You can’t put in 50 cents into the soda machine and buy a $1.00 soda. Consistency is what shows you and the world what is important to you and brings it closer to you every day. There are no shortcuts that can allow you to circumvent consistency. Consistency is what separates those that have new years resolutions and keep them past January and from those who have already slacked off and quit by January 5th.
The interesting thing about consistency is that you may have figured out exactly the action steps to reach your goal and you may know how to do each perfectly but not doing those actions steps consistently has completely stopped all the progress and has kept your results away from you. You can have the perfect boat, the perfect hook, the perfect fishing line, the perfect bait and hook the the largest fish but if you don’t consistently reel that spool on the fishing rod, you will lose that fish or it will stay in the water.
Why is it So Difficult to Stay Consistent?
The irony about achieving the results we want is that we more than likely already know the majority of what we have to do to accomplish our goals. This means that for the most part, figuring out the actions we need to take is not the difficult part. However, for some reason, consistency tends to be the culprit. If you think about it, it’s illogical and border-line insane to really need or want something yet have an issue with doing the work for it. In any case, not consistently working towards your goal(s) simply means you don’t actually want or need it bad enough.
There are some lessons I have learned from experience and through my times of struggling with being consistent in some things. I find that in order for you to set yourself up for success in this area you have to be in the right frame of mind and it has to be the right time in your life to pursue particular goals and have a chance at sticking to the work required to achieve those goals. I heard a long time ago at a conference, “you can do all the things you want, you just can’t do them all at once.” I find that having too many competing priorities or distractions hinder you from keeping your mind on the one or two things that you need to keep working on. With that said, most people live lives of total distraction with menial and unimportant things. Most people are too busy being busy that they have no time to be productive. If you are able to remove these distractions, you will free up the time required to work daily on the important tasks.
Consistency requires a strong mind and a disciplined person. Once you become that person, you can accomplish anything. At the end of the day, it is quite simple. You are either doing the wrong thing, or the right thing in the wrong way. Think about that. Figure you out exactly what you need to accomplish, list the daily tasks required to get the end result, and do those things daily. Structure your day in a way that allows you to work on those tasks and create a success routine that works for you.
