I’m sure you’ve heard about how beneficial consistency is, but it can be really hard to actually apply it to your daily life. If you’re new to consistency or you struggle with consistency these main ideas on how to be consistent in your daily life will be perfect for you.
Consistency will allow you to progress toward any goal you’re working toward. Learning how to be consistent in your daily life is the first step in making a change.
Keep reading to learn the best strategies on how to be consistent in your daily life.
How to be Consistent in Your Daily Life
Why is it Important to be Consistent?
Consistency allows you to make constant progress toward your goals and will allow you to feel more in control of your life. Without consistency, you might find yourself constantly stopping and starting when working toward something. This stopping and starting is discouraging, and results in more work to reach your goal.
If you focus on consistency, you will be able to enjoy the process in addition to reaching your goal. To learn more about the importance of consistency, take a look at the article linked below.
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1. Decide Why You Want to be Consistent
The reason that you want to reach your goal is what will keep you going even when you don’t want to. The beauty of consistency is that it can help you accomplish any type of goal. First, decide what goal you’re trying to reach or change you’d like to make in your life. In order to apply these ideas of consistency, you’ll need to ensure that you have a process goal. If you’re not sure what that is, don’t worry!
In short, a process goal is something that is fully in your control. For example, if you want to learn how to crochet, your end goal might be to crochet a blanket. In this case, your process goal might be to spend 2 nights a week crocheting for 30 minutes.
Using a process goal like this will allow you to feel accomplished at the end of each week after achieving that goal. In addition, having process goals will help you break down an intimidating goal into something more manageable. Take a look at the article linked below to learn more about how to take any type of goal and turn it into a process goal.
Once you have that goal, think about why you’d like to achieve it. For more information on coming up with your reason behind your goal as well as making sure you have a process goal, take a look at the guide linked below.
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2. Prioritize Balance
With these tools to attempt to reach your goals, it can be very tempting to jump all in and spend all your free time working toward them. This is not a good idea because it will be very tough to stick with. The advantage of process goals allows you to celebrate small accomplishments often as well as constantly make progress. This means you should make sure you’re still saving time for yourself.
To do this, you should audit your time for a week. This doesn’t need to take too much time. Periodically jot down what you did throughout the day and take note of the time each activity took. At the end of the week, look at what free time you had.
Now, you should not take all of your free time and put it toward this goal, instead, decide how much of that time you want to spend on working toward this goal. This will allow you to maintain balance and a more well rounded life.
3. Plan a Schedule
To be even more successful in prioritizing both balance and consistency, a schedule can be very helpful. This schedule doesn’t have to be too detailed, but it should have the non-negotiables for each day. Start with the list reflecting what you spent time on during the previous week and then make a list of everything that HAS to get done this coming week.
For example, this list might have work, the number of days you’re going to the gym, a plan with family, and a night that you’re spending doing your favorite hobby. Start your schedule with these things. When you add these to your schedule, it is important to decide which days you will be going to the gym and which night you are spending doing your hobby.
By deciding exactly what days you will be doing each thing will give you more structure in your week and make it easier to follow through. Now that you have these non-negotiables on your schedule, you will have a better idea of how much additional time you have.
4. Be Realistic
When applying consistency to your daily life, it is important to be realistic about how many additional tasks you can take on each day. While the amount of work you’re doing toward your goal every day will absolutely affect the amount of time it takes to reach your goal, you don’t want to overload yourself. If you take on more than you can handle, you will find that you’re not able to reach your process goals. If this is the case, maybe focus on only one goal at a time, or maybe reframe your process goals.
For example, if your end goal is to lose 20 pounds and your starting process goal is to walk for 20 minutes 5 times a week, maybe reduce it to a 10-minute walk if that’s what you can handle at the moment. Even if the goal is smaller, it will be more beneficial if you are able to consistently reach it.
Not only is reaching this process goal going to help you to reach your weight loss goal, each time you reach a process goal, you will gain some confidence in yourself. This is why it is important to be realistic and think about what you can really take on.
When coming up with your process goals using the techniques in the article above, keep in mind what kind of time commitment you’re willing to consistently put toward each goal.
5. Start Small
Starting small is always helpful, especially if you’re feeling overwhelmed or nervous about achieving your goal. You should never feel like you have to set huge process goals to reach your end goal. Even the smallest of process goals will get you to your goal.
Using the same example as above, walking for a shorter amount of time will still help in creating the habit and routine of going on a walk 5 days a week. By starting with something small and manageable, you’ll start to feel very comfortable with that 10-minute walk and at that point, 5 walks per week will feel normal. Now, you can build on that habit. Maybe you make the walks longer or maybe you add 5 minutes of strength to the end of the walk.
Whatever you plan to add to that walk, the hard part of creating the initial habit is already done. Combining habits in this way is called habit stacking. This technique is described in detail in the book, “Atomic Habits”, by James Clear. You can also take a look at this website for more information on this specific technique.
6. Reduce Distractions
For many people, myself included, distractions get in the way of their ability to be consistent. You may have the best intentions of heading to the gym to do a workout you found on youtube. Once you open your phone to find the workout, maybe you get distracted by a notification. One thing leads to another and now you’ve taken way longer than expected to complete your workout.
This is completely normal, but important to take note of. Take note of any patterns and try to be very intentional about staying focused in times that you often get distracted. For more tips on preventing distractions, take a look at this article.
7. Focus on Self Discipline
Self discipline is very important when trying to be consistent in your daily life. I personally have some goals revolving around running. To reach these goals, my process goals require me to wake up early some days to run. Sometimes I really do want to get up and go for that run, but honestly, those days are few and far between.
Most days it is my self discipline that gets me out of bed and out the door. Once I am on the run, I am glad I got up and followed through. If we always did things based on what we felt like doing at the moment, it would be nearly impossible to stay consistent.
To stay consistent, sometimes you will be able to follow through using only motivation, but, most often, you will need self discipline to be able to follow through. Take a look at the article linked below to learn more about how to strengthen your self discipline!
{ Related Post: 7 Major Benefits of Self Discipline: How to Take Advantage of Them Today }
8. Accountability Partner
Having someone to hold you accountable is very beneficial in staying consistent. Accountability partners can help you in all aspects of your life and they don’t have to be working toward the exact same goal as you. Maybe you each have a goal in mind and have your respective process goals to achieve your end goals.
Using your accountability partner can be as simple as sending a quick text to let them know you completed your process goal for the day and they can do the same to you. Not only do you know they are waiting for that text from you, but if they text you that they completed their process goal for the day, that can serve as a reminder for you.
9. Celebrate Small Wins
Celebrating small wins is a very helpful way to encourage yourself along the way. It can take a long time to reach some goals so it is important to celebrate the small wins along the way. This will keep you feeling confident in your ability to make it to your ultimate goal. Take a look at this article for ideas of different ways you can celebrate your small wins.
Thanks for reading and I hope you use this information to better yourself! If you have any comments or questions, please comment below or email us at ourteam@wellroundedyou.com.
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