As a coach, I spend a lot of time thinking about what actually creates growth in a person’s life. After years of watching this play out in myself and in the people I work with, I’ve landed on a simple belief: growth comes from consistency, awareness, and — every once in a while — bold action.
This summer, I’ve been putting that belief into practice in a few key areas of my own life. Here’s where I’ve started, and why.
Setting My Environment Up to Succeed
The first place I focus on when I want real change is my environment. If you have to rely on willpower alone every single day, you will eventually lose. But if you design your surroundings so the hard thing becomes the automatic thing, you barely have to think about it.
Here’s a personal example. We now live on top of a big hill, and after a serious knee injury, one of my goals this summer is to rebuild strength and resilience in that knee. I had an easy option sitting right in front of me — an e-bike, or just taking the car. Instead, I chose a road bike.
That choice was intentional. Every ride up that hill is a small, repeated act of physical therapy, determination, and resilience. It’s not glamorous, and most days it’s not comfortable. But that’s the point. This one consistent habit — built directly into my daily environment — is training both my knee and my mind. The long-term intention is to summit multiple mountains this summer: the bold action that consistency has been quietly preparing me for.
The Muscle of Doing It Anyway
Consistency isn’t just about repetition — it’s about showing up and doing the work even when you don’t feel like it. Because my environment forces the choice (that hill isn’t going anywhere), I’ve had to train myself to keep a positive outlook even when the weather is bad, even when my legs are tired, even when the easier option is right there.
I think of this as building an internal muscle — the muscle of determination and hard work. And it’s exactly the muscle we’re losing collectively as daily life gets more convenient. Every shortcut we take, every friction we remove, feels good in the moment. But it also means we stop practicing the very thing that makes us capable of doing hard things when it actually counts. Ease is comfortable, but it doesn’t build capacity. If anything, it quietly erodes it.
Consistency in the Work That Matters
The second place I’m applying this philosophy is in growing my business. My mission is to have a bigger impact on the communities I serve, and consistency is at the core of that too — just in a different form.
The families and teens I coach are relying on the quality of that work. If I let my daily discipline slip — the unglamorous, behind-the-scenes effort that most people never see — the quality of my coaching would slip right along with it. That’s not something I’m willing to compromise on. So the same principle applies here as it does on the hill: show up, do the work, especially on the days you don’t want to.
The Common Thread
Whether it’s a bike ride up a hill or the daily effort of building something meaningful for other people, the pattern is the same:
- Consistency creates the foundation.
- Awareness keeps you honest about where you’re actually showing up and where you’re not.
- Bold action — summiting the mountain, taking the leap in your business — is what all that quiet, consistent effort eventually earns you.
Growth isn’t a single dramatic moment. It’s the accumulation of small, uncomfortable choices, repeated on purpose, until they build the strength — physical, mental, and professional — to do the bigger things you actually set out to do.
That’s my take on summer growth. Here’s to the hill, and to whatever yours is.
