The Olympics has it all, doesn’t it? Anticipation, drama, intrigue, excitement, and incredible highs, alongside soul-crushing lows, hopes, disappointment, excitement, complications, and resolutions. The Games are not just a sporting event but a grand showcase of global human accomplishment and acceptance.
As a business coach, the Olympics have always held a special significance for me. I am intrigued by the commitment and discipline required to become an Olympic athlete, the resilience required to overcome the brutality of winning and losing, and, of course, the powerful relationships between an athlete and their coach.
One theme that runs through many of the stories resonates because it reminds me of a saying that one of my mentors taught me and has been enormously helpful:
Small, daily, seemingly insignificant improvements, when done consistently over time, lead to stunning results.
My experience is that a truly successful life and business happens more through evolution than revolution. It’s those constant micro-wins that, when done daily, evolve into a tsunami of victory.
This was doubly reinforced to me when I heard Michael Johnson, the retired American sprinter and now BBC athletics pundit, interviewed recently.
He won four Olympic gold medals and eight World Championship gold medals in the span of his career. He held the world and Olympic records in the 200 m and 400 m and is generally considered one of the greatest and most consistent sprinters in the history of track and field.
In September 2018, Johnson suffered a stroke that affected his left side. Following the stroke, he couldn’t stand and couldn’t walk—left arm, leg, fingers—he could barely move them.
By November, he said that he was almost “back to normal” and attributed his recovery to the “Olympic mindset.”
Hearing Johnson speak about the recovery was fascinating. “The recovery is really hard. A lot of people give up. There are a lot of days when you don’t see any improvement. For me, having been an Olympic athlete, my daily routine consisted of tiny, little, mostly unrecognisable gains on a daily basis.”
Some days, when you’re training at such a high level, you have a really hard training session, and you’ll feel like you didn’t get any better today. I just wasted all that time. But, you know, as an athlete, I did get better.
That’s the case for stroke victims. You will go through a day or period where you’re trying to get better and regain movement. Some days, you feel really good, and that’s the motivation to come back the next day. But a lot of people who haven’t been trained like Olympians to recognise those tiny little gains don’t recognise them, feel like they’re getting worse, and stop. They say this is it. This is as good as it’s going to get. Why do I keep putting myself through this? I need to get on and accept this is now my life.
So, Johson says he was very fortunate to have been experienced that world. He was able to take it on and feel confident and was get proof, every day that he was going to make a full recovery.
Consistency is the Mother of Mastery
Years ago, I was in Egypt and visited the Great Pyramid of Giza. The seventh wonder of the world. I learned that it took 20 years to build. Two and a half million stones were needed, and nearly 50,000 workers rallied to do the job. For over 3000 years, until the Eiffel Tower was created in 1887, this amazing structure stood as the highest one made by human hands.
What was the real formula for building this amazing structure? The monument was made by placing one block of stone upon another block of stone and another block upon that block, over and over and over. The focus wasn’t on the pyramid but on the constant act of placing the blocks. The attention was on the process, not the goal.
We live in an age when so many people want their dreams to be realized instantly. Too many have forgotten the power of patience, the magic of steadiness, and the wonder of tiny triumphs made daily on the project that most inspires us.
Consistency truly is the mother of mastery, and the little things you do daily are so much more important than the big things that you might do annually.
Sometimes, it doesn’t look like your regular, but minor acts of moving things forward are creating any progress. Yet, trust me, they are. Growth is often invisible, like the seeds that are germinating underground and, sometime in the future, will turn into towering trees. Just stay focused, dedicated, patient, and aware that your tiny daily triumphs will eventually compound into remarkably big victories over the course of time.
In the words of Scottish novelist Robert Louis Stevenson: “Don’t judge each day by the harvest you reap but by the seeds you plant.”
Mohammed Ali said, I hated every morning training session, but I loved the idea of being the champion of the world. You have to stay with your program; you have to stay in the training camp, through thick and thin, when you’re bloody, when you’re happy, when you’re down, and when you’re discouraged, get up. It’s what the Japanese say – get knocked down 7 times, get up 8!
Conclusion
Success lies in a masterful consistency of the fundamentals.
To win in business, sports, the arts, and life, stick to the knitting. Keep it simple. Do the fundamentals consistently well. Consistency is the mother of mastery. Work on the fundamentals of your business and skills every day. Day by day, the days slip into weeks, weeks into months, and months into years. The little gains from optimising the fundamentals create a tsunami of success.
Small, daily, seemingly insignificant improvements, when done consistently over time, lead to stunning results
It’s not what you do once a year that’s important; it’s what you do every day—your days are your life in miniature. Run the same habits every day and optimise them, and if they’re good habits, those habits compound into exponential gains.
If you would like some help with implementing high-performance habits, you can book 15 minutes to talk about coaching here at TimeWithShane.com.
