Edition: March 11, 2022
Curated by the Knowledge Team of ICS Career GPS
- Excerpts from article by Andy Murphy, published on Medium.com
“The rarest of human qualities is consistency” — Jeremy Bentham
Successful people all mention the same thing when asked about the reason for their success. No matter in which field, it all comes down to only one word — consistency.
You hear a basketball player say, “I shoot hoops every day”, or a writer highlighting, “I write every day”.
Consistency connotes to — no matter the job description, ordinary people who do the same thing over and over again ultimately become successful.
However, not many want to believe this formula for its mundanity. Everyone wishes to become a master but few are willing to put in the time and effort that mastery takes.
Thomas Edison wonderfully once put it — “Genius is 1% inspiration, 99% perspiration.”
Mastery is as much about hard work as it is about talent. Malcolm Gladwell famously calculated mastery to take upwards of 10,000 hours.
Putting that into context, if you worked on the same thing for 50 hours a week, for 4 years straight (without taking a single day off) you would be somewhere close. Some people need to double that, and most people need triple.
It may be tiring to hear that if we just stick in there, we will eventually get to where we want to go. However, it is not all tedious and may mean quite the opposite.
How?
Knowing the fact that you will get “there” eventually, you can enjoy the process every step of the way.
“Many of life’s failures are people who did realize how close they were to success when they gave up” — Thomas Edison
The tricky part about building consistency is that we live in a world whereby we want everything now, thinking that any delay may make our goal redundant.
Here are 3 tools that can help unlock your superhuman potential:
1. Set and achieve small, bite-sized goals.
- Going after a dream can feel overwhelming.
- So, setting small, gradual goals, on the other hand, is far more manageable.
- Achieving these manageable goals helps to release small bursts of dopamine, which tells us to keep going because it’s working favourably.
- The goal might still be a little far away, but tiny steps forward can make huge inroads.
“The secret of getting ahead is getting started. The secret of getting started is breaking your complex overwhelming tasks into small manageable tasks, and starting on the first one.” — Mark Twain
The 1% rule:
- If you commit to improving yourself by just 1% every day, in 100 days, you will be 100% better off than where you are right now.
- By a year? You’ll be 365% better off.
- Breaking it further, 1% of 24 hours is 20 minutes, having a daily practice of just 20 minutes is the 1% that you need.
- Progress taking tiny steps forward. So that when you take a moment to pause and look back, it will be joyous seeing how far you have come.
“Success is not a big step in the future, success is a small step taken right now” — Jonatan Mårtensson
2. Let your life be inspirational to others.
- The most contagious source of inspiration is happiness.
- The best way to continue doing anything is because it brings us joy.
- Live a life that lights you up, takes you on adventures, teaches you great things, helps you learn, connect, share, and grow from your heart.
- Success finds committed (and consistent) people.
“Be the change you wish to see in the world” — Mahatma Gandhi
3. Share all that you have learned.
- Everything we think, know, believe, and trust in life is learned from someone else.
- So, share your gifts, recycle what you have learned, and dispense it as something current and fresh.
- Also, be brave enough to let go of things that have become redundant to create space for new opportunities.
- Consistency, among many things, reminds us there is always more to come.
The main component of consistency is courage.
It is what gives us the strength to go after our dreams.
As much as consistency is the rarest of human qualities, courage is an overlooked factor that makes us go about every day. Without courage, consistency simply doesn’t happen. Therefore, along with consistency, it is an important quality to mention.
“Talent is cheaper than table salt. What separates the talented individual from the successful one is a lot of hard work.” — Stephen King
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Have you checked out yesterday’s blog yet?
Education & Career Trends: 10 Rules Of Email Etiquette
(Disclaimer: The opinions expressed in the article mentioned above are those of the author(s). They do not purport to reflect the opinions or views of ICS Career GPS or its staff.)
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