How You Do Anything Is How You Do Everything

Jess Sims is one of my go-to Peloton instructors and she says, "How you do anything is how you do everything" at least once in every one of her classes. And she's absolutely right! Think about it. You are what you do. Every time you act, you create a habit, even if it’s a small one. Aristotle once said, "we are what we repeatedly do. Excellence, then is not an act but a habit.” Everything you do is practice for who you are becoming. Every action you take is a vote for the type of person you wish to become. No single instance will transform your beliefs, but as the votes build up, so does the evidence of your identity. This is why habits are crucial. They cast repeated votes for being a type of person. You are not the product of your dreams, your desires, your potential or what you could be someday, somehow, in the perfectly right environment. You are what you do. You are the culmination of your actions. So that’s why it matters. It's not just what you do, but how you do it. Ever notice that when you do one thing, it breeds more of itself? When you wake up late, you show up late to commitments, you miss meetings, you’re constantly behind and apologizing. You’ve accepted it’s “who you are” – but it’s not, it’s just “what you’re currently doing.” It’s who you are (at this moment). If you tell yourself you’ll do something, but then don’t, you suddenly start not doing all the other things you promised yourself you would do. If you happen to miss the gym, you get a little weaker, and it’s easier to miss the next one. When you tell someone a lie (and let’s be honest, you didn’t have to, but you were trying to be nice), it gets easier and easier to distort facts, keep expanding the lies, and worst of all, lie to yourself and distort the accurate picture of reality that you’re in. When you cut a rep in the gym, not because you failed, but because it was hard, it gets easier to cut corners in other parts of your life, business, or relationships. You are what you do. You become the thing you practice. And how you do anything is how you do everything. The good news is, it works the opposite way too. If you tell yourself you’ll do something and you do it , you trust yourself more, and you’ll do more. If you push yourself in the gym to do an extra rep, an extra lap, add more resistance, to go beyond what you thought you could do, you carry that with you throughout the day. If you’re truthful, even when it’s inconvenient, it’s easier to be truthful in other areas of life and give yourself the most accurate version of reality possible. Like Bruce Lee said, "If you always put limits on what you can do, physical or anything else, it’ll spread over into the rest of your life. It’ll spread into your work, into your morality, into your entire being." And you know it deep down too. If you take it easy in the gym, you find it easy to take easier in life. If you cheat on a rep, you find it easier to cheat on your diet, then it’s easier to cheat on a test or cheat on yourself. If you lie when the stakes are low, you build the habit of lying until the stakes actually do matter. How you do anything is how you do everything. It bleeds into your character. It molds you and before long, without even knowing it, you have become a reflection of your cumulative actions. Every action is something. Every action matters. How you do anything is how you do everything. Start acting like it. #SLAY