How to be consistent - Consistency Tips
Introduction
If you go on any social platform and see a wellness and health related content, you can see that they mostly talk about consistency. Most creators give consistency and discipline a huge credit while sharing their journey. What is consistency? Why is it so important? How can you be consistent? In this writing, I will talk about this.
What does consistency actually mean?
Consistency in its dictionary meaning is; the quality of always behaving or performing in a similar way, or of always happening in a similar way. Consistency in terms of wellness on the other hand, similar to the definition, can be defined as doing the same positive things everyday, meaning that you are performing in the similar positive way for your wellness journey. Meaning you are committed. Certainly, this doesn’t mean that you can’t be sad, you can experience negative emotions and think about negative things, however, if you are doing even the smallest thing to make a change everyday, this means you are consistent in your journey. Discipline usually aligns with consistency, hence why motivation shouldn’t be your key focus; but you should be focusing on staying consistent.
Why is it actually important to be consistent?
Most people that want to start their “healing” and “wellness” journey does a common mistake: waiting to be better or waiting for some circumstances to change in order to actually start the journey. People don’t always have the motivation, since we are sentient beings and how we feel directly affects how we behave. It is hard to control your feelings, however behaviours can be controlled in time.
You shouldn’t be waiting for a certain thing to happen to start changing your life, adding quality into it. A common example is when people say “I will start dieting on Monday, I can eat anything I want on Sunday”, and they usually can’t start dieting on Monday since they ate a lot on Sunday, hence didn’t feel like it. So, they wait until the next Monday. This can create a cycle, which shows a lack of will and motivation to do something. A consistent person wouldn’t wait for something to happen, they would just find different ways to do something.
Consistency ensures the positive behaviours to become more of your habits and overall helps you to achieve your wellness goals in the long term. Consistency is important since negative behaviours and habits are hard to change, which means it will take long and you need to put in effort in the long run.
How to be consistent?
Being consistent is not easy, especially if you struggle with sticking to routines or long term goals. I had/still have this issue.
Find your comfort zone and try to break it. If you feel like staying at home is too relaxing and you can’t be bothered to get out of bed or do something productive, it is time to take action against this. A comfort zone is where you feel like slacking off, where you feel relaxed and feel like it is time to rest. You can’t force yourself to do something, hence you shouldn’t; but you can do it for once and when you feel better, you will see that you will want to do it more. Get out of your comfort zone. If your comfort zone is being outside with your friends, spend more time inside; it doesn’t have to be your room. If you want to stay at your house and be consistent, try to change places in your house. For instance, if you stay at your room all the time, go to the living room to study, go to another room.
Most of the time our environment affects our motivation, hence consistency. If you can’t change your environment, don’t wait to get better or for your environment to change in order to start the journey. If you don’t like your room and can’t study in that environment, find somewhere else to study. It can be a cafe, a park, a library, even a restaurant or college/university study spaces.
Spend more time alone. Learning how to enjoy spending time on your own is so important on the road to both consistency and your overall wellbeing. Try to spend some time learning about yourself; ask yourself some questions like, what do I enjoy doing, what am I good at, who do I like, who would I like to be, what would I like to be good at… Focus on these and work on yourself. If you learn how to be on your own and enjoy your time alone, you will be consistent easily and also be invincible. There is nobody who knows you better than you!
Think about what makes you feel like you “messed up”. For instance, if you wake up late one day and you feel like you messed your whole schedule and that your journey is going bad, so you want to stay at bed the whole day; take a shower, get dressed, go outside. Walk. Grab some coffee. Read some book. The place doesn’t have to be far, if you have a park next to you, go there. If you have a cafe next to you, go there. If you own a house and you have a backyard, sit there. Stay outside. Being outside forces you to stay out of your comfort zone, hence will make you feel better.
If you have friends, try to make plans with them to break your comfort zone and have a reason to go outside, to socialise. If you don’t have friends, try to spend some time alone first, then when you have enough courage, talk to a stranger at a cafe and be friends with them. It can be shocking to see how friendly some people are. If you can’t be confident, I will also give some tips on how to be more confident this week, you can also check it out.
Put in little effort but every single day. Staying consistent doesn’t mean that you need to do something that you never did all of a sudden everyday. To be consistent, start with small steps. Just things like: walk more, go outside more, travel more, find new hobbies and try to work on them more, study more, do something MORE, not ALWAYS. Everyday, do something, but don’t go hard on yourself. Even writing about your feelings for 10 minutes or going outside to walk for 10 minutes is SOMETHING.
I hope these tips help you throughout your journey! You can always email me or contact me on my socials if you need support or help with something. You can also book a session with me for 50 minutes to just talk about things and get advice from me. I will help you.
I trust you, I’m with you. You got this! Start today, don’t delay. Stay safe!
Love, ela.