What Consistency Looks Like

We’ve all heard the following advice before.

Be consistent.

Show up every day.

If it’s important, do it daily.

The big, flashy things we see, like kicking the winning goal, the photoshoot with six-pack abs, or having your name on the cover of a book. They’re all great, but that’s the result of consistency.

So, what does it look like? There’s plenty of advice that tells you consistency is the secret sauce and how to get it. It often takes the form of hard-ass advice, like get out of bed and do it. No pain, no gain. Only losers skip a Monday. You don’t want to be a loser, do you?

Tough love is one way to approach it, because nobody likes to fail.

So, what does it really look like?

I’m going to start by explaining what it doesn’t look like.

Consistency Vs Perfection

People often confuse perfection with consistency.

Perfection means being flawless, or complete. It signifies the utmost level of excellence, skill, or proficiency.

Consistency refers to acting, behaving, or performing in a steady, uniform, and dependable way over time.

The definitions are different, so what confuses people? Some feel they need to be perfect to be consistent, and when they are not, everything goes to crap. Nothing screams this more than dieting. They start all guns blazing, sticking to their diet no matter the cost.

Then life happens. You forgot to pack your lunch. Or work through lunch, and by the end of the day, you’re screaming hungry. Or someone offers you your favorite forbidden fruit that’s not on your diet.

The examples where life screws up your plans are endless.

Life tests willpower, combined with the willpower required to diet; something will often give. People with an all-or-nothing mindset will say screw it, and eat the tub of ice cream. Others will see it as a setback and get right back to work. A certain degree of perfection is needed to be consistent; that’s why IMO they get confused.

Think of perfection as the stars and consistency as the moon. It would be nice to reach the stars, but human nature tells us that perfection is almost impossible. The moon is pretty good too; reach for that instead. 

Consistency Vs Punishment

Let’s not delve too far into Dr. Phil territory; let’s stick with what I know: diet and exercise. To be successful at both, it is safe to say that being steady, uniform, and dependable over time is key.

You know that because that’s what we have been told over and over.

However, change is hard, and people who are changing their diet, exercise, or both are often not doing so from a place of happiness. They don’t like the number on the scale, and they don’t recognize the person in the mirror.

To achieve consistency and maintain motivation for change, they treat diet and exercise as punishment. I have been a naughty boy or girl, and now I need to starve myself and drag myself out of bed for my 6 am run.

They use negative thoughts to drive positive change.

The same could be said for many things beyond diet and exercise. Consistency is harder when you punish yourself. If you are using shame to achieve a goal or make a change, you’re doing so from shaky ground.

Although you may need a little perfection to achieve consistency, punishment should be nowhere near it.

Showing Up

Most Mondays since April 2016, I’ve published a blog post. To date, I’ve published 506 posts. I’ve achieved this by making Monday blog post day. Regardless of how I’m feeling or what’s going on outside my computer, I hit the publish button.

I haven’t been perfect, nor punished myself, but I have done that one thing. Showed up on most Mondays and hit the button. Remember the definition for consistency? Being dependable over time. Imagine trying to punish or be perfect for 10 years. That’s impossible. But showing up for yourself and others week after week and year after year, that’s doable.

In fact, showing up is what consistency looks like.

Wrapping Up

I hope you now have a clearer sense of what consistency looks like. You know the definition, you know you need it to achieve your goals, and you know what it doesn’t look like.

But you also know what it does look like.

Keep showing up for yourself and others, and good things will happen.

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