When I first started my life transformation journey, I stumbled upon a quote from Robert T. Kiyosaki that really resonated with me. It says:
“Your future is created by what you do today, not tomorrow.”
I used to struggle with procrastination, and despite setting SMART goals, making great plans, and having in mind a clear picture of what I wanted my future to look like, staying consistent was a huge struggle.
I would start every day telling myself, “today is my day 1” until I went off-track, ruined my efforts, and told myself, “I’ll do better tomorrow“.
It rapidly became a spiral, and I wasted almost a year postponing my plans without committing to them.
The truth is that you can set all the goals you want, make the greatest plans and be just as motivated; if you don’t stay consistent, your sporadic efforts won’t get you anywhere.
If you feel stuck and want to know how to be consistent in life, this post will help you make the necessary changes to commit to the new life you are creating for yourself.
Benefits of being consistent
Being consistent in life has many benefits.
If you want to achieve big life goals that require you to work hard and stay focused, being more consistent will considerably speed up the process.
A few months of hard work can really put you years ahead in life. We all hope we can find the secret recipe to success, enabling us to achieve our goals with the snap of a finger.
Unfortunately, the only way to success is hard work and patience.
Sometimes, luck can be a good help too. But let’s be honest; counting on luck to miraculously transform our lives is certainly not the fastest way to turn our lives around.
Having a plan and staying consistent is a much faster way to improve your life. In fact, if you do it right, you can transform your life in a couple of months only.
If consistency helps us achieve goals faster, it is also an incredible help to build trust and self-confidence.
Staying consistent even when life gets in the way will give you a sense of pride which will improve your self-esteem.
If you are used to setting goals but often fail to achieve them, consistency might be what you’re missing.
Causes of lack of consistency
Many different factors can cause a lack of consistency.
Lack of inspiration is usually the most common one. It will make you give up on your plans as soon as other things get in the way.
Staying inspired to achieve your goals will play an important role in your success. Adding sources of inspiration to your daily routines will help you stay motivated and committed to your goals.
Inspiration and motivation are closely related.
Staying inspired will help you stay motivated, which is important to stay consistent. We will discuss different sources of inspiration later in this post.
How to be more consistent in life
Set the right goals
Setting clear goals is the first step of every life-transforming journey. If you want to considerably improve your life, you need to set clear goals.
Unfortunately, setting SMART goals will not be enough to stay motivated and achieve them.
Indeed, you need to make sure that the goals you set will serve your long-term vision of the ideal life.
This implies that you need to figure out what makes you happy in life and how to add more of it to your daily routine.
If you do not yet have a clear picture of your ideal life in mind, you might want to do a life audit before setting goals.
Doing a life audit will help you understand what motivates you, what aspects of your life need to be improved to reach your definition of success, and how to set goals to support these changes.
Know who you want to be
It’s no secret; you become what you do daily. And sometimes, doing the right thing can be hard.
This is why “fake it until you make it” is sometimes the best advice you can follow.
If you’re trying to change to become a fitter, smarter or kinder person but don’t know where to start, ask yourself: “What would a fit/smart/kind person do?” and just do it.
This is actually the tip that helped me lose 40 lbs.
Whenever I needed to make a decision regarding what to do during my free time or what to eat, I used to ask myself that question and simply act according to it.
This simple tip really helped me stay motivated until I became that person.
It is also an amazing way to increase your confidence because when you act as the person you want to become, you feel an immediate sense of pride because you’ve just proved to yourself that you can do it.
This is why knowing who you want to be and picturing that person very clearly in your mind will help you stay consistent until you achieve your goals and actually become that person.
Implement new habits
Implementing new healthy habits will undoubtedly be part of the process if you want to make massive changes in your life.
Just as your goals, your new habits need to support the long-term vision of your dream life. Understanding why you set these habits and how they will help you achieve success will help you commit to them until they become automatic.
Habits are powerful because they help you work towards your goals on auto-pilot. And implementing a new habit is easier than setting goals.
However, a lack of consistency will again slow you down on your way to success. Following a new habit will only change your life if you do it on a very regular basis.
Tracking your habits will help you stay consistent until they become automatic. To track your habits, you can either use a to-do list app on your phone or use a habit tracker.
Since tracking new habits is a struggle for many of my readers, I’ve created a free resource that will make this process super easy.
It includes 17 different templates to get organized, plan effectively and track your daily/weekly/monthly habits.
To download it, subscribe using the form below.
Create routines
Once you have set your new habits, you can start thinking about how to stack them to make it easier to follow them.
Habit stacking is just another fancy way to describe a routine. Creating routines is a simple but effective tip to successfully implement new habits, commit to them and stay consistent.
When creating your routines, you need to take into account the duration of the activities you want to include in them.
To stay consistent, you need to make sure your routines stay realistic.
Writing a 2-hour routine on paper will be counterproductive if you are never able to stick to it. This is the best way to actually get demotivated and give up on your plans.
Instead, ensure you create routines you will be able to follow no matter how busy you get. Using a timer the first time you test a routine can be a simple way to do so.
Another important aspect of staying consistent with routines is to ensure you do not forget about any of your new habits.
This is why you should use a to-do list app or at least write your routines down until you follow them automatically.
Use reminders
Reminders are a great help to stay consistent in life.
With so many things going on in our lives, it is impossible to keep everything important in mind without writing things down.
Using reminders (post-its or mobile apps) will help you remember things to do or how to behave throughout the day.
Location-based or geolocated reminders are my favorite type of reminders. They work as any other reminder that pops up on your phone, except that they are not based on a specific time but on location.
When you set a location-based reminder, you save a reminder to, for instance, buy some milk and specify the store where you usually get it. The next time you are near the store, a reminder will pop up on your screen to remind you to go to the store and get some milk.
In-app reminders are great for keeping up with habits despite a busy schedule. If you don’t have time to check your planner during the day, using a reminder app will help you stay consistent.
Monitor your time
If you want to be consistent and achieve your goals, you need to ensure you use your time wisely.
Time is the most precious asset we have. Using it mindfully will help us get things done and optimize the way we use it.
If you feel like you don’t have enough time to work on your personal growth and achieve your life goals, you should give monitoring your time a try to understand how you currently use it.
You will be surprised to see that you can actually save a lot of time daily by avoiding distractions such as Netflix and social media and reallocating your time to work towards your personal goals.
Many apps, such as Screen Time and Timely can help you monitor your screen time to better understand what changes to implement to be more productive.
Find consistent sources of inspiration
As already discussed, inspiration and motivation are closely related. Hence, if you want to stay consistent in life, you need to ensure you have consistent sources of inspiration and motivation to keep you going no matter how busy you are.
If you want to stay inspired to be more consistent in life and achieve your goals, here are great sources of inspiration to use daily:
- Podcasts
- Personal growth books
- Ted Talks
Social media can also be a great source of inspiration as long as you use them consciously. If using social media makes you want to go back to bed and sleep to forget about your “miserable” life, you are definitely not using it right.
It can be really difficult to use social media to find inspiration to achieve goals. Most of the time, Instagram model showcase their perfect lives and make us feel bad because they make everything look so easy.
They have the most impossible morning routines, wake up a 4 am looking fresh despite sleeping only for 37 minutes, and get shit done non-stop without ever feeling demotivated.
Keeping in mind that this is not what their real life looks like is hard.
Social media can have a significant impact on your level of motivation. This is why you need to choose your models wisely and avoid the noise that will not help you achieve your goals.
Do things even when you don’t feel like it
Discipline is stronger than motivation.
Doing things before you feel like doing them is what will make the difference between success and failure.
Even when you really want to be consistent and do your best to stay motivated and inspired, you will have bad days.
It will be hard to keep up with your habits after a hard day/week/ month at work. Staying committed even when you don’t feel like doing the work will give you a confidence boost.
Consistency is key to long-term success. This is why discipline will always be stronger than motivation.
Visualize the person you want to become and show up as her every single day. This discipline will make you unstoppable.
Don’t overthink it
Paralysis by analysis can really hold you back when trying to achieve your goals.
Overthinking important decisions from time to time is normal and okay. It only becomes problematic when it keeps you from making trivial decisions.
If you feel like you consistently overthink, this behavior is probably causing you excessive stress.
Sometimes all you have to do is take action and accept that you might make a few mistakes along the way.
Being consistent is more important to achieving success than doing everything right.
Value the process and progress over perfection
Perfection is the enemy of action.
To get things done, you need to stop trying to achieve perfection and understand that progress is more valuable.
Action brings clarity. It can be hard to get things done when you don’t know where to start. However, the easiest way to cope with this situation is to get started anyway.
No matter what you are trying to achieve, you will make mistakes along the way. Mistakes are not a synonym for failure. Quitting is the only failure, and everything else is just gathering information.
Valuing the process over perfection will help you make progress consistently. And this is the key to long-term success.
Don’t lose sight of the bigger picture
It can be hard to put so much energy into something when the outcome is not certain.
No matter your goals, you need to keep the bigger picture in mind to be able to stay consistent when things do not seem to pay off.
When things do not work out as planned, keep in mind that consistent actions will always lead to progress. Consistency always pays off, no matter what you are trying to achieve.
When it’s getting harder to stay motivated and get things done, focus on the outcome and the bigger picture.
Having a clear vision of your goals and success will help you stay consistent in life no matter how hard things get.
Final thoughts
If you want to reach your goals and achieve long-term success, you will have to become more consistent.
Consistent actions will always lead to progress and help you considerably speed up your journey to success. Implementing healthy and productive habits every day will turn your life around fast.
Are you ready to become your best self? If so, the free eBook below will help you set goals, implement habits, create routines and track them to ensure you stay consistent and transform your life fast.
