All of us either have something we want to start doing in our lives or a habit we want to incorporate into our everyday routines. It could be something as small as getting up at five in the morning or signing up for classes to learn a new language. Starting these things are easy enough. You will do them every day for a few weeks because it intrigues you so much or because you think doing that task will make your days better. But where most of us fail is after the initial few weeks when the charm or novelty of the task wears off. It either gets boring or too difficult to follow along (unless you’ve been diligently studying everyday). Instead of fighting through that and consistently carrying out the task, we give up.
Cambridge dictionary defines consistency as ‘the quality of always behaving or performing in a similar way’ among many other definitions of the term. That definition in itself sounds very boring. Unless you are super invested in that task or topic, you wouldn’t like doing the same thing over and over again. But without consistency, you will not achieve the desired results in any thing you do.
If you look at any successful individual, they were consistently hustling in their field of interest for years before their hard work paid off. In today’s age when everyone is flaunting their filtered lifestyle through social media platforms, it can be very easy to believe that people attain success with a snap of their fingers. But even those individuals who you think are getting recognized as soon as they started their careers have actually put in years of hard work. And people who become famous or ‘successful’ without putting in much effort can’t hold onto their successes for a long time since they don’t really know the importance of hard work and consistency.
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Even though you feel like you aren’t making much progress by doing something everyday, keep on doing that task. You will slowly but surely get better at performing that task but if you give up halfway down the line, you won’t reach anywhere. When you finally get the desired success in that field, you will also treasure the success more because you know you had to put in years of hard work to get to that stage. And because you already have a habit of practicing or carrying out that task regularly, you won’t slack off even after you reach your initial goal.
We have all heard our parents talk about the importance of forming good habits that benefit us. Most of us probably didn’t give it much thought back then but as you grow up you begin to realize the importance of habit formations. And consistency and habit formations are very intimately related. You form a habit only after doing that task consistently for a long period of time. If you think about it, consistency isn’t really a new thing people are discovering just now. But the fact that a lot of people are bad at it makes me believe it truly is a superpower. We can all get it and we all know how important it is as a trait. But not all of us achieve it. And those of us who can’t train ourselves to be consistent end up being only mildly successful at whatever we try to do.
I actually struggle with being consistent myself. I’ve signed up to do a lot of things every day. But every so often, I miss out on completing one of the tasks. Sometimes it’s because I procrastinate but most of the time it’s because I have too much I’m trying to juggle. And every time I miss out on doing something that I’ve promised to myself I’d do consistently, my mood sours.
The one thing I’ve learned in my journey of trying to be more consistent is that even developing this particular trait requires a lot of consistent hard work. It’s pretty easy to remain consistent once you develop a habit of being consistent. But once you slack off, you will gravitate towards wanting to slack off frequently. To avoid this from happening, don’t give into procrastination. Don’t let yourself believe that slacking off this one time will not hamper you in the long term.
I believe consistency is a superpower because it can take our mundane lives to greater heights. And even though it’s such an accessible trait that literally anyone can develop, most people fail to do so. The ones who do succeed in being consistent and following through all their tasks, however, are unstoppable. That, in my eyes, makes them superheroes with an enviable superpower.
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