The Power of Consistency

Consistency is the quality of always behaving or performing in a similar way; it is all about repetition. It is a word I come across in different facets of my life from cooking to project management.

From the consistency of a sauce which can refer to the look, feel, mouth-fill, structure or viscosity to consistency in a person’s attitude which can speak to how reliable they are and consistency of performance which can refer to a process, a person or even a sport’s team’s performance.

Sports fans are frustrated when their teams have inconsistent performances as it means they never know which way it’s going to go. Most of us don’t like change and many are outrightly against any change which through another lens means they want things to stay consistent and remain the way it has always been.

Consistency as a word can apply in both a positive or negative way; one can be consistently good, average or bad, a person can consistently make poor choices that derail their trajectory in life while others make consistently good choices that set them up for success over their lifetimes.

Many people that we tend to see as being lucky because life has supposedly panned out well for them often apply ‘consistency’ to many of their ‘behind the scenes’ actions. It could be that they consistently write a chapter of their book every week which means they can publish quickly or perhaps they consistently read everyday so always appear knowledgeable which consequently gains them trust in business dealings.

In today’s post, I want to connect the dots between consistency and success. Success comes with consistency. A sales person might get a ‘no’ from hundreds of people which would put most of us off but a consistent sales person isn’t deterred by a no; they keep going until they get their first yes and their second until getting yes is almost their expected result. Also their consistency means they finetune and perfect their sales pitch until they can consistently deliver it without missing a beat.

If we bring this back to the social media space, there are millions of people who maximise social media to their advantages and at the root of this is consistency. The consistency of their posts matched with good quality content means they gather followers quickly as their followers can’t wait to see what they produce.

Consistency comes at a price

I love the phrase that says, ‘Success is never owned, it is rented. And the rent is due every day.’ This is so powerful and worth pondering or meditating on.

You can never own success, you rent it everyday by doing the needful and paying the price everyday. And the price looks like showing up to work, showing up for your family, showing up for your business and showing up for you.

It’s like wanting to focus on our health and wellbeing: you can’t focus one day and not the next, you can’t eat right one week and give up the next week. This is why successful weight-loss or healthy eating must be accompanied by permanent lifetime changes.

One of my rules for any major change – career, dietary, behavioural or health changes is to ask the question, ‘can I do this for the rest of my life?’ If it is a change I need to make for the rest of my life, I focus on how to make it happen rather than the immediate knee jerk decision to start something that I am likely to stop a week later.

Consistency adds up

Consistency is like a muscle that is built up through working at it everyday and it is proved over time. You can make a promise to be consistent but you can’t be consistent on day one of any action, decision or choice. The first day, you keep your promise to complete that action, then you simply repeat on the next day until you can say you have been consistent over the past week, month or year. You build and earn consistency with performance.

As Dwayne Johnson puts it, ‘Success isn’t overnight. It’s when every day you get a little better than before. It adds up.’

Consistency comes with blips

Even with the best intent, blips happen because life happens. You may be consistent with going to the gym to work on your physical health but what happens if you fall ill or had to have an operation that means you can’t work out for some time. What happens if you have to catch an early train on a work trip that means you can’t go for your morning run.

What happens if someone in addiction recovery takes their eyes off the ball or hangs out in a place that emotionally takes them back to their old ways. We all make mistakes and have a bad day in the office or at home, a bad moment when we eat what we shouldn’t, sleep in longer than we should or procrastinate an action that should be done.

The point is blips happen intentionally or accidentally but we can take immediate corrective actions by drawing a line under it and immediately getting back on track. Just because you made a mistake doesn’t mean you have to wallow in the cesspit of pity. Don’t eat the whole packet of chocolate because you already ate the bar you shouldn’t have eaten. Draw a line underneath the poor choice and deploy your restart button.

As Conrad Hilton puts it, “Successful people keep moving. They make mistakes, but they don’t quit.”

Thanks for reading my post. Knowledge is best when shared so please share this post with others and see you next week.