It is very hard for us to try anything new or anything that we are not very familiar with. It is often hard not because of the complexity of that task itself but rather because of our fear of the unknown. The wisdom that comes with age is actually just your experience that fills in the gaps of your knowledge about these uncertainties. The good news, however, is that you can always overcome this fear and its consequent hardship if you just stick with it. But most people would not be able to do that as they will give up on the arduous path and opt for an easier one even if the destination of that path be something that they despise. Most people would abandon ships on encountering their first storm and not look at the bigger picture or the long term plan. Of course, those who stay consistent get to reach their destinations as well as enjoy much more than what they had originally anticipated. But saying it is much easier said than done.
Developing consistency is the steepest of the challenges that you will ever encounter on your path to success. But before you get to climbing on that stage to overcome it, you need to at least start on your journey. We often like to delay opting for the hard tasks as much as we possibly can, hoping that they will take care of themselves and you will just get the rewards delivered to you. We want to close our eyes and hope that all of the deadlines just fade away. Unfortunately, reality is in quite the stark contrast to our wishful thinking as we ourselves have to tackle our hardships head-on and face them. Once you understand you own responsibility in dealing with difficult challenges, you will seek them out as challenges rather than avoid them as calamities. To overcome any mountain, you first need to convince yourself to start preparation for doing just that and then take your first step, even if it be a baby’s step. This is the hardest step on the journey but if you have realized that you are responsible for the solution of your own problems, then you will be guaranteed to take it.
Taking A Step is More Important
Even when you have taken the hardest step on your journey and started, it will not get you where you want to go. And that’s where consistency comes into play. Making progress towards reaching your goal is solely dependent on how much progress you are making. A very important think to note here is that making progress is much more important than making greater progress. You can always improve the amount of work you do or how big of a step you take towards reaching your goal but learning to take that step every day is the key that will ensure that you do get there. Taking that step every day is what separates those who succeed from those who do not. It absolutely does not matter how much you can accomplish in your step if it is not consistently followed by the next one. So learn to take a step regularly, even if you do not make strides towards reaching your goal.
For example, consider a student X who tries to take a very big step and study the whole night to prepare for an exam. Studying for the whole night does not mean that you will retain everything as you are bound to get tired after your mind reaches its capacity to store new information and you will also be more sluggish for the next day. Since the student forced himself to study for the whole night, that means he did not allow his brain to recharge via resting and pushed through to make a big step towards reaching his goal. In contrast, consider a student Y who only studied for an hour, but he was consistently studying for an hour throughout the whole month. The latter student(i.e. student Y) is more likely to succeed over the former student(i.e. student X) because the time he has spent studying is not only quantitatively more but will also allow him to exert his mental capacity to the fullest without wearing out.
Trust the Process
It is human nature to be hasty and many of us want to see the results of our efforts quickly manifest themselves in our life. Although we really do want to see them, these effects very rarely appear in such a short span of time. More often than not, you will need to have a lot of patience and put in a lot of work before they actually become apparent to you. If you want to be consistent, then you have to learn to trust the process i.e. you have to learn that no matter how small the steps that you are taking for now, they are slowly but surely bringing you closer to your destination. Once you realize this and learn to trust the process, you will be amazed at how much work you can actually get done by only taking small steps and how easier it was to do something that you once dreaded.
For example, consider the scenario where you just join a gym for the first time in your life. If you go for one day and try to look for substantial results then you will only be disappointed. Even if you go for a week, you will not see anything. In such instances, what you need is not to verify the manifestation of some kind of results that you desire but rather a trust in the process that you will eventually get what you are looking for, but only if you keep going at it regularly. This stays true for the above mentioned point as well since it does not matter if you exercise for almost the whole first day in the gym, you will not see any of the results in your body that you are looking for.
Conclusion
In a nutshell, to develop consistency in anything, you just have to first realize your own responsibility and start somewhere. Not only is it perfectly fine to start with something small but it is, in fact, preferred as that would make it easier for you to actually begin on this seemingly perilous path. As long as you keep taking steps forward then it does not even matter if they are very small as you just have to trust the process. As long as you are taking a step, you are making progress towards you goal. Once you have mastered just taking a single step consistently, you can always optimize it to gradually cover much more distance over time. If you just start and keep believing in your efforts, even if they appear to be small for now, then you will definitely achieve much more success than you initially had set out for. Good luck!
