If I had a dollar for every time I heard the quote “practice makes perfect”, I would have thousands of dollars. But, that quote isn’t true. Although practice and consistency are closely related, what practice really does is build the muscles and pathways necessary for consistency. To strive for perfection and have continued success for any extended period of time it takes deliberate, focused, and consistent practice. Consistency is vital to any long-term success story.
Being consistent is a powerful tool for success; it is one of the keys to building trust and credibility with customers, clients, and colleagues. It also helps to create and maintain healthy relationships with others. When you are consistent in your behavior, others will come to know what to expect from you and will be more likely to trust and rely on you. Consistency also helps with goal setting and achieving success. When you remain consistent with your actions, it will be easier to stay motivated and on track towards reaching your goals.
A huge factor in becoming great at anything is a person’s ability to simply be consistent. You cannot become great at anything without consistently doing it. The discipline to practice something over and over again creates the muscles that create the pathway to becoming great. One measure of greatness is being able to do a thing at a high level consistently. It is important to learn that consistency will determine the direction of your life. If you consistently do things the right way, then you will consistently get positive results, and if you consistently do things the wrong way, then you will surely get negative results.
I have found this to be true in both my personal and professional life. Whether it’s positive or negative, whatever I consistently feed will grow, and whatever I consistently starve will die. It is so important to pay attention to what you’re consistently doing, how you’re doing it, and why you’re doing it. You can easily be consistently practicing doing the wrong things and end up being great at something negative, such as manipulation, deception, gas-lighting, and lying.
Success and consistency go hand and hand. A study of most successful people shows a pattern of consistency. One of the main things I admire most about my mentors and heroes is their consistency.
Consistency plays a huge role in our choices. It is what we fall in love with in our mate; it is also the reason we return to our favorite restaurant or shop at our favorite store. It is also the reason we want to try that signature dish from a famous restaurant or stay at that credible resort because we want to see if it is consistent with the reviews we heard.
So many aspects of our lives are inconsistent and unreliable. It is important to find an area of consistency that we can always depend on to bring about a sense of security and stability. Hebrews 13:8 in the Bible declares that God is always the same and never changes. He is forever good, forever loving, and all-powerful. No matter how we change or the people around us change, we can have faith that God is consistent. He is the same yesterday, today and forever. Amen.
As we in society become more impatient, our attention spans decrease, and instant gratification becomes the norm, the individuals that are able to fight those urges and practice consistency will become successful. We all know consistency is important and still we self-sabotage so many of the things that we say are important to us, by doing the opposite and being inconsistent. Remember, knowing and doing are two totally different things.
As for me, I was tired of being inconsistent and decided to implement some new habits that would help me to be more consistent in my own life. One of the main things that I started doing is adding discipline to my regimen, which in turn brought about a level of consistency. Forcing myself to tidy the room before bed (even though I don’t feel like it), disciplining myself to read the Word of God daily (even when my schedule is already full), and putting effort into communicating (even when I simply want to shut down) are some of the things that I started doing to build those consistency muscles for myself. Decide today that you too will start to become aware of the things that you’re doing consistently, positive or negative. Then, slowly start to eliminate the negative one’s and increase the positive ones. Let’s build the consistency muscle with deliberate and focused, practice together. It may not be easy, but it will be worth it.
