You Don't Become Consistent By Demanding Consistency of Yourself

If you want to be consistent in your goals, one of the things I want to emphasize here, that's what you want if you want to become consistent in your goals, is realizing that consistency is not straightforward. It might sound like I'm putting a dampener on your attempts to be consistent with that, right, being negative with it, but if we have, if we're trying to be consistent and we have an assumption and the assumption is, well, consistency is straightforward. It's obvious. You do the thing and then you do it again and then you keep doing it. Pretty straightforward, simple. If you believe that, you are not going to be consistent. Now I'm going to give you an alternative to that way of thinking about it and something that will actually help you become genuinely consistent in going after what it is that you want. The truth about consistency. Well, is it easy? Is it straightforward? You see, if you look around, and I'm not saying this from a place of judgment at all, but how many people do you know who are genuinely consistent in something? It doesn't matter what it is. It could be regular exercise or writing a book or working under business or any goal, right? Very few of us, myself included, are actually consistent in anything, right? So that doesn't make sense. If we're told that consistency is straightforward, you just do the thing and you keep doing it and there you go, simple. Then why are so few of us consistent with things? Something doesn't add up there. So what I'm saying is the assumption that consistency is this easy, straightforward thing. You just do the thing and you keep doing it. There's a problem with this. And what I need to explain then, if I'm going to be negative of that, is how does consistency actually come about if it's not simple? Well, consistency is something that is learned. We learn how to be consistent as opposed to something that is demanded of oneself. We just treat ourselves as if we flick a switch and there you go, you're consistent. That's not how consistency works. Consistency is learned. You learn a lot of things about what it takes to be consistent in practicing it, right? And you get feedback. Now, the feedback comes from failure, right? So you try to do the thing. You notice, oh, I didn't follow through on that. Well, okay, I could just demand more consistency. It doesn't work. What it actually requires is understanding exactly what happened in that failure, right? If we can slow down long enough to actually, instead of immediately going to repair it or pushing ourselves further to just slow down, what just happened there in that failure is actually information. And in that failure, the information that you extract from it gets put into this integrated understanding of what it takes to be consistent. So instead of seeing failure as a terrible thing, failure is actually a very normal and healthy part of what it takes to be consistent in developing the understanding of what it requires to be consistent in doing the thing. Now, of course, we're told that failure is no option and you have to just keep doing the thing, just repeatedly doing it. But if you're just repeating the same thing, you're saying, no, I just have to do it. Well, I didn't do it. Why didn't I do it? Well, I see, now there's really some assumptions you're coming into contact with there. I'm just not good enough or I'm not following the directions well enough. Well, what if there were a whole host of really important reasons why you didn't actually show up when you said you would that time? Like you overestimated how tired you were, or you didn't have good enough boundaries with things, or you took on too many projects at once. All these very, very important reasons that would lead to you not taking action. If we just assume that none of the reason is I didn't follow the instructions properly and I didn't take the action. That's the problem, because I'm lazy or I'm not motivated enough or whatnot. Those are judgments, and judgments are the opposite of what you find in reflection. And it's pausing without attacking yourself and saying, okay, exactly. It's okay. I didn't do the thing. Instead of attacking myself, I'm going to actually, honestly, slow down and just look at, I wonder why I didn't do that thing. And you'll find when you don't have that judgment and the self-attack, you think, ah, there was actually a legitimate reason that makes sense as to why I didn't do it. Now I can take that piece of information and put it into this new strategy. This much more informed strategy that isn't relying on, isn't built on guilt and shame and self-attack. And over time, that becomes integrated wisdom. Wisdom about what it takes for you to do, engage with whatever it is that you need to do on a consistent basis. So the important takeaway here from this video is that consistency is not something you can demand of yourself. Consistency is something that is learned once you create the environment in which it can happen, that learning can happen. And that is done through reflection, through slowing down and honestly going into, okay, a curiosity as to why I wasn't able to follow through on that. There's a number of reasons why that I've been able to identify. They're pretty consistent. Taking on too much at once. The biggest reason most of us delay or fail to engage a project is that we're overwhelmed. The tendency for us to put these huge demands on ourselves to begin with is the very thing that stops us being consistent. So that becomes a part of it, right? That will be a part of that integrated wisdom I'm talking about. Okay. If I want to be consistent, I can't overwhelm myself. That's usually the first thing, right? Other little things. I was way too attached to how other people would view the thing I was doing or producing. That's information. That's a valid reason that would explain why you didn't engage with it. But instead of bulldozing ahead, you have to stop with that. And you have to really get curious and honest with yourself about what's going on here with this. Stop demanding consistency and start cultivating an environment of understanding where it can happen. Another reason why we would maybe fail to follow through on a thing would be that we don't have any guilt-free play scheduled in our lives. And we start to look at our day as a performance or a work day. It's just work, work, work. And there's no conscious attempt to actually switch off and do something else. That guilt-free play, that need we generally have has been protected strongly enough. That will create resistance. So again, if you're noticing, be consistent. I have no consistency in my life. I can't follow through. I can't seem to do it. The reason is that you're probably, you've been told or you bought into the idea that consistency is easy and straightforward and simple. Consistency isn't. Consistency requires deep reflection without judgment. And consistency, like the strategy that would make you consistent would be different to anybody else's. This is why you can't read a book. This is why all these books about the right strategy and the right hacks and the right morning routines and whatnot, they may be good for certain people, but maybe they're not good for you. You will find it through that reflection about what it is that created your resistance. And then you can adjust that to fit your strategy, this more informed strategy going forward. And that's what works. That's what over time, if you do that, if you can, basically what you do is you commit to creating a space for consistency and not beating yourself up over not taking action. And then you'll find that you become more informed about what it actually requires. So yes, you can be consistent, but stop telling yourself it's simple and straightforward and a command you can issue yourself. It isn't. It's deeply personal. It's tailored to each individual. And it has to do with what those individual issues are that that person has that creates the blocks and understanding them. So that's what it requires to be truly consistent. So please stop beating yourself up about it. It doesn't help. In fact, it's the worst thing you can do. It really is. That's the number one action item you could take from this if you want to be consistent. Stop attacking myself when I'm not. Now that doesn't mean you go in and you say to yourself, everything's fine. It's perfectly fine for me not to do the thing. No, you want to do the thing, but you just do it with a deeper, a slowing down and a curiosity into understanding the resistance that was there. Right. Because that is worth examining. It's not that there's nothing happening. There is something happening that warrants you investigating it and questioning it, understanding it more. But that's how you actually become consistent. Okay. So hope that's a useful comment and keep that in mind. Maybe apply it in whatever way works for you, but it will probably going to require a space for nonjudgmental reflection. That's useful. Take care. And I'll talk to you again very soon. Bye bye.