“Discipline is choosing between what you want now and what you want most”
Abraham Lincoln
“We are what we repeatedly do. Excellence, then, is not an act, it is a habit”
Aristotle
Both quotes above clearly express the result and power of consistency. Life, every single aspect of it, is about consistency and discipline. You can change the world just by doing the same thing over and over again in a positive way. Even to love, you need to do it consistently to learn to do it right. I mean, the phrase: you are the love of my live, only makes sense if she or he actually becomes that. The only way to do that is to love, forgive and understand consistently.
The results of being consistent is the result of every champion, you will get the results you want, from losing weight to be more charismatic, every change in your life starts with do the power of doing it consistently.
- You will create a habit
The power of consistency starts with habits, the activities that we repeat every day without even thinking about it. Like for example, brushing your teeth every morning, it is a habit our parents help us create by doing it consistently when we were kids. (if you read The Power of Habit, you will learn how advertisement and the habit loop created this habit so engraved in our daily lives). Can you imagine your day without brushing your teeth?
We usually mix up the concepts of consistency and habits. Truth be told, to create a habit, something we do without thinking, first we need to do it consistently. As Charles Duhigg explained in his book the Power of Habit, doing something repeatedly will make that something be engraved in our prefrontal brain so that it becomes so automatic that we don’t have to think of it to complete it.
However, you need to be careful. The power of consistency will work both ways. You can create both good and bad habits by doing it consistently. You can eat a hamburger each day for lunch as you can eat a salad, which of the two become a habits will depend on YOU, what do you want to do with your life and how do you want to live it.
Ask yourself the following questions at the end of everyday and it will help you define the habits to instill in your life:
- I am happy with my life?
- My actions today are a reflection of what I want most for my life?
- If not, what things do you have to do to be or get what you want most in your life?
2. You will become an expert
Excellence is a synonym of an expert. Every time you want to confirm something, we will get the opinion of an expert. Like Aristotle work at the beginning of this post “we are what we repeatedly do. Excellence, then, is not an act, but a habit.” To become an expert and be excellent at what you do, the power of consistency doing something will allow it to become an expert in any field. You will become who you want to be by doing in a consistency basis, so you will learn to love, only by loving others many times. Like a baby learns to love because the love, caring and acting, consistently of his/her mother.
As a result, we become experts by doing, practicing and changing, repeatedly. Before concluding in the phrase above, Aristotle began analyzing that a man/woman nature is to find happiness, which comes in the long run by gaining experience, and experience, again, is accomplished first by understanding how happiness is achieved and second by simply doing and practicing to get this experience.
3. You will overcome obstacles you thought you could not
When I started running a few years back, I was overnight and my knees hurt for every 50m I tried to run. However, I needed to lose weight to improve my health, not only my knee, but my general health levels. So, instead of running I started walking for 30 minutes everyday. At the end of that year I ran my first Marathon, the Disney Marathon to be more exact. How was I able to do that? The biggest obstacle I overcame was my own limitation and paradigm, that overweight persons like me will never run a marathon.
However, the power of consistency relies in these other key elements so that you can reap all of its benefits:
- Avoid negative thinking. If you dwell too much in self negative talk, you will never complete a task more than twice. This will sabotage any dream or goal you have in your life.
- Understand that there will always be bad days. Don’t be afraid of those. learn from it and move on.
- Don’t wait until it is perfect. Nothing but God is perfect in this life, so embrace the Don’t worry be happy vibe.
4. You will fulfil your dreams
Yes, you will! However, be clear to put your feet on the ground and do the work today to get where you want to be tomorrow. Learn the lesson from the milkmaid and her bucket of milk fable. Don’t stayed halfway there because everything changes, keep doing, keep walking, watch your steps.
Once you know what you have to do, don’t imagine what will happen, you may lose your thoughts in there. Just keep going, keep working consistently and you will see how the power of consistency will get you where you want to be.
5. You will change
Yes, you will. I love to follow weight loss influencer. Maybe because you can see the change vividly. You can see that it is possible, and the new habit will make you more experienced. You will become an expert and you will be a different person that were when you started your journey.
By doing consistently, you will become who do you want to be. So, stop imagining the life you want, and start doing what it takes to get that life, and you will change. Something static, will never change. But if you keep moving, you will evolve at every turn, learning, becoming and changing.
So, what is it that you have to do consistently with your life today to be able to change and fulfill your dreams?
