Consistency in Achieving Success

Speaker 1 0:00

We live in a world that often celebrates overnight success stories and grand accomplishments . We see people achieve greatness and assume that they did it all at once , that they are a massive overnight success , but the reality is that most lasting successes is the result of consistent and incremental progress . It's about embracing the journey and making small and sustainable changes that compound over time . In today's episode , let's talk about what those sustainable changes mean . Shift work can be brutal , but it doesn't have to be Welcome to a healthy shift . My name is Roger Sutherland , certified Nutritionist , veteran Law Enforcement Officer and 24-7 Shift Worker for almost four decades . Through this podcast , I aim to educate shift workers , using evidence-based methods , to not only survive the rigors of shift work but thrive . My goal is to empower shift workers to improve their health and well-being so they have more energy to do the things they love . Enjoy today's show . Welcome to a Healthy Shift podcast . I am your host , roger Sutherland , and , as always , I get great pleasure in personally welcoming you to this episode of the show , and thank you for listening .

Speaker 1 1:30

In today's episode , 1% better every day is always going to be better than 100% for one day . Now , this is a topic that's very , very close to my heart , because if there's one thing that I always find , particularly when I first take clients on , to start off with , it's got to be all or nothing . It's 100% . I want to do this , I get that , I want to do this , and they get bikes and they want to . But if there's one thing that clients learn from me is we just do the 1% , is to start off with , and then we just slowly build on those habits . And this is really really important of a way to go about it . And in today's episode , what I want to do is I want to go through why this is so important that we do it this way and not the 100% all in , because otherwise you're a complete failure . Now I just want to talk about it .

Speaker 1 2:22

We're on social media today . We look at social media and we're looking at all of our fits , both bodies , and we think , wow , god , I just want to look like that person and I want to be them and I want to be ripped and I want to have abs and you know , guys want to have a big chest and shoulders and women want to have big glutes and things like that . But what you got to understand is that didn't happen overnight and you've got to get a grip of that . Exactly the same way that you may have put on weight over time , it takes time for that to come off again and it doesn't happen overnight . But unfortunately you get massively sucked in by these eight week challenges or 12 week challenges that you see , and you see before and after pictures that have been posted by PTs . That's all smoke and mirrors . It's not exactly how it works , because when you understand how fat loss works , it's either it's so difficult for you to go into a massive fat loss phase to actually lose that much weight , to lose that much body fat , to change completely , to go from fluffy to go to toned and rip with abs . It doesn't happen in eight weeks . I can assure you that that's a situation .

Speaker 1 3:40

And then we go through what a fit spo eats in a day . Now that's what they've . These are habits and foods that they've developed over the years that they've been doing what they've been doing . They don't do this in an eight week challenge and then just step out of it . They've been doing this for however many years they've been training Four , five , six years . People have been doing this for over 10 years , so they're conditioned to it . It's easy for them , it's sustainable for them and they can eat that because that's something that they want to do . Now what we look at also is these meal meal preps that people do . Now the meal preps that we see , which are the insta famous . You know , I'll . Look at me , coach , look how good I am , with all these containers laid out on the kitchen bench . Come on , shift workers . You know as well as I do . That's just not feasible , it's not realistic for us to do and we don't end up with these fits both bodies and we can't get the what I eat in the day in the meal preps and things like that .

Speaker 1 4:43

And also training in the gym . When we first walk into the gym and we start training in a gym , all of us start from scratch with absolutely no idea . Even the PT in the gym that you're looking at , in the gym there that you think , oh , I'm a bit embarrassed to be training in front of them . They started where you started with absolutely no knowledge whatsoever . And that is the beauty of a gym , because everybody is on their own journey . I can promise you , looking around the gym , no one gives a toss what you're actually doing there .

Speaker 1 5:19

So let's go through a number of talking points . I just wanted to cover off on those . First , because this is what social media is feeding you the fits , both bodies , what I eat in a day . Look at my meal prep coach . Look how amazing I am . And the training in the gym , looking like you've been doing it for 100 years , because you pretty much have been . So your technique is perfection and you're looking awesome . But everyone started from somewhere . So my first talking point is the power of consistency .

Speaker 1 5:48

Now , look , it's easy to fall into the trap of wanting immediate results . We set overly ambitious goals for ourselves and we expect to reach them in one giant leap , but the problem with that approach is that it leads to complete burnout , and very quickly . And then what does that lead ? To Complete disappointment . On the other hand , if we just focused on getting 1% better every day , this allows us to create habits that stand the test of time .

Speaker 1 6:18

Now there is a massive importance in setting a realistic and an achievable goal . Set a small and achievable goal every single day . I will walk 30 minutes today and get out and do that 30 minute walk today , take it off . That's all you got to do . Don't say I'm going to walk 30 minutes every day for the next seven days . This is what I'm going to do , and miss a day because you feel like a failure . Today , I'm going to walk for 30 minutes . Get out and go for a walk for 30 minutes . Everybody has 30 minutes . Even if you do it in two 15 minute lots , everybody can do that .

Speaker 1 6:57

So set yourself a small , achievable daily goal this morning or today . What I'm going to do is I'm going to eat two pieces of fruit today . Now , don't over complicate it . You can make it a banana and a mandarin . You can grab yourself a peach . You can grab yourself some handful of grapes . That's two pieces of fruit .

Speaker 1 7:16

Do you have any idea the impact that just having two pieces of fruit a day is going to make on your life ? No , you don't have to track them . No , the fruit is not bad . It's fructose , the vitamins and the micronutrients that you actually get from fruit , and eating mixed varieties of fruit far outweighs that . Goddamn sugar is bad . Let's just forget about that and get two pieces of fruit in for the fiber and the micronutrients that this provides Our human body . Really important , all right . So there you go . So there's there's something that you can just set two pieces of fruit every day . Play a game with yourself . Put a fruit bowl on the kitchen bench , put six or seven pieces of fruit in it and challenge yourself to take two pieces every day . But it can't be the same two pieces every day , and that way you're going to get different colors in . Now , these are sort of the things that you can set to accomplish . You don't have to go all or nothing , because once you start doing that , you will start to feel so much better yourself , and once that becomes a habit , then you start to stack on top of that habit and then there becomes another one . Now also , we got to remember how consistency will then lead to a positive outcome for you , and I just want to give you my own personal example here , which is just very quickly .

Building Consistency for Sustainable Success

Speaker 1 8:35

I used to train six days a week with one rest day , no problems at all . Go back prior to COVID , three , four years ago , I was training six days a week and I was loving it and I was in ripping shape for it . Then COVID hit . Gyms closed two years we've been really bad and we had massive problems with that and I've battled , started a business and I've battled to get back to the gym . So what I did was I just set myself one PT session a week and then that perpetuated into one PT session and another session on its own , and then I then started a challenge and the challenge is three days a week just to do the exercise on that . And then I went from there to now .

Speaker 1 9:16

I go to the gym on a Sunday and I just go and do something whatever I feel like doing in the gym . So I'm now training four days a week . I've got a minimum of three that I have to do and I'm training four . And that is how consistency . I haven't missed a day in six weeks so far . I just haven't Now . Before that , yeah , of course I was missing days , and then I do one day and I wouldn't do another . Then I do another and then I would think , oh , I've missed it . No , I can't be bothered , I'll start again Monday , and that is absolutely okay .

Speaker 1 9:49

What we do is we then start to put the consistency in and look at it and look at what we can do over time . That outweighs the days that we're not actually doing it . So I've gone from five days to no days and then back to one day , and now that then perpetuated into . I'm now training resistance training four days a week , and that's enough for a shift workout . Four days a week plenty . Three days is more than enough . Now we also small habits build up over time .

Speaker 1 10:20

Now let's look back on the simple things that I do that are now life , like meal prepping . All right , I now break my meal prepping down into three separate days . One day , or think about what I want to have , that's it . The next day , I in and out of the supermarket , shop for it , get it , do it . And then on the rest day or the day off , I then actually just do that meal prep and it takes me about an hour and a half . If you then try and do everything on the one day the 100% all on that one day , you waste a rest day . The chances are you're not going to actually do it , so you won't .

Speaker 1 10:55

The other thing that I do is sky before screen . Every time I wake up now , I get sky before screen , open the blinds , get that sunlight in or use the sad lamp to get that light in at the start of every single day before I look at my phone . As soon as you look at your phone , you are gone . Your mind is going to start getting full of all the rubbish that your phone is actually feeding to you , what your spit fits both of feeding to you , the bodies that you're looking at , the emails from work , the text messages from friends , everything You're lost . If you just set your intentions during the day and get that light before you look at your phone , you will feel so much better . Hydrate before you caffeinate , getting early movement in these are all things that make you feel so much better .

Speaker 1 11:44

Now , don't try and set yourself all of those things to start off with because you just want to cheat them . These are all things . If I wrote down what I do every single day , you would say , right , that's what I've got to do to thrive . But you would not be able to keep up with it because you haven't built the foundation that I've built over this , over the last 30 years 39 years in fact that it takes a long time to build these things up , but you know what . You can put small things in place and start to build on them Now .

Speaker 1 13:10

The other thing is , I think what's really important is the next phase is to embrace the actual learning process questioning why you didn't achieve something and then putting a strategy in place to try and make sure that you can do that better next time . So when we chase perfection in a single day , what we're missing out on is the valuable lessons that we learn through continuous improvement . Now , growing happens when we embrace the process of actually learning . We make a mistake and then we think , okay , why did I make that mistake ? And then we adapt to working in a environment that works for us . Maybe that habit and the way I was going about it wasn't quite right for me , given my circumstances . Just because Karen at the office does it doesn't mean that it's going to work for you as well . Now , this is about being open to feedback and being willing to iterate and improve upon your previous attempt . So you've got to revisit where it failed and why it failed , because I want to make this very clear to you as well the habit never fails , ever . It's the processes that you put in place to achieve that habit . So let's talk about one of those things . So how can we embrace failure and use it as an opportunity to learn , to grow ?

Speaker 1 14:31

Well , the dieting it went wrong . Because of what ? What are you questioning ? What went wrong ? Like you set yourself an intention I'm going to diet , I'm going to lose weight , and you start off and then you couldn't maintain it . Well , I think what you need to do is you need to question that to yourself , because it wasn't the actual diet that failed . The diet certainly didn't fail . What happened was the steps that you put in place to get there , or the type of diet or what you were trying to do is literally what failed . So you've got to ask yourself what can I do to be better next time , to avoid that failure ?

Speaker 1 15:09

So we don't look at it as a failure , we look at it as a learning process . But , by the same token , we need to look at that . We need to question , instead of going oh , I'm no good , I'm a failure , oh , it's just terrible , I'm no good , I don't know . What can I do about this ? It's shocking . I'm just useless . What does that achieve ? It actually achieves nothing . So let's have a look at why it failed , question yourself and put something in place to make sure that that doesn't happen next time . All right , so once you nail that , that part of it is where you start to really , really achieve and a growth mindset can actually shift their perspective on our own progress and our development . I'm going to learn from this and I'm going to improve on it , because confidence comes from growth and a feeling of knowledge and accomplishment , which I think is a great way to really look at this . Once you've made a mistake and you've corrected it , you start to troubleshoot your own problems , because my name is not on your birth certificate , so you can ask me all the questions that you like , but you're a grownup , you're listening to this and you're a problem solver and you can actually do that as well . So in my own situation , I got small nutrition strategies through one of Coach Mark Carroll's challenges or guide guidebooks that I was doing and it was so interesting and I just wanted to learn more about particular things and this gave me the hunger see what I did there for more nutrition knowledge . So what I was doing was I've been picking up the crumbs along the way and adding them into the knowledge bank , wherever I can pick bits and pieces of information up . So I didn't get to where I got to overnight . It's taken years of study and years of practice and learning and reading and listening to podcasts etc . To get to where I've got to today .

Speaker 1 17:02

Now the next point long term sustainability . Now , sustainable success is all about building that solid foundation . Without the foundation , you have nothing . It's like constructing a really sturdy building . You can't rush the process . You can't start building a frame on a slab that hasn't actually solidified yet or gone hardened yet . So what you've got to do is you've got to wait for these processes to form properly before you can actually put the next step onto it . So you can't rush the process without compromising the integrity of the structure . So when we focus on 1% incremental progress , what we do then is we actually create a strong base that can support continual growth .

Speaker 1 17:47

Now I want you to think about it . You've all watched houses being built over time , whether it's your neighbors , whether it's one down the street or whatever and they built in 1% increments all the time . They cut the ground , they put the slab , the plumbing and electrical in , they put the sewage in , they put the slab down and then , after the slabs harden , they then put the frame up and then they put the roof on it . Everything's done in 1% increments and then , in six months time , you've got a solid house with a good foundation . Well , you should have anyway . So that's one thing .

Speaker 1 18:21

So this is what we have to look at as we're building habits to step ourselves in the right direction as well . So yo-yoing is really bad . Starting full-on and then stopping and going back to your habits is actually extremely unhealthy . Losing a little bit of body fat and then putting it and more back on , and then losing a bit of body fat and then putting it more back on , is actually really really severely detrimental to our health , because we end up putting more weight back on than we did , than we lost , and this is what's going to happen to us every time , and all in ends up being nothing in , which leads to frustration , and then you end up as a self-bullier , which research is very clear does not work . Oh my god , you're hopeless , oh you're useless . G's on bad at this . How come I'm so stupid ? G's on dumb , and that doesn't help . It actually is shown to be worse for you . All right .

Speaker 1 19:22

So sustainable progress leads to lasting change in various areas of our life . All right , which is in our health , whether it be in our career or whether it be in relationships . If you're looking at going through a ranked structure at work or you're looking at progressing in your job , no one walks in and goes bang , bang , bang and all of a sudden becomes a manager , although you could question that sometimes . But anyway , that's another point . Let's not go down that road . But we have health in our career and our relationships that are all built very , very slowly , and building these habits and being consistent with them is how they then become very , very ingrained .

Speaker 1 20:00

Now , sustainable habits . How can you build a sustainable habit ? Now ? I'll just give you a simple example to start off with . Like medication or your own supplements that you take , like your fish oil or your vitamin D , which everyone should be taking anyway , as well as creatine . Have your container , go and get yourself a Sunday to Saturday pill container that's marked every day and leave it on your kitchen bench , if you can , or up and out of sight , if you can , if you've got young children , but put your medications in it . So when you walk out in the morning and you see it , there you go . Oh , I've got to take it , and that's one thing that you can actually do .

Speaker 1 20:42

Visual reminders are proven to work as a habit building . Exercise , and we hydrate before we caffeinate , don't we ? So what are you going to do ? You're going to leave a tumbler in front of the coffee machine or the kettle as a reminder , until it becomes an ingrained habit . So you can't put the kettle on , or you can't turn the coffee machine on without seeing the glass . And if you don't do it , then well , you can come over here and I'm going to give you a smack upside the head . All right ? So there are two little simple things that you can actually do Now .

Speaker 1 21:13

There's one thing that we have to do and this brings me to our next point is we've got to overcome our own frustration and our

The Power of Continuous Improvement

Speaker 1 21:20

impatience . All right , it's natural to feel frustrated or impatient when we don't see immediate results . However , what we do need to understand is the power of continuous improvement , which can keep us motivated and persistent in our own endeavors . Right ? Here's something to keep you in mind all the time . If I was to sneak into your kitchen and tear a piece off your brown paper roll your baking paper you wouldn't even notice it gone . And if I came in again the next day and tore a piece off your baking paper roll , you wouldn't notice it again . And if I kept doing that for a whole week , the chances are you probably still wouldn't notice it . But if I kept doing it for a month , you'd be starting to wonder where the brown paper's gone , and then , if I kept doing that for another three months , you would absolutely be wondering where the brown paper's gone . So what I'm actually saying to you here is , just by chipping away and tearing little bits off , that brown paper roll brings sustainable results long term , and I think it's something that we really do need to keep in mind . If we are doing the things like getting the movement and putting the sustainable habits in place , we are improving ourselves every single day . You might not be able to see it , but it will gain momentum and I can promise you that . And when you do that , if you get yourself a calendar on an , every day that you tick the box , you put a green tick on your calendar , and every day that you have what you think is not a successful day , you put a red cross on it . I guarantee to you , at the end of the month , you'll have more green ticks on the calendar than you will have red crosses , and that , my friend , is actually consistency , because you are getting more green ticks than red crosses , and I think it's really , really important that we celebrate the small wins along the way , and this is why we set ourselves daily and weekly goals that are actually achievable , so that we get a sense of achievement out of it . Another example of this is when you're setting your .

Speaker 1 23:26

If you're a resistance trainer or you're someone who likes to run or you have a particular exercise that you want to do , don't schedule it in five times in a shift working week . That's pointless . You're not going to get five sessions in , or you may not get five sessions in in a shift working week , but why not schedule three in ? And if you schedule three sessions in and you nail those , what a sense of achievement it is . And you might get the fourth , but it doesn't matter if you don't , because you've scheduled three and you've picked them off . You've done that really well . But I can guarantee to you , if you schedule five and I said to you how did you go for your training this week ? And you said I only got three , only three . Yeah , well , I scheduled five . Yeah , but if you had a scheduled three , you would have nailed them . Now you might say , yeah , but if I had a scheduled two , I would have nailed that too . Yeah , that's true . So schedule two in and nail it until you get that right , and then it will start to gain momentum . And this is what's happened to me on a personal level three sessions that I hit every week and now I get a bonus session where I get to go into the gym and just play with whatever I want and do that All right .

Speaker 1 24:38

So I think one of the best things that we can do is to not focus on our long term goal and enjoy the journey of what we're actually doing , so focus on the small goals and pick them off easily and then just feel comfortable doing those , all right . So , for argument sake , our destination is a body recon . We just want to have that massive body recon . But the journey is actually feeling your body move , feeling great , gaining momentum in that area , starting to eat better , starting to move more , starting to feel like I've got more energy , and that will lead to what your destination is , which is your body recon . But I can tell you now , your destination will always move , all right . So keep that in mind as well . That destination you never , ever , ever reach it . Okay .

Speaker 1 25:29

So now the other thing is that I just wanted to talk about here now is to make sure that we don't go all or nothing If you can nail 1% every single day instead of going right . This is it . Starting Monday 100% and I know you know I'm talking sense here then it will make such a massive difference to you All . Right Now , that brings us to the end of today's episode . Just remember your greatness is not going to happen overnight . It is the result of a consistent effort of learning and of growth . So embrace the power of getting 1% better every day , and you will literally be amazed by the incredible progress that you can make over time .

Speaker 1 26:18

Now , as always , I encourage you to reflect on today's topic and just find ways to imply it in your own personal life and shift working life . Striving for progress and not perfection , is how you will win the war . And please remember , be patient and kind to yourself as you navigate the challenges of shift work and prioritize your mental health and wellbeing . And , as always , I want to thank you for tuning into a healthy shift . I hope you found this episode helpful and inspiring and , if you did , please share it . And until next time , keep moving and make a healthy shift . Thank you for listening . If you enjoyed this episode , be sure to subscribe so you get notified whenever a new episode is released . It would also be ever so helpful if you could leave a rating and review on the app you're currently listening on . If you want to know more about me or work with me , you can go to ahealthyshiftcom . I'll catch you on the next one .