The Power of Consistency: Where Would You Be Today if You Kept Going?

Sylvia Salow
Aug 28, 2017 · 5 min read
Image Courtesy of Pixabay

“Success isn’t always about greatness. It’s about consistency. Consistent hard work leads to success. Greatness will come.” — Dwayne Johnson

Consistency didn’t belong to the list of my most favorite words. Actually, as an artist, I naturally used to despise consistency, and whenever someone has brought this topic up, I just wanted to leave the room. It felt incredibly annoying and limiting to me. I was thinking that being consistent equals living without inspiration and imagination.

I’ve noticed that many creative souls feel the same about consistency. And I can understand. Now I also understand how being consistent can create the life you want.

Why don’t some people like consistency?

For many of us being consistent means being a person of habits. We want to be free spirited, creative, and unbounded. Anything that resembles limitations can scare many people to the point that they rather do the exact opposite.

They rather choose to always surprise by doing something new. Some can have foreign interests because it makes them feel alive. They don’t want to be restricted by those earthly to-do lists and musts.

While I can understand this, I also know that this thinking can sabotage us more than anything.

Being inconsistent is a form of self-sabotage

If you don’t like consistency, the chances are that you also don’t show up for yourself. Maybe you unconsciously make sure that you’re always late or when you’re working on an important project you don’t feel good, so you make sure you don’t bring your best self into it.

Or perhaps you’ve started over million times studying Italian and before making the breakthrough you’ve stopped coming to classes. Maybe you’ve signed up for yoga classes, but after few visits, you’ve persuaded yourself that it takes too much time out of your week that you’re better of not continuing.

When you’re inconsistent, you never give yourself an honest chance to succeed.

After talking to many entrepreneurs, I’ve noticed that all of them resist to some degree being consistent and they unconsciously use it as a way to neglect their power. For instance, they indulge in behaviors which don’t bring their business further yet, on the other hand, they don’t show up for the very activities that their clients need.

Any advancement requires you showing up on a daily basis.

Let’s say that you’d like to get fit by swimming twice a week. You go first two weeks and then your mind starts to talk your way out of it. The little voice in your head starts telling you that you’ll never get fit, it’s too time-consuming, the results aren’t as you’ve hoped for, and so on.

While you think that it would be a relief to quit, you’re sabotaging yourself. It’s the fear-based part of the mind that wants you to stay in the status quo. It feels safer and more familiar. Therefore when you begin doing new things, this part of the mind trying to protect you by keeping safe, so it keeps sending you the thoughts of quitting.

The power of consistency — rephrase what consistent means

Any achievement requires some degree of consistency. There wouldn’t be artists like Mozart, Shakespeare or scientists like Tesla if they wouldn’t be consistent. Of course that they could have thought that it’s boring and restricting them to sit by the piano and keep composing. But by doing just so, they’ve turned their fate into a destiny and have impacted the whole humanity.

You don’t have to be a composer to have a reason to become more consistent.

I’d like you to start thinking about consistency differently. Instead of thinking about it like of something that is taking something from you — like your time, freedom, energy. I want you to rephrase it and begin to consider consistency as something that adds to your life.

When you’re inconsistent, it’s like wanting to travel 1000km through an overgrown forest path. You go few meters then you have to stop. Then you think if you should take another path. Then you return and start somewhere else again.

While being consistent is like taking a highway. You know that one day, you’ll arrive. You don’t have to change your direction, neither spend your energy on considering other ways.

Consistency opens up for you a whole new world. There in the consistency land lies fulfillment of your dreams.

You can choose to be consistent in many ways — creating new habits that support you, committing to success by preparing for your language classes or being consistent about not giving up.

It’s not the actions you perform sporadically that shape your life. It’s the actions that you do on a consistent basis that creates the difference you want.

Take an inspired consistent actions

How can you combine spontaneity and consistency in your life?

If you want to make sure that you’re doing the right things, do the things that you feel called to do. It’s your soul guiding you. You can feel it as glimpses of inspiration and intuition.

You can trust me that save a lot of time when you begin to act on your inspiration.

Once you’re clear on what you want, sit down and think about the best ways how you can show up for your dreams on a consistent basis. It’s very likely that at some point, the fear-based mind will kick in. So the key to keep showing up is to clear these negative thoughts.

These 3 steps — choosing the inspired action, getting consistent, letting go of the fear and self-sabotage — will create a huge shift in your life. Then just keep repeating them.

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Therefore I invite you to create your own lifestyle and the daily schedule that reflects YOU.

Originally published at sylviasalow.com on August 22, 2017.

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Sylvia Salow

Written by

Life coach, public speaker, author. Let go of the limiting beliefs to create the life you deeply desire. TEDx Talk: http://bit.ly/TEDxLifePurpose

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