From Consistency to Intensity.

Success is nothing more than a few simple disciplines, practiced every day; while failure is simply a few errors in judgment, repeated every day. – Jim Rohn

One of the significant hallmarks of the highly successful in any profession, sport, field or sector is their ability to go the extra mile. They understand what it takes to go to the next level, from good to great. First, you must stay consistent with the process and then get intense with the relentless pursuit of your goals and objectives. As the American author and motivational speaker often said: “Success is nothing more than a few simple disciplines, practiced every day; while failure is simply a few errors in judgment, repeated every day. It is the accumulative weight of our disciplines and our judgments that leads us to either fortune or failure. Failure is not a single, cataclysmic event. We do not fail overnight. Failure is the inevitable result of an accumulation of poor thinking and poor choices.” Success is never an accident, and failure doesn’t just happen overnight; both occur due to our efforts day in and day out. Your input determines your output to get what you have never gotten; you’ve got to do what you have never done.

‘We don’t rise to the level of our expectations, we fall to the level of our training.’ – Archilochus

Consistency is the key to achieving anything worthwhile; getting good at anything requires staying consistent over time. But to become a master in any field requires a level of intensity that others might consider to be an obsession, freaky, or too intense. In his classic book Lead the Field, Author Earl Nightingale observed, “One hour per day of study will put you at the top of your field within three years. Within five years, you’ll be a national authority. In seven years, you can be one of the best people in the world at what you do.” We get rewarded in public for what we repeatedly practice in the private.” For example, in sports, those we consider to be the greatest of all time, such as Serena Williams, Micheal Jordan, Babe Ruth, Tom Brady, Pele, etc, are the ones that got to the level of intensity. While others were doing the required training of 3-5 hours per day, they put in the extra effort of another 2-3 hours, which ultimately made the difference.

My Marathon Running Experience: From Consistency to Intensity

I participated in my first full marathon in 2013 in Accra, Ghana, and I finished with a 5h+ time. Completing the first marathon was tough, but one improves over time like anything you stay consistent with. In the past 10 years, I have run 25+ full marathons in 18 cities. I have since reduced my personal best time from 3:59 – 3:44 – 3:20. I am aiming to run a sub-3 hours full marathon time in 2024 and it is going to require the same level of dedication and commitment as I used to reduce my personal best times in the previous years.

Earlier in the year, I set a goal to run across the ten Canadian provinces and also run the qualifying time to run in the Boston Marathon. To participate in the Boston Marathon, I need to run a time of 3 hrs 05 minutes for my age bracket. I had to increase my running volume, cross training and making sure I don’t get injured in the process. I had to move from just being consistent with training to getting a little bit obsessed. We play the way we train, one cannot perform above their level of training. One of the greatest lessons I have learned participating in multiple sports is the role of cause and effect. Your input in training, mostly in the dark (private) will ultimately determine your output when the lights are on (public). I trained extreme hard to achieve my stated objective and the effort ultimately paid off with achieving 95% of the stated goal.

By the end of the running season, I was able to run in nine of the ten Canadian provinces and I was able to reduce my personal best time from 3hrs 44 mins to 3hrs 20 mins. According to my Strava, end of the year in exercise numbers, I was able to cover a distance of 3,390 Kilometers, with a time of 833 hours and a total elevation of 10,112 meters as at December 16, 2023. This number made me part of the top 1% of Strava users in 2023. The dedication, commitment, consistency and intensity ultimately paid off with this numbers. I am proud of how far I have come in my quest to become a better version of myself and pushing the boundaries of my physical limits. How you do one thing is how you do everything, the same intensity that was used to achieve some of the above result is what is going to be required to take it to the next level.

Next Goal

Run a sub-3 hours Marathon in 2024.
Run an ultramarathon (50KM) in 2024
Participate and finish in a half-Iron man triathalon.
Qualify for the 2025 Boston Marathon.

Meditations

Daily Calm with Tamara Levitt – Family
The holiday period is usually a time to engage with family members. Still, it can also be challenging as some family members grow apart and have little in common. Some have conflicts that go back years, and childhood wounds can be easily triggered. It is not uncommon to face conflict when spending time with family.
Practice to make family time more enjoyable: Meditate more frequently, practice mindful speech – making an effort to refrain from saying or doing anything that may provoke conflict. Practice pausing when triggered by tuning into the body and noticing what is happening. If we can calm the body down, the mind often follows.

Daily Jay with Jay Shetty – Compassion Fatigue.
Every day, we create more than 300 million terabytes of data, 30 times the content of all the books in the Library of Congress. No wonder we are overwhelmed, considering that what we consume is more about struggle and hardship. Dealing with so much distress can take a tremendous emotional toll and lead to compassion fatigue.
Practices to deal with Compassion Fatigue: Decrease your data stream by rationing the information you consume and unplug occasionally. Instead of meditating on all the places where you are powerless to make changes, zoom in on the areas where you can make a difference. When you focus on where you can make a difference, you feel inspired instead of tired. Direct some of your kindness and care towards yourself by having self-compassion.

Do your little bit of good where you are; it’s those little bits of good put together that overwhelm the world. – Desmond Tutu

Daily Trip with Jeff Warren – Inner Noise-Cancelling Headphones
Our Inner Noise-Cancelling Headphones help us hear sounds and feel sensations even more crisply and cleanly—none of the noise matters; your simple sensing, breathing presence matters. Meditation is much more about learning to trust what is under the noise; it’s been ok with your own being, allowing the simplest things in your experience to settle you and lead you home.

Podcast