Guy Reams (00:00.846)
This is day 201, every day is every day. So I've written on this topic many, many times, because this is the most important principle in making and keeping commitments. So as I've said, this is a third installment of my three principles for the commitments. I've done this many, many times, and I've learned a lot of lessons along the way. And I've...
resolved to keep commitments and failed on more than I've actually kept. So I have kept probably 12 year long commitments where I've done something every day for a year. I've done about 12 of them, maybe a little bit more. But there's probably 20 or 30 of them that have completely failed.
And there's one key principle, and that is that every day is every day. So you can't be half in. You can't be committed part -time. You cannot be committed some of the time. A commitment is a commitment. It's a full -time, all -in effort. No matter what is going on, no matter what the excuse, you keep your commitment every day. Now, that means even if you have to barely keep the commitment,
Crawl across the finish line. Just barely get something done. That's okay. Like I had one commitment, which I still keep, and that is to write a blog every day. I started that a long time ago. I've written thousands of these things every day, every day. Now, there were times in my 365 days where I was writing a blog every day and I...
was literally coming home at 1130 at night and I was exhausted and I did not want to write anything. But, and there were times when I wrote just a paragraph. I mean, literally, it was just a paragraph and I was falling asleep as I wrote it. But I got it done. Every day is every day.
Guy Reams (02:02.285)
You might want to call this consistency. Some people call it discipline. Whatever you call it, it is the same. No matter what you do it, no matter what. It's just an attitude. You've got to decide. Like if you're going to keep a commitment, you can't have a day off. There is no day off in commitment land. Consistency is the cornerstone of keeping commitments.
It transforms sporadic efforts, lukewarm attempts into real life changing, consistent action that iteratively and accumulatively changes your life. When you stick to something over a long period of time, you become, you understand how reliable you are. You start to lean on yourself. You start to trust yourself, right? It becomes a mindset, a behavior, a belief that you can do anything.
So consistency that comes from the everyday commitment is powerful. My favorite commercial advertisement from Nike of all time was from Nike. And I don't remember where it was. Maybe it was a Super Bowl ad. I don't remember. But there was an image. It seemed like San Francisco area or maybe Seattle. But it showed an image of basically the apocalypse happening.
like nuclear bombs or disease or zombies or whatever. The world was falling apart and this door of this house opens and somebody dressed in running gear comes out, leans over and ties their shoes and this starts running, right? Because every day is every day, right? This commitment to run is an everyday commitment. So no matter what,
Staying steadfast to your routines, to your objectives, to your commitments is an everyday thing. And I have been through hell to do stuff every day, let me tell you. During my push -up routine, I ended up one day I had to do push -ups in the airplane aisle. And that was embarrassing. In fact, when people started cheering me on, I was like, my commitment was to do a push -up every day.
Guy Reams (04:25.005)
for 365 days a row, meaning I would add one. So on day one, it was easy, I just did one. But day 10, I had to do 10 pushups, and then 11, then 12, then 13, then 14, then 15. So I eventually got up to like 200, 250 pushups. Well, one day I was flying a red -eye flight. I hadn't been able to get my pushups in, and the clock was gonna hit midnight while I was in the airplane. So.
I had to do 250 some pushups in the aisle of the airplane and several people were cheering me on as I did it. So that was pretty funny. But that's the everyday attitude, right? It's the ritual of consistency. So yeah, that's this is the most important one. Forget everything else. Do it every day. Thank you.