effective. And the key

really is to stop maximizing the

excellence on the best days. That may

sound paradoxical, contradictory or or

or absurd. Why would I not try and be my

best self on my best days and try and

optimize the upside? Well, to answer

that, it's important that we take a few

steps back to explain the cycle of

mediocrity.

What we're looking at here on this first

graph is

the cycle of self-sabotage and

mediocrity that the vast majority of

[snorts] high achievers or high people

with high aspirations find themselves

in. People with lofty goals,

entrepreneurs and people of these type,

they find themselves in this

oscillation. You see this line that

we're looking at here represents

effective action on the yaxis. Effective

action is the amount of action you're

actually taking towards your goal. And

so at the peak, you're taking loads and

loads of action. You're super

productive, super focused, really high

intensity. At the bottom here, for this

specific example, you're not taking any

action whatsoever. So in other words,

you are being inconsistent.

And so most people bounce back and forth

between these different zones. the

floor, which is inconsistency, and the

ceiling, which is super productive.

This blew my mind when I first saw it

because it painted my p it painted my

life out to a tea. In my business, I'd

be working productively for two, maybe

three, maybe four weeks, and then I'd be

on the downward spiral where I'd be

inconsistent again. It didn't matter how

hard I worked, how hard I tried, I would

always snap back like an elastic band to

the baseline of my identity. And this

happened when people try to lose weight.

They diet for a couple weeks and then

they self-sabotage. They go back and

they revert. In fact, they actively

sabotage their own efforts. They start

eating more than they did before. This

happens with going to the gym. You're

consistent for a couple weeks and then

you just stop. You said you were going

to be consistent, but then you stop. You

go back on that initial rational

intention. What we are doing here is

we're bouncing from ceiling to floor.

But what these represent are your

standards. Now the difference the the

the space between the ceiling and the

floor represent the range of your

standards. The floor represents your

minimum standards. The minimum behavior

in which you tolerate. Now for example a

minimum standard for you may be brushing

your teeth or at least I sure hope it

is. You will not tolerate going to bed

without brushing your teeth. that would

breach your minimum standards and

therefore you wouldn't tolerate any

behavior below it. That is where the

current minimum floor sits. It's the

minimum standards of the behavior you

[snorts] tolerate.

And then the ceiling is the opposite.

It's the maximum standards. Again, you

you tolerate certain behavior. You can't

you you cannot lift above your

tolerances or your standards. And so

these represent the behavior in which

you're bouncing in between. But most

people are bouncing up and then they're

bouncing down. They bounce up again and

they perpetuate this cycle of mediocrity

typically for the rest of their life.

And what you find is actually if we draw

a line of best fit through this

oscillation through this wave you find

that at equilibrium we are not making

any progress. The line is flat. We

aren't actually going in an upward

trajectory in terms of the amount of

effective action we're making. [snorts]

Because when you are being inconsistent

your results don't just pause. They

don't just stop. If you're if you're not

growing, you are dying. And so if you're

being inconsistent, your progress is

also going down in the toilet as well.

And so when you're in this sort of feast

and famine cycle, which the vast

majority of people are in, and if you

really look at yourself and you really

audit your life and analyze the last

couple months, doesn't this kind of

happen? It happens to everybody. This

isn't unique to you. But the first step

is actually becoming aware because

awareness is the prerequisite of

control. Most people don't make any

progress despite them actually being

relatively locked in and focused for a

couple weeks or even a couple months. It

doesn't matter because they are also

being inconsistent.

That's the baseline theory that we need

to go through. Now, the second graph

that we're looking at is what most

people try and do is their solution to

this. Now, as I said at the start, the

key is to stop trying to maximize for

excellence. This is what most people try

and do when they're inconsistent. They

say, "Look, I keep trying and I keep

failing. So, what I'm going to do is I'm

going to try harder." And so, when they

are being productive and they're on this

upward trajectory with their effective

action and they're focused and they're

at a high intensity, they're going at a

high clip, what they try and do is just

they push even higher. They breach their

ceiling and they lift the ceiling to a

new level. They reach a new standard in

terms of what their best behavior is,

their best intensity and productivity.

And they do print a higher high. They do

print a higher peak in terms of the

amount of effective action that they are

taking. However, what must come up what

comes what goes up must come down. They

haven't changed their minimum standards

that what for what behavior they

actually tolerate. And so it doesn't

matter how high you raise your ceiling.

If your floor is still in the same

place, you will go all the way down. And

every action has an equal and opposite

reaction. We will always find ourselves

at our floor at some point because it's

a part of our identity. It's our

baseline. You have to understand that

most things in life oscillate. You're

going to have good and bad days. But

what really matters is how bad the bad

days actually are, which determines how

much success we really see. But we'll

get on to that in a second. In this

scenario, we're simply volat we're being

volatile. We're just it's just a more

volatile

self-sabotage sequence. We still aren't

making any progress because the the

floor still represents inconsistency.

You your tolerances,

you still tolerate inconsistency.

That is not your minimum standards

aren't to the point where you're going

to be consistent even at your worst. And

that's the problem. It doesn't matter

how high you raise, how much progress

you make in the couple of weeks. If

you're being inconsistent, it's all

going to die. It's all go it's all going

to break down. If you're not growing,

you are dying. And so again, doesn't

matter [snorts] how high this ceiling.

It could be the ceiling could be up here

for all for all week. You could have

done something insane. It doesn't matter

if you're going to fall all the way back

down to this same floor and you're going

to be inconsistent.

It's all going to break down because

when you study exponentialism,

and we'll get on to what this looks like

in a second,

the losses and the gains are asymmetric.

A loss is so much worse than a gain. And

so really, the solution here is to

forget about the ceiling and actually

try and lift the floor. Lifting the

floor, the floor is the minimum

standards of your behavior, what you

tolerate. And so you simply raise your

minimum standards. You raise the

behavior in which you tolerate. And you

do this gradually. So on this example,

you can see the floor's not being lifted

that much, but you can continue to lift

it throughout the future. And eventually

what we are trying to do is create new

minimum standards which engulf the

principle of consistency. And so even

when we come all the way back down to

our baseline of our identity, our

minimum standards of our identity, even

at this point, we are still being

consistent.

The the example may be at the top you're

doing 200 cold calls a day. At the

bottom, you may be doing one, but at

least you're showing up. That's the key

here. If you can raise your minimum

standards to a point where you still

show up, you are still consistent. It

doesn't matter how bad it is. It's the

worst of the worst. You still show up

and you still do something. Then you

will make progress. Then you haven't

broken this chain of consistency. And

you begin to continually move the floor

up. So maybe it's one and then it could

be five and then it could be 50 in the

worst days that you possibly have. Now

that's one example. It could be creating

content or it could be running ads or it

could be whatever vehicle niche model

you're doing. This relates to every

goal. It's not just simply business and

making money. What happens when you lift

the floor is you squeeze the ceiling.

Because when you focus all of your

energy on mitigating the loss on the bad

days rather than optimizing for the gain

on the good days, which is what we're

doing here, naturally, your good days

are just going to be better anyway

because the average is moving up. And as

the average moves up, that's going to

squeeze your capability in terms of what

you're capable on your best days. But

that's what we're doing here. We're

mitigating loss in instead of trying to

maximize gain. That's the key here.

We're being consistent no matter what.

And in this case, because we are being

consistent, the upward trajectory of our

progress is moving in the right

direction. We are continuing to build

momentum. You cannot build momentum if

you are being inconsistent. And that's

so this crucially is what you do. You

lift your minimum standards. What you

the beha the minimum to tolerances you

have. And so like not brushing your

teeth, you would not tolerate being

inconsistent. It would make you feel

sick, disgusted because it's conflicting

with your identity. It would create

cognitive dissonance.

And so to reiterate, we are optimizing

the bad days, not the good. Lift your

minimum standards to engulf consistency.

If that's the one thing you take away,

do this because that is everything.

Forget about how good you are on the

good days, focus on mitigating the loss

on the bad because that's where we

create exponentialism. Now, the reason

for this is because loss and gain are

asymmetric. I mentioned this earlier,

but think about it. Let's just give an

arbitrary example. Let's say you have

100 points that represents the progress

you've made and you lose 50% of them.

You have now you're So you 50% loss

means you're now at 50. To get back up

to 100, you need to gain 100%. Losing

stuff and winning stuff, they're

asymmetric. They are not of the same

value. Loss is so much worse than gain

when we are trying to build

exponentialism. When you study the

markets and compounding, it's not about

maximizing your gain on the good days.

It's about mitigating loss on the worst.

That's why people dollar cost average

when they're investing. This is why

inconsistency is so detrimental and we

need to avoid it at all costs.

Now, in golf,

consistency into your minimum standards.

All sounds well and good, but that's

difficult. Consistency is difficult.

It's going to be difficult to show up on

your worst days when you have no sign of

results, no guarantee of results, and

every cell in your body is telling you

to turn back. But I have a very powerful

tool that I've been using for the last

couple years that has turned me into

like an inconsistent

[ __ ] which is what I was. I just

couldn't be consistent with anything and

I' I'd flip back to different things

like a monkey to now someone who is

fairly well pretty absurdly consistent

in the things that I'm doing including

this YouTube channel.

The solution is spiral mitigation. It's

the difference between three months of

inconsistency and 3 hours of

inconsistency. Because what you must

understand is things are going to go

wrong. You will mess up. You are human.

You are irrational. You will make

mistakes and you will make the wrong

decisions and you will make decisions

which go against your goal which is kind

of the start of a self-sabotaging cycle.

But you can take yourself out of that

cycle that spiral at any time. And this

is a protocol that we can follow to do

just that. Basically to become

consistent simply avoid inconsistency.

Eliminate the conditions which create

inconsistency because if you can do that

consistency is the default outcome. This

is using a tool known as inversion

thinking. So firstly to avoid

inconsistency we need to understand why

it arises. Nobody's inconsistent when

it's going well. Everybody's

inconsistent when it's going badly but

there is no good or bad objectively.

It's it's going good or bad perceived to

you. So it's emotional in some way. So

you it's an overwhelming and negative

emotion of some sort which is going to

trigger this whether it's fear, doubt,

anger, hopelessness, sadness, betrayal,

whatever whatever emotion, flavor of

emotion you feel or what's personal to

you. You feel this emotion. This emotion

is uncomfortable. You do not like the

feeling of this emotion. And so this

causes avoidant behavior. Avoidant

behavior could be no behavior. So

avoidant behavior could be not doing the

things that you said you were going to

do on that day or that week or that

month. Or it could actually be doing

behavior which is going against your

goal, cancelling sales calls.

Uh that would be the example of someone

who's trying to lose weight and they

start binge eating. They are actively

destructing their own path because of

this negative emotion. It's feeling so

uncomfortable. They need to alleviate

that discomfort. What you must

understand is that humans primarily will

avoid pain at all costs. And that's what

you're doing here. Now, you go against

that initial intention. Deep down, this

creates a huge amount of guilt and shame

because you really want this goal. You

really, really want to make whatever it

is per month or lose the 30 pounds or go

to the gym. You really want this thing.

Of course, you want it. Otherwise, you

wouldn't have made the commitment to go

towards it and the sacrifices needed to

get there. And so, the fact that you've

gone back on your initial intention, of

course, this creates a huge amount of

guilt and it creates a huge amount of

shame. And these are also negative

emotions which feel incredibly

uncomfortable. And so, what this does is

it encourages more avoidant behavior.

And then that avoidant behavior creates

more guilt and shame. And what you find

is you're in a negative downward spiral.

This is what most people get stuck in.

This is what creates the conditions of

self-sabotage and therefore

inconsistency. They continue down this

spiral until one point they hit their

baseline, which [clears throat] is rock

bottom, and then they can bounce back

up. But as we said, if we're just

oscillating like this, we're not going

to be making any progress. And [snorts]

so our job here is instead of going all

the way down, we cut our losses early

on. We understand that things will go

wrong. We will feel negative emotions

and perhaps we'll make the wrong

decisions and take the wrong action in

the moment. That doesn't mean that we

have to now be inconsistent for weeks on

end or months or even days because that

is so detrimental. If we're only

inconsistent for a couple hours and we

catch that knife that's falling early,

the damage has been mitigated. This is

about mitigating the worst. Now, we're

always they people are going to be

inconsistent maybe on a short time

frame. That's okay. But when it begins

to spread itself out over days, weeks,

and months because we're going down this

negative spiral and we failed to

mitigate it, then it becomes

detrimental. Then you failed to achieve

your goal and you're not going to get

whatever it is you desire. And so, the

way that we mitigate this spiral is

through something known as the STAR

protocol. This is something you deploy

without judgment when you realize that

you've messed up. You told yourself you

were going to do a certain set sequence

of behaviors and you found yourself for

whatever reason something's gone wrong

and you're not doing those behaviors or

you're doing behaviors that go directly

against them. If anything like this

happens, you deploy the STAR protocol.

And so let me walk through it now. The

first and it's an acronym. The first

letter of STAR is S. that is stop stop

the spiral at the source by removing

distractions and coping mechanisms. No

alcohol, phone, Netflix, food, gaming,

whatever it is. So ultimately we're not

doing nothing, right? So it's very

common that if you're in a negative

downward spiral, you are coping with

you're trying to so the guilt and shame

that you feel as a result of going

against your word and that intention and

your desire and the better half of

yourself creates that guilt and shame.

To get rid of that guilt and shame, we

launch to our coping mechanisms.

Everybody has different coping

mechanisms and they're not necessarily

unhealthy. It could be you just go for

long walks and you put your head in the

sand. For a lot of people, it's going to

be something that alters their brain

chemistry. Alcohol, social media, their

phone, some sort of escapism, food,

gaming, could be all of these. These are

the distractions which keep you numb.

They numb you to the reality of what's

going on. They numb your rational mind

and therefore continue down this spiral.

Because when you look at this spiral

from a rational perspective, you're

like, "What are you doing?" Like, when

you when you come out of this a couple

weeks later, you're like, "Why did I do

that? I didn't want to do that. That

felt awful. Why did I do that to

myself?" Because you're numbing the

rational side of your mind, which can

make those sorts of executive decisions.

And so,

firstly, you've got to cut off what is

creating irrationality at the source,

which is these coping mechanisms. You've

got to identify whatever they are for

you and cut them off. Just eliminate

them. Whe if it's a console, move it

into another room, another put it in

your bathtub, drown it, whatever you

need, something radical to just

eliminate it entirely. The next step is

t transform. Transform your state

through physiology, movement, air,

breath, cold. Change the body and the

mind follows. This allows you to access

rationality again. And so now we're kind

of at a state of neutrality. We've got

rid of the coping mechanism, but we're

clearly not in a good state of mind. A

really great way to feel better mentally

is lead physically because physical

health often leads mental. [snorts] And

so go out for a walk, take a cold

shower, go for a run, what a swim, go

for a bike ride, whatever activity of

your choice that makes you feel good in

nature. No distractions, no phone, no

podcasts, just you and your thoughts. No

judgment. We don't need to get on to the

actual technical stuff right now. Just

enjoy yourself. Be present. And what

you'll find is you'll begin to start to

access rationality again. That part of

your mind will start to fire up. And

you'll start to realize that what you're

doing is a mistake. That brings us on to

a which is acknowledge. Acknowledge what

happened through voice journaling. Then

give yourself grace. name it, understand

it, release the shame and accept the

past as the past. The issue here is a

lot of people reflect on what they did

and they feel a huge amount of guilt and

shame and then they just continue the

spiral. You have to give yourself grace.

You need to stop being so stubborn with

yourself because if you do not forgive

yourself, you will not be able to move

on. Be get very good at radically

forgiving yourself for the mistakes and

the regrets of the past. Give yourself

grace because the past is no longer

real. It's not something that exists. We

cannot touch it. It's simply thoughts

arising in the present. And if you hold

on to the past, it's going to continue

to project itself into the future. And

so name what happened, understand it

without judgment, release all of that

shame, and just say, "Look, it

happened." And accept the past as the

past. I love to do this through a voice

voice journal, speaking to myself on

voice memos through my phone. can always

write this down but in some way go

through some purposeful

protocol of reflection. Talk about h

what happened why it happened. Release

the shame. Tell you actively tell

yourself I forgive myself for these

things. So we can release these emotions

of guilt and shame which are tying you

down to this spiral which is bringing

you nowhere good. And R is reset. Reset

body, mind, body and environment back to

baseline. then sit at a desk. So mind

would be something like meditation,

cleaning the mind. Body would be making

sure that you actually,

you know, you're you're not you're not

in your body is in a in a healthy state.

That would be changing your physiology,

taking a shower, making sure that you're

actually refreshed and your environment

is cleaning up your environment so that

it's easy to get back to work again.

[snorts] Get back to baseline. Once

you're there, sit at your desk and don't

commit to anything. Just sit at your

desk and do nothing if you want because

if we can create boredom,

work becomes a whole lot, it becomes the

obvious and easy option. And so when you

follow this protocol, S T A R and you

follow it religiously, when you've

messed up, you know, a couple hours into

messing up ideally, but even a couple

days or months or weeks, you have to do

it at some point. You cut it off and you

stop projecting the past onto the

future. You cut off this cycle of guilt

and shame and therefore you cut off

inconsistency early. You mitigate the

spiral through the star protocol. This

has saved me so many times. Now just you

learn watching this video now isn't

going to be enough. You need to write

this down. Ideally, somewhere on your

wall, somewhere which you would see it

every single day because when you're in

this spiral, you're not going to

actually remember, ah, I need to do my

start protocol. No, it's going to have

to be something that you bump into. And

so, it needs to be something in your

environment that can remind you to just

lock in for this one thing, forget about

everything else and just go through this

pro protocol because your goals rely on

it. Because if you're inconsistent,

you're not going to make any progress.

This is incredibly powerful to do

because ultimately if we can avoid

inconsistency by default we are being

consistent and if you are taking

consistent action in the direction of

your goal the only variable is time. It

may take years but you are going in the

right direction if you're being

consistent and therefore you just need

to wait and you really can achieve

anything you really want in this life.

If you found this lesson valuable, I'll

link on screen the best lesson I have

ever released. I'll see you in there.