How Consistency Makes the Difference

Posted on December 12, 2020 by Bennie Fowler, One of Thousands of Leadership Coaches on Noomii.

The following is adapted from Silver Spoon: The Imperfect Guide to Success.

What makes the greatest difference to your success? For an athlete, consistent training is essential. Getting in the gym every day for a week and working on something you’re trying to do is far more effective than powering through a single intense training session, then skipping five days because you’re too sore to train again.

You may not be an athlete, but you still need to show up consistently. Working steadily toward your goals will move the needle much more quickly than killing yourself one day and being unable to perform the next.

That sounds good in theory, but in practice it can be hard to remember. Consider this article your reminder. Tape it to the fridge. Read it out loud. Do what you need to do to remind yourself that you get to your goals by taking a few steps every day, not by running as hard as you can on Monday and crashing out for the rest of the week.

How Consistent Practice Translates into Success on Game Day

In December of 2018, I made two catches—both over twenty yards—in an NFL game. After the game, my trainer, Seth Minter, showed me a video of my movements. They looked amazingly familiar.

Interspersed with the footage of my recent game performance was video of some drills we practiced six months earlier, in June 2018, about a month prior to the opening of NFL training camps. The drills emphasized my acceleration step, which is the move receivers make to get the defensive back turned around.

Sure enough, my movements in both videos were identical. In the game video, our opponent blitzed their corners and put the safety on me. I took the acceleration step, turned the safety around, and when I stopped and came out of my break, the ball was there. I saw the same thing in the drill video, except there, I took my steps on circles marked on the grass, and I made cuts around cones on the field.

I probably wouldn’t have made the connection between the drill and the play. Still, when I watched the videos, I realized just how much my preparation in June was paying off for me six months later.

I practiced consistently and I was rewarded with the capacity to perform my acceleration step without thinking, at exactly the moment I needed to. You may not need to turn around a defensive back, but there’s something in life you want to accomplish. What will it take to get you to a place where you can deliver what you need to deliver, time and again?

If you consistently practice your craft, each piece will fit together in an unstoppable package. There’s no luck involved. It’s repetition. It’s practice.

Building Consistency

Consistency starts with determining the habits that will get you where you need to go. What are your goals? What do you need to do to get there?

Now, how can you build consistency into your habits. What frameworks do you need to put in place to ensure that you eat well and get enough sleep? How can you make your training consistent? Running. Weights. Stretching. Reading. Studying. Whatever it is, you need to build your days around it. If you use meditation or visualization, practice every day.

Make time for yourself as well as time for others. Make time for learning and self-improvement and always be on the lookout for habits that give you pleasure and help you get stronger, faster, healthier, and more resilient.

Decide what you love and what you want to do, and then make sure you spend at least a little bit of time every day to get better at that thing. Practice. Train. Learn. Every day.

In addition to consistency in your training, strive for consistency in your mental outlook, whether your training has gone well or badly. Accept that some things you try are not going to work. That isn’t failure; that’s learning.

Three Habits to Undertake Consistently

Whatever game you play in this life, there are countless ways you can improve. Some are more useful than others. In seeking every possible advantage, here are three I’ve found especially valuable.

1) Find People to Emulate

Use those in your field who are outstanding, successful, and happy as models. What habits do they have that will work for you?

When I played with Demaryius Thomas, I tried to emulate aspects of his game. I take things from a lot of people I encounter—not because I want to be like them but because they exhibit traits or habits that I admire. They will make me better at what I’m best at. These characteristics have made them successful, so I’m eager to try them out and see if they’ll also work for me.

Emmanuel Sanders introduced this idea to me. When I came to Denver as a rookie, he told me he was taking something from my game, and that he’d adopted things from Demaryius as well. He had no qualms about it, and I remember thinking, “That’s smart.” You don’t want to play just like those guys, but you do want to take certain things that they do well and fold them into your own game. It makes you that much more dangerous.

2) Write It Down

Science tells us that when you clearly record your thoughts in writing, they become more indelible on the brain and trigger reaction. I started journaling earlier in my career when I first saw the need to improve. I wrote down my thoughts and included positive statements of things I wanted to happen.

At first, they were minor things, like how I was going to have a great day or things that I really admired in myself. As I got into a routine, I wrote about broader aspirations and made more sweeping observations. I described practices and games—both the positive and the negative—and how I could improve.

Journaling helps relieve daily stresses. It makes you feel better about yourself. You can relive events in a way that allows you to process them and learn from them without anxiety. You can use it to solve problems and clarify your thoughts and feelings.

3) Identify Your Improvement Goals

Look ahead to how you can improve. Even when I’m in midseason, I think about what I’ll work on in the off-season. Since the prize is the journey, I’m always on my journey.

These are long-term goals and not things you need to fix right away. For instance, I know I want to develop a more consistent diet. I want to work on my speed. I want to work on my outside routes now that I’m no longer in the slot.

Polishing one area enhances others. If I upgrade my mental game, I elevate my physical game. If I hone my football preparation, I’ll sharpen other aspects of my life. It all translates.

Consistent Processes Beat a Hail Mary

To achieve your goals in life, you need a plan. Hoping for the best isn’t a plan. It’s what happens in the absence of a plan. What do you do every day to bring yourself closer to your goals? What do you do every day to succeed? Winning is a symptom of a good process.

Of course, a process is only as good as your understanding of where it will take you. Be clear and specific about what you want. When you’re clear about your goals, the best way to attain them is with a stable routine. For example, I write out to-do lists of things I’m going to work on. Some people tackle the easy stuff first, but I attack the most difficult things first because those activities require the most concentration and hard work.

Whatever process you use, you need to make sure that it works for you. Then you need to execute. Consistently. Day after day.

For more advice on consistency, you can find Silver Spoon: The Imperfect Guide to Success on Amazon.

Bennie Fowler is a six-year veteran of the NFL. He began his career as an undrafted free agent signed by the Broncos in 2014. He spent four years with the Broncos and was a member of the Super Bowl 50 championship team in 2016. Bennie played college football at Michigan State University, where he was a member of the 2014 Rose Bowl championship team. Bennie holds the annual Bennie Fowler youth football camp in Detroit, Michigan, is an in-demand speaker trained through the NFL Speakers Bureau, and lives in Denver during the offseason.