How To Be Consistent In Life With Anything

You’ve set your heart on something you really want to do or change. Maybe you decided to embark on this journey at the beginning of the year or sometime in April. You talked about it, felt excited, motivated, and inspired. But after a few days of taking action, you get tired. Your enthusiasm wears off. What you were so excited to do suddenly feels draining, and your brain keeps avoiding it even when you know it’s good for you.

You feel bad, but somehow you move on with your life knowing that there’s something you can do to make your life better, healthier, more fulfilling, and rewarding, but you’re not doing it because you lack consistency.

After analyzing the subject, including my struggles and progress with consistency, I can boldly say you can be consistent with anything, not everything, anything you choose. But before we talk about how to be consistent in life, let’s look at some reasons why we aren’t.

Why aren’t we consistent?

The reasons or excuses why we’re inconsistent with things that actually matter to us will form a never-ending list, but here are some of the most common ones:

Too many commitments

You want to do so many things at once. You want to play the piano, learn programming, frequent the gym, and learn 3 new languages on Duolingo while working a 9 to 5. Unfortunately, to shine at one thing, you may have to accept mediocrity in something else. The question is “What’s most important to you right now?”

Strenuous/overwhelming tasks

You’re feeling so excited, so you give yourself a hard task like working out for 2 hours daily when you’ve not been working out for years. Then, you wonder why you’re too sore in your mind and body to continue after the 3rd day. Your brain sees the activity as strenuous and does everything to prevent you from going at it again.

The illusion of a perfect time

You’re a little too organisational, like I am sometimes, and that’s the problem. You want things to be perfect before you start. Or, you pause your progress because you’re waiting for a tiny detail to fit in perfectly before it makes sense for you to continue. It’s either all or nothing for you. So, you end up stalling on important things for longer than you need to.

Impulsivity

You think there’s no need to plan. You like to take things as they come. You’ll have a burst of energy, work for 5 hours, and think it’s okay to do it 4 weeks later, when you feel deeply inspired again.

You consciously or subconsciously believe that no one should impose any action on themselves if they’re not feeling like it. Unfortunately, feelings alone aren’t reliable for building anything substantial. Not relationships, not career, and definitely not a powerful habit like consistency.

Zero tolerance for discomfort

Simply put, you don’t like stress. If it’s too hard, it must not be for you. You believe you shouldn’t have to go through much stress for something you want and love. Well, a dose of stress is the way of this world. If you’re unwilling to be inconvenienced, you’re not ready to grow.

How to be more consistent

Now that we’ve addressed why we aren’t being consistent, let’s talk about how to be more consistent:

Have a strong “why”

I see posts on X a lot where people say, “You only need discipline, motivation is overrated.” Hardly disagree, discipline is inspired by motives. We need to be intentional about having the right ones.

You need a picture in your mind to fuel your actions. A vision board, a person you want to become, an outcome, a status, a depth of intimacy. You need to define why you want to embark on a journey because that’s what consistency is, it’s a journey.

Set a specific goal

Sounds cliché, but hear me out. You need to know exactly what you want to do. Have a plan. Yes, plans change, but have one. Don’t start too many things at a time, especially when they’re time or energy-consuming activities.

Here, we’re focusing on actions, not outcomes. Decide on the goal (action) you want to repeat consistently until it becomes a part of your routine. Building consistency is what we’re trying to achieve, right? That’s what gets results anyway. Value who you’re becoming over outcomes. That’s how you grow. It’s the person you become that guarantees and sustains outcomes.

Focus on momentum, not intensity

Focus on momentum, not on intensity, at least in the beginning. Don’t be obsessed with things like “oh, I spent 10 hours…” “I’ve been consistent for 30 days.” I mean, you can brag later, but focus on actually getting to the place where you comfortably put in the reps consistently, then you can begin to scale your efforts.

Set priorities

You can be consistent with anything, but not everything at once. Define what your priorities are for the week, month, quarter, and year. Yes, your priorities can and will change, and once they do, adjust to show up where it matters.

Tackle the hard things early

We often avoid the difficult things. Have you ever had a difficult task to do, but you ended up doing anything else except that? Then you force yourself to hurry, maybe when you have a deadline or the day is coming to an end, and you just want to finish up asap so you can say you tried.

Give the hardest things your best effort. That involves starting early, maybe in the mornings, maybe at the beginning of the week, after you’ve rested from your weekend. Start early.

Review, continue, or stop

Consistency is about being intentional with what you do with your life. It’s a journey, not a one-off thing. Be comfortable with reviewing your progress, performance, and circumstances. Ask yourself questions like:

• Am I seeing any progress?
• Is this making me better at all?
• Are there any important areas in my life suffering because of my commitments?
• Can I make my routine or schedule slightly better?
• Do I need to let go of something?

Be comfortable with reviewing your progress and making the intentional decision to continue either in a similar or slightly changed circumstance. Or, just stopping one thing to make room for another.

Forgive and restore quickly

You’ll slip up sometimes. It’s not a prophecy. It’s probably happened before and will most likely happen again. Sometimes, you may not skip the action entirely, but your intensity begins to dwindle, maybe due to stress or disappointments.

Forgive yourself, train yourself to get back on track as quickly as possible. Being a consistent person is more about your ability to get back up when you don’t feel like it and continue even after you fail.

Tackle bottlenecks

Yes, you’ll have to deal with bottlenecks, both internal and external ones. Confront beliefs and lies holding you back. Ward off distractions. The interesting thing about bottlenecks is that they are unique to individuals. What is a hindrance to you might not be to someone else.

Someone may need to quit eating late because they feel bloated and lazy the next morning. Another person may eat at night and still feel hungry the next morning.

You may need to adjust your leisure time. You know what’s in your own way, confront it. Audit how you spend your time, what you do, how it makes you feel, and decide whether it’s adding or taking away from your consistency journey.

Cheers to more consistency

Consistency is a muscle you build, and for every area of your life where you need it to be stronger, you’ll require a bit more focus and intentionality. Also, value the person you become more than the outcome you expect. Do you like who you’re becoming? If yes, keep at it. Because outcomes follow consistent work and effort.

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