The longer I live, the more I’ve come to understand that all progress is made by two things, and two things only.
- Consistent discipline
- Sudden breakthroughs
Consistent discipline… At our firm, Hixon Zuercher, we have a saying that floats around from time to time, and that is: “Consistency compounds”. This simply means you show up, do the next right thing, win or learn, rinse and repeat, then get up again and do it again the next day. With that discipline, applied consistently over and over again, makes a career… makes a life.
Note that consistency necessarily doesn’t mean an unbroken sequence. Sometimes, you need a break. Your body is worn down, your family needs you, something unexpected happens. That’s okay.
Consistency means doing a thing often enough that added together, the collective effort makes a bigger impact than any single effort.
How about sudden breakthroughs…
These happen due to the consistent discipline that occurred long before the breakthrough happened. It only looks sudden from the outside.
As the cliché goes, it took me 24 years to become an overnight success. While from the outside, it looks like a sudden breakthrough, beneath the surface is a quiet story of consistent discipline that no one saw.
When we combine enough discipline with enough consistency, we create a breakthrough. The key to it all is that your discipline must be greater than your progress because ultimately progress can be so slight in the moment, you can barely see it.
But over time, the chasm of what was, compared to the potential you’ve grown into, is dramatic.
Next time you see a sudden breakthrough, you can be confident it’s because of your consistent discipline.
Get up, get moving, take action, make progress.
And live on purpose today.
