7 Tips To Stay Consistent And Achieve Your Goals
When you start running a few miles, you enjoy them. Then, you aim at running your first 5k or building a routine. Everything looks great. However, it happens that, for different reasons, you skip some workouts, and your motivation is lower than before. At that moment, consistency becomes challenging to maintain and, consequently, the results.
Does it look familiar to you?
Skipping a workout is not terrible; one missed activity doesn’t affect your performance. On the other hand, if your body tells you to rest, it’s an intelligent decision.
The challenge is creating excuses and postponing or skipping more workouts. If we are not consistent, eventually, we don’t accomplish our goals, partially or entirely. Consistency is critical to our success, and running is not an exception.
If you want to achieve results and improve your performance, you must train consistently.
Paris Marathon, 2024
Every skill can be mastered with practice. Repeating a task repeatedly makes you a great runner or anything else you want to become. As they said: “practice makes you perfect” that it’s true but easier to say and difficult to implement.
So, how can you be consistent?
Here are my top 7 tips that, based on my experience, have helped me and the people whom I trained to stay consistent:
Commit to yourself. This is the first step; believing in what you’re doing because it’s something you want to do or it’s good for you.
Know your WHY. Why did you commit? Why are you running? This is essential and will help you in difficult times or when you want to give up, it’s your motivation to keep going. It’s your WHY that enables you to finish the last mile.
Grow continuously but gradually. Running is not a destination but a journey. It’s made of good runs and bad runs. Please don’t get discouraged by a bad workout; it happens to everybody; accept it and be ready for the next day.
Increase accountability. If the first steps involve an internal dialogue with yourself, this is about external feedback and sharing an experience with others. Tell other people what you’re doing. The fact that you share your goals with somebody else increases your accountability.
Do it with other people. Run with a friend or join a running group. It’s more fun. Doing and practicing things together with other people make you feel more motivated.
Execute it in small steps. We always desire to do more than we should, but it doesn’t necessarily lead to significant accomplishments. However, you will experience more effective results based on behavior change psychology if you apply the small-step approach.
Look back to moving forward. Look at what you have achieved and how much you have accomplished to push you forward. Don’t dwell on the past and think about mistakes. The past is the rear window to show how far you’ve gone. Your energy should focus on the next step, not the previous one.
I’ve applied all these steps to running and in my life. When I have a new adventure, I alwaysreturnk to these simple concepts. They help me stay more consistent and less intimidated to approach new challenges or leave my comfort zone.