Why Repetition Gets A Bad Rap

SPEAKER_00 0:00

Yo, yo, yo, welcome back to the Feather Your Lifestyle podcast conversations on lifestyle, passions, and hustles. My name's Chris. I am your host, and I'm super excited to be back here having the conversation with you. Episode 269 today, and I want to talk about an interesting topic which I think it actually makes me laugh simply because I I had a I had a comment come through where someone actually said to me, It's like, Bro, you're too repetitive. And I find this very funny because this is the topic for today, is why I believe being repetitive enables long-term success. And I think a lot of people forget about that being repetitive, yes, there's there's probably two sides of this story. It can obviously be not good for you, but it can be very good for you as well. And it all comes down to habitual and building routines and being able to be consistent as easy as possible. And I get confused and I laugh about when people think that being repetitive is a bad thing. But I can understand why some people may think that. I also understand why repetitiveness can become boring. It can become something that doesn't keep you motivated and it can create maybe a disinterest in something. And I kind of wanted to touch on this today. I really wanted to make sure people can understand, well, leverage this. How can you bring being repetitive and make it a nice little muscle that you can continue to leverage and use in your life and your lifestyle and help you get further in your lifestyle? And I think, I think, I think, I think why, why, I think one question we should probably ask ourselves is why do we celebrate like novelties but quietly overlook the habits which or the routines which actually are the things that are changing our lives. And if you look closely at anyone that is successful, there is a consistency of repetitive in business, in sport, in health, relationships, creativity, and you'll find that it isn't necessarily a surprise. It's it's always there, it's always evident. And it's not necessarily built on extraordinary moments, it's built on extraordinary repetition. So that's the big idea today. If that sounds something that you're interested in, buckle up, get cozy, make sure you hit like, subscribe. You can leave a comment along the way or at the end of the show. And of course, if you think someone else needs to hear about why repetitiveness will enable long-term success, then please share it with someone. Let's roll the intro and let's get into it.

Breakthroughs Are Built On Reps

SPEAKER_00 2:34

So people people love, I mean, I do. I I think I can speak as a generalization that most people love breakthroughs. Breakthrough moments, we we love when there's a launch, when there's a promotion, when maybe when there's an event or a race happening or a transformation, or just a viral moment. Like we all enjoy those things. And those moments, moments are usually byproducts of hundreds, if not thousands, of repeated actions. And I think when we look at it from that perspective, we we sometimes forget that how we got there, the journey. And we're going to be talking about this in another episode in probably next week, actually, just talking about the journey to where we get to and then hindsight and what does it tell us? But that that's next week. But my point is long-term success isn't created by intensity, it's created by repetition. And as I said, this is the core component of this entire episode. And I think there's a couple of areas that I kind of wanted to go through in the notes that I'd kind of taken down that I wanted to share my thoughts and opinions on.

Foundations And Doing The Reps Right

SPEAKER_00 3:33

Number one, rep repetition builds foundations. And that's why it's really important that we're actually building the right repetitions. Because if you're doing, like if you learn to ride a bike incorrectly and you've been doing it for five years, you try to fix that structure or how you go about doing it because it's just become a repetition of muscle memory, it's going to be very hard to do it. So nobody lays one brick and then calls it a house, right? You need to go through, you need to lay all of them one by one, but you have to do it the right way. If you don't do it the right way, the house is not going to be structurally sound by the end. Might fall down, might break, might not actually all fit together. And nobody goes to the gym once and calls themselves fit, although a lot of us expect results instantly. That's not the way it works. And nobody goes ahead, like myself, records one podcast and becomes a great communicator. When I first started, I was nothing like this. I couldn't kind of speak off the cuff. It was a bit more nerve-wracking. And it takes repetition, it takes experience, it takes lessons, it takes learnings, it takes time. And sometimes the first rep means very little, but which I would actually challenge because I think actually the first rep is the most important because you're actually starting. It's then seeing it through. But it's the thousandth rep that you do that changes everything. Because you've taken everything that you've learned prior to that and being able to continuously add percentage value of increased outcome on top of it. Right? Repetition builds skills, it builds systems, it builds confidence, it builds trust, it builds resilience. And what feels repetitive today becomes instinct tomorrow. And that's why a lot of the stuff that I do, I just do it as a routine. I do it as the same, I keep it on repeat, I keep it on just keep smooth sailing because it makes my life easier, but I know it works. And that's why I laugh when people say, oh, it's you you do all the same things or the same repetitive videos. This was in particular to my to my building my business content. Because yeah, I mean, at the end of the day, we're going to buy stuff, we're going to process stuff, we're going to list stuff, we're going to sell stuff. That's it. How we go about that, sometimes there's some interesting changes within that, but a lot of the time that is the roughness, the dryness of our business. There's only so much to make that exciting, but the reality is, the more we do it, the more consistent, the better the stock, the better the product, the better the input equals the better output, right? The outcome. And that's why I think it's really, really important. The other thing is number two, the area of conversation that I wanted to chat about is repetition enables the ability to remove decision

Decision Fatigue And Stopping Reinvention

SPEAKER_00 6:09

fatigue. And I think this is probably one of the biggest reasons why people fail to stay actually consistent is because they're too busy trying to reinvent the process. What's the new strategy? Or what what's the shortcut? How can we do this quicker? Or is there a quick hack to make this easier for us? But the people who win long term, they're not actually looking at it from that perspective. They're looking at, okay, what does work? What works and how do I keep doing it and remove friction? And when you're able to play that role and actually make that happen, repetition will free your mind. It frees your mind to focus, to improve, and it's not going to be wasted on instead of this constant reinvention or trying. And that's why a lot of people aren't able to actually get the results they want to see is because they start and it gets too hot and they can't get into a groove. So they're like, you know what, I'll go try the next thing that's going to stick and get me the results. But a lot of the time, habitual habits are going to take 21 days. I mean, go go read Atomic Habits. Talks about this very, very clearly. Getting into a groove takes a little bit of a trance to get there. You're going to have to find your groove to be able to get it. So it's something of a natural ability. I had my friend say to me the other day, it's like, oh, when I'm driving, I'm able to talk and do it so easily while driving. And I'm like, oh, I've been doing it for so long. And then I realized I've been doing it for 20 years. Now, for what would come very hard to someone that's just starting, needing to concentrate, needing to learn, is a big surprise to them because they make they see me and make it look easy and they think, why can't they do that? Because they haven't had the reps, they haven't got the experience.

Compounding Results In Real Life

SPEAKER_00 7:42

And that's why repetition creates a really important thing, which is point number three, a compounding effect. And that's where the magic happens. This is this is why repetition is so, so important, because it's not the one workout that sorry, one workout won't change your body, right? And we said that one good meal isn't going to help you lose weight just once, and one podcast doesn't change your thinking either. That's why you've got to do it consistently. You stack those actions, you need to do it daily, monthly, weekly, yearly, consistently, and suddenly the impossible becomes normal. What you thought didn't couldn't happen, isn't true, isn't understandable, becomes clear. And the compounding is simply repetition meeting the time. And that's why if you're able to keep doing it, be consistent, you're probably gonna most of the time outwin most other people because most other people will give up. So repetition, and this point number four, repetition feels slow because we live in a very, very instant and convenient world. Everything's just like click of click and snap of the fingers, and you get what you want. There's a lot of cultural perspectives that suggest that everything is an overnight success, or there's viral moments to be successful, or you're gonna get these instant results. It's the 1% of the 1%. Like it does happen, but it's the 1% of the 1%. We're a majority. We have the minority in this case, which is the 1%. So we we have to think about it. Like trees

Why Progress Feels Slow Now

SPEAKER_00 9:09

don't grow overnight. If we could plant trees and they're instantly where they need to be in terms of the size and structure and the, I guess, impacts that they can make to society, the air, the world, the ground, nature, and we could plant it and that happens instantly, things would be so much better. But it doesn't work like that. They're gonna take 5, 10, 15, 20, 100 years to grow to their full forms. Neither is trust built overnight. Trust takes time, learning who the person is, how to interact, what they're where they've come from, their background, their beliefs, their ideas, all these different things. You can't just trust someone like that instantly, let your guard down. There's a process. It takes repetitions of meeting and communicating and sharing and having experiences together. And same as mastery. It doesn't happen overnight. And the things that last are the things that usually grow very slow, very slow. And that sometimes sucks, and that's why we have to seek that discomfort. So I think point number five, which is the last main area of discussion, is I think repetition becomes a real big

Repetition Shapes Identity And Discipline

SPEAKER_00 10:14

component of your identity. And every repeated action that you do says to yourself, this matters, this is who I am, and this is the kind of person I'm becoming. Now you have to be careful of that because when we have unhealthy repetitions, we sometimes just learn to be ignorant and look the other way and avoid the the tough conversations we need to have to self. If it's a bad eating habit, if it's a smoking addiction, if it's an unhealthy addiction, if it's all these other things, but you're just doing it, those reps compound, and those reps can compound into bad things too. So you need to learn that, sure, there might have been some things that you've done which you've now got yourself in a bad routine. So discipline won't come overnight. You need to rebuild that discipline. And it's like with the positive and the negatives. If you want a positive outcome, you're gonna have to have discipline. If you want to get out of a negative outcome, you're gonna have to change and have that discipline once again. So you don't become sorry, you become disciplined by repeating doing disciplined things. It makes sense, right? And repetition isn't just building results, it's really building who you are. So who do you want to be in a year's time? So what are you doing today that's gonna get you one step closer to being where you want to be in one year's time? Simple thing, really. One thing that you can do today could be 15 minutes, could be 30 minutes, could be having a conversation, it could be doing a rep. It could whatever. You get my

Questions To Lock In Your Next Habit

SPEAKER_00 11:41

point. So, a question I will be asking, there's a couple of questions I want to ask you before we finish up. Is number one is what in your life needs more repetition and not more innovation? Stop with the whole, oh, how can I make this better? Let's just get down to how can we just start this and make it happen. Where are you constantly starting over? Like stop starting, stop starting, switching, pivoting, instead of actually just seeing it through for a little bit longer. And I think that's why I laugh when people say, Oh, you're so repetitive. But we've grown 18% quarter on quarter on average for the last five and a half, six years in my business. And people tell me it's like, oh, it's just so boring, or you're so repetitive. Well, you're just doing the same stuff. It's like, yes, because it works, there's learnings, there's mistakes, there's challenges, there's ups and downs in all of that. There's pivots in terms of how do we do things better and how do we bring in new revenue sources? But the the foundation of it all is exactly the same. Get good product, list good product, sell good product, send good product, good customer, you know, satisfaction and support. That's that's really what it is. But how we do that continuously changes. Another question for you is what habit, if repeated for the next five years, would completely change your life? You answer that one. And are you chasing excitement or are you building something that lasts? So I think before I close, maybe long-term success isn't hidden inside some secret strategy. Like it, and it isn't. I I don't think it is. I think a lot of the time it's just it's hidden inside the ordinary things that we're we're willing to repeat,

Meaningful Actions Repeated Plus Wrap-Up

SPEAKER_00 13:19

but sometimes it's not always that obvious. Going for a walk daily for 15 minutes for one year, it will it will change your life. Literally, your health, the conversations that we have and the types of conversations we're having. And are we talking positive, are we talking negative? Even the conversations we have with ourselves, the workouts that you're doing, the early mornings that you're doing, your sleep habits, the quiet work, the focus work, all these different things, they all have a really key component in helping you be successful. And success isn't usually found in doing something incredible once. It doesn't work like that. It's found by doing meaningful things again, again and again. Let me know your thoughts on this. If you want to jump down in the comments, we can continue the conversation. Otherwise, we're gonna be back here for next week talking about hindsight. And I think it's gonna be a very good tale, a follow-on episode from this one. So make sure you do hit like, make sure you do hit subscribe if you don't want to miss out. Otherwise, I'll see you when I'm looking at you. Ciao