WHY’S IT SO HARD TO BE CONSISTENT?
I wanted to come here today and discuss consistency. It’s a word that’s used often in our lives. Be consistent online. Be consistent with disciplining our kids. Be consistent with eating and exercising. Why is it so hard to be consistent though?
There is research behind consistency and how it can help with development (this research is easy to find, so I will not be diving into specifics about this) so you’d think that’s all we need. It’s clearly not though. It’s so hard. It’s so hard because of the pressure. We put pressure on ourselves to get it right and perfect everyday. The outside world is pressuring us. The internet is pressuring us. We have it in our heads that consistency means perfection. What if that isn’t true?
Have you ever asked yourself what consistency means to you? I finally had to recently and I came up with this: Consistency is doing things and showing up on a regular basis. I think of it like friendships. You may not talk to your friend every day. You might text them once a week this week and 5 times next week. Maybe you haven’t talked to them in a week, so you reach out and say “Hey, I’ve been so busy! What’s been going on with you?” Our friendships are still successful even though they’re not perfect and were not talking to our friends daily. I think framing consistency this way can take some pressure off of us. You show up on a regular basis online, 3 times this week 1 time next week, 6 times the following week. You have limited screen time for your child most days, but some days it’s a lot. You exercise 3 times a week most weeks, but some weeks it’s once. 90% of your meals are healthy and sometimes you get ice cream and a burger for lunch (me today). But you’ll still be successful in gaining a following, in having limited screen time for your child, in exercising and eating healthy.
Long story short, there’s a lot of pressure in this world to do things perfectly. So we try and then fail (because no one is perfect) and then we really fall off the deep end and stop showing up online, stop exercising, stop caring about screen time, etc. But what if we just kept showing up on a regular basis? Whether that’s once this week and 6 next week or no screen time today and an hour tomorrow. Will we fail even if we’re not perfect? Or will we be successful, just at a slower pace?
Sometimes we need those harder weeks or days to recognize how doing things on a regular basis (or consistently) are really benefiting us. So all this to say, try taking some pressure off (says the 30-something year old who has never been able to implement this into her life until very very recently) and do things on a regular basis, don’t give up. The results you want to see may take a little longer, but it’s ok because it will last and soon you’ll have a beautiful friendship with all those things you used to give up on.
XO Erin
