I'm sure you're constantly working on being more consistent with some of your behaviours. These are the habits you're trying to build, the routines you want to make daily, the rituals to keep you on the path you've chosen. There's consistent behaviour, then there's another aspect of consistency that can be forgotten or ignored. Today we'll look at these two aspects and how one of these can strengthen the other.
Hey there. It’s me, Kore. And you're listening to Exercising Self-Control: From Fitness To Flourishing.
The almost universal focus is being consistent with what you do: your behaviour. If you want to be fit and healthy you must exercise, you must eat mostly healthy food, you must get adequate sleep. And you must do all these things consistently enough to reap the rewards. This applies to any domain in life: business, art, relationships. If you want long-term achievement in any arena, you must put in the work. And you must do so consistently enough that you reach a certain level of skill that makes the difference.
How consistent do you need to be? It depends. What are you doing? What's the goal? How skilled are you at the tasks required? There’s a minimum level of consistency that must be met to trigger growth and development. Lacking that minimum level nothing changes except the seasons.
The most common tactic to make up for any lack of consistency is with an increase in intensity. You work harder. You work faster. You increase your focus. You set aside other concerns, things that don't matter, like sleep, a family member's school play, eating. Obviously I'm joking a little bit there but you get the idea. In the short term that can work but it usually has steep consequences and it’s not sustainable. Life, as they say, is a marathon not a sprint. When it’s lived well, and with some luck, it actually is a marathon. It’s going to go on for a long time. And that's how we should assume it's going to play out.
Now, there's the other aspect of consistency, the inner considerations. This is the more important domain because it determines how to be consistent outwardly with your behaviour. It also determines how to maintain consistency over the long-term while facing obstacles and challenges along the way.
Here I'm speaking of the consistency you maintain with your values. Living your highest values as a commitment is the surest path to living a good life. Referencing Donald Robertson once again from his book, Build Your Resistance,
“Resilience can be defined as being consistent with your values regardless of the circumstances, especially regardless of adversity and hardship.”
When you can keep yourself consistent with your values, it naturally leads to keeping your behaviours consistent. That's a powerful position from which to move through the world. It's stable. You can trust yourself. You can make plans and you know that you'll follow through. Others also learn to trust you. They see that you keep your word.
That's not to say that you'll never change your mind. Ralph Waldo Emerson from his essay, Self-Reliance, said,
“A foolish consistency is the hobgoblin of little minds, adored by little statesmen and philosophers and divines.”
That “foolish consistency” is to be avoided. When your understanding of reality changes so must your thinking and your position in relation to those facts. That might mean you change your behaviour and break your word. That's not a lack of integrity. It can be seen that way by others. You may even feel that way yourself. You may struggle to find the choice you consider to be the right one. That's part of the journey. What makes you a good person isn't that you make the right choice every time, it’s that you aspire to make the right choice. That you make the mental effort to look at your values, the circumstances, the context, the consequences, and make the choice you imagine is the most right, all things considered.
In the following quote from Seneca the Younger he's speaking of philosophy but I believe it can be taken to be just as true if he were speaking of life itself.
“It demands of everyone that he should actually live by his own standards, that his life should not be out of harmony with his words, and that his inner existence should be of one hue, and fully harmonious with all his outer activities. This, I say, is the highest duty and the highest proof there is of real wisdom–that deed and word should be in accord, that a man should be equal to himself under all circumstances, and that he always should be the same.”
Consistency with your values, especially your highest values, is the precondition for everything good in life. So even as you go about striving to make certain behaviours consistent remember that the root of those good behaviours is the consistency that you hold with your highest values. When you can do that your behaviours will flow much more naturally, much more easily, and the good choice will be much more obvious.
That's it for today. Catch you next time.
