The Power of Consistency

Photo by Emma Matthews on Unsplash

It’s hard to stay consistent. It’s hard to keep up the habits we’re trying to establish, like new years resolutions that we do for a while, but then the balloon deflates with our enthusiasm. We go back to the old ways because they’re ingrained deep into our routines.

Humans are creatures of habit. Sometimes that makes it difficult to create new ones. Staying consistent will help us build the habits that we want to create.

Consistency builds trust.

Have you ever made plans with someone just to have them cancel on you? Did you trust that their excuse was genuine, or did you suspect that they were just flaking out? Chances are you base your judgement on your experience of their past behavior, their consistency.

Have you ever been surprised by a person’s judgement of you? Chances are they based their judgement on their past experience with your consistent behavior toward them or others.

Staying consistent is how you build connections with people. Staying in touch, working or playing together, you build a rhythm with people based on consistent behaviors you exhibit.

When someone does something out of character (according to our knowledge), it surprises us and puts us off. We lose that rhythm that we created. It makes us wonder just a little bit if we were wrong. Not enough to break a relationship, but we hesitate.

Remaining consistent will help people build trust in you. Do the things you say you’ll do and people will learn to depend on your promises. Carrying those promises through every time will build that trust in you and create a better relationship overall.

This is important for every day relationships as well as newfound relationships.

Consistency builds on your work/content.

Of course we’ve heard the story of the race between the tortoise and the hare. Slow and steady wins the race. Or as Nick Stephenson, an author/entrepreneur puts it, “Even a 1% improvement every day doubles your results.” Little drips into your bucket of awesome build overtime.

Think about diets or working out. Hitting the gym no matter how hard once or twice a month isn’t going to help you achieve your goals. The recommended amount of exercise by Health…