How to Be Consistent in Life: 7 Hacks to Stay Consistent with Your Goals
Consistency is the key to achieving any of your life goals! Sadly, most people struggle with it…So, if you’re one of them, don’t worry – cause you’re about to discover how to be more consistent! 😉
In this article, you’ll learn 7 tricks to be more consistent in life so that you can achieve your goals. Whether you want to:
- Kickstart your health journey
- Launch your blog
- Write a book
- Start meditating every day
- Learn a new skill
…This post got you covered! 😉
Are you ready to learn how to be consistent with your goals? Then, let’s get started!
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The 1 Rule That Challenged My Consistency
If you’ve read the article “How Can You Achieve Your Goals With the 90/90/1 Rule”, you already know about the challenge I decided to take on during July.
TLDR – I committed to working on my blog for an hour and a half for 30 days straight!
It might seem nothing extraordinary to many but, to me, it was a nice way to boost my self-discipline – especially during summer. (Is it just me or it’s so easy to fall off track during the summer months?!)
The 90/30/1 rule – which is the shortened version I adopted – helped me stay consistent and increase the number of posts published on my blog! To me, that was a great success!
But, of course, like in any challenge, I’ve also faced some unexpected difficulties…
So, now that I have a whole month of experience on my back – I’m here to share with you the tricks that helped me stay consistent the most so that you can apply them to your life too!
7 Tips for Being More Consistent
If you want to achieve your life goals, here are the 7 tips that will help you be more consistent in life:
1. Get Clear on the Outcome
The key to having enough discipline to achieve any of your goals is to be crystal clear about the desired outcome.
What is it that you want to achieve, exactly?
In my case, for example, the outcome I was hoping to achieve thanks to the 90/30/1 rule was to increase my posting schedule – going from publishing one new article per week to two.
There was no way to beat around the bush: either I hit my 2 weekly posts mark or not. (How do you think I did? 😉 )
The truth is that you can have the best intentions in the world, but – at the end of the day – what truly matters is the actions you take.
But, how do you know what actions you need to take if you don’t even know where you’re headed?
For example, let’s say your goal is to lose weight. You could achieve that by:
- Limiting your sugar intake
- Eating less junk food
- Exercising more
- Eating high-protein meals
- Regulating your nervous systems
These are all strategies to achieve the same goal – which is weight loss.
But, not all of these strategies will be the right ones for you. And forget about trying to control them all at once! (Spoiler: that’s the recipe for a disaster!)
The smarter way to achieve your goals is to get crystal clear on your desired outcome.
Taking on the example of losing weight, here are some ways you could reframe the goal for more clarity:
- Taking on a sugar-free challenge to cleanse your body
- Breaking your addiction to junk food
- Working out 2-3 times per week
- Adding proteins to every meal
- Getting rid of your stress belly by adding more mindfulness into your days
Whatever of these goals you’ll pursue, you’ll end up naturally losing some weight.
What has changed, though, is that now you have a better idea of the right actions you need to take to achieve your desired outcome.
2. Set Specific Timeslots
I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again: if it’s not on the calendar, it’s not gonna happen!
Setting a goal without developing a game plan to achieve it is the same as saying to an old friend “We should hang out soon!”…We both know it’s never gonna happen! 😉
If you want to develop the right consistency to achieve your goals, you need to make time for them.
As I was tackling my blogging challenge, at the beginning of every week I made sure to schedule the hour and a half that I would have spent working on my blog for the next 7 days.
Not every time I was able to follow through, but there was something about setting a specific timeslot for my goal that made me more consistent in working on it.
So, whether you’re a type-A (like me) and can plan months or weeks in advance; or you’re more chilled and like to go with the flow…
This is your sign to set specific timeslots in your agenda, planner, or calendar to work on your goal.
If you have a date and a time, it’s more likely to happen.
You’re giving an appointment to yourself, after all – You don’t want to be that annoying friend who always bails on you last-minute, right? 😉
3. Fully Commit
If you’re not ready to fully commit, then you might just as well not commit at all.
When you set your new goal, you need to believe in yourself and in the fact that you’ll show up consistently!
If you’re the first one not to believe in your goals and your ability to achieve them – who will?
Take me as an example: I’ve had a bad history of starting things and not completing them. (Did I ever mention that this is my third attempt at blogging?)
But, when I heard about the 90/90/1 rule, I was ready to fully commit! I wanted to challenge myself, step out of my comfort zone, and grow the blog!
So, what’s your goal?
- Do you want to work out consistently?
- Do you want to write that book?
- Or read more?
- Do you want to meet new people?
- Or to finally launch your blog?
Then you must be ready to fully commit!
If you aren’t, what’s the point of having that goal in the first place?
4. Be Flexible
Once you’ve made your commitment statement, here’s another important aspect of consistency: you’ve gotta learn how to be flexible. (And no, I’m not contradicting myself – and I’ll tell you why!)
Committing to your goals and believing you have what it takes to achieve them is a whole different story than acknowledging that life happens.
You can have your best intentions but, sometimes, life just gets in the way.
Be ready for everything not going as planned – that’s just life: unexpected and unpredictable, yet still wonderful!
As mentioned in point #2, although I had set specific timeslots to work on my blog, I wasn’t always able to stick to my schedule.
Did I let that stop me? Did I let that bring me down? Or, did I let it teach me something?
Yeah, you can bet it’s the last one!
It taught me I still could have made some progress towards my goals even if the conditions weren’t as perfect as planned!
To me, that looked like:
- Finding snippets of time during my lunch break, at work, to finish editing new blog posts
- Committing to waking up extra early if social events or plans came up throughout the week
- Sacrificing some of my nighttime habits for the sake of not breaking the promise I had made to myself
- Stop wasting time on mindless activities
- Saying ‘no’ more often to be able to say ‘yes’ to my project and end-goal
This is your sign to allow for flexibility as you move towards reaching your goals.
Only by being flexible, you’ll be able to be consistent in the long run.
So, develop a plan but always keep in mind that, sometimes, life happens – and that’s ok!
5. Make It Fun
I’ve been blogging for over a year and – for the whole time – I kept repeating myself: “I don’t have the time to increase my posting schedule to 2 articles per week”.
Well, now that I’ve successfully published 2 articles per week for the whole month of July, I can easily say that: it was a bunch of excuses!
I knew that ramping up my posting schedule would have been a lot of hard work (and it was!) – so I kept convincing myself that it wasn’t the right moment…
The truth is that: it will never feel like the right moment to get uncomfortable! That’s why you gotta do it 😉
I believe that the secret to being consistent with my blogging goal was to “gamify” the whole thing.
How? By turning it into a challenge!
So, why should you decide to take on a challenge if you want to achieve your goals? Here are some of the perks:
- Setting a short-term deadline will boost your motivation
- You can easily track your progress
- It boosts your self-confidence
- It’s a nice way to make your life more fun 😉
What are you waiting for? Take on a 30-day challenge to go from only dreaming about something to taking action and making it your reality!
READ HERE: “30 Extraordinary 30-Day Challenge Ideas to Motivate the Heck Out of You”
6. Stop Looking at Others
Of course, the hardest part of the challenge was to take action consistently.
Sometimes, I would get too sucked up in the “consumer mode” – watching what everyone else had to say or was doing, and ending up feeling like anything I would say or do wouldn’t be good enough.
Every day, I had to intentionally stop looking at what others were doing to make time for myself – to do what I promised I would do!
It’s easy to get stuck in the “freezing mode”, feeling too overwhelmed to take any sort of action.
But, without taking action, how can you expect to make some progress?
The fact that others are out there achieving their dreams doesn’t make you less worthy of realizing yours!
You should look at their success and use it as fuel for what you are capable of achieving too – if only you start taking action!
So, if you’re struggling with consistently working on your goals, one of the best things you could do is to stop comparing your life, your art, and your project to others.
Your story is for you to tell. Your story is unique and worth to be shared. You are on your path, on your journey, and on your own.
To make real progress toward your dreams, you must stop being a consumer and become a creator of your own journey.
7. Acknowledge Your Progress
Finally, the last bit of advice that I want to give you to boost your consistency is this: acknowledge your progress!
I spent so many days thinking about what I didn’t achieve, worrying and stressing about endless tasks.
But, you know what’s an important lesson the 90/90/1 method taught me? It taught me to celebrate any achievements!
As long as I worked for an hour and a half on my blog, I could consider that as progress.
Every day that I “clocked out” was one more day of consistency. Of Self-discipline. Commitment. And progress.
It was a day closer to my goal and one day further from my excuses.
But, it took me some time to let that soak in.
Why? Because, before that, I was always focusing on what was still missing. On how far I still had to go. On what I hadn’t done yet.
So, if you’re anything like me, this is your sign to stop for a second.
Take a moment to acknowledge your progress.
Celebrate your achievements.
Congratulate yourself on your commitment.
Cause, if you’re constantly projected toward the future, it will be much harder to be consistent. Why? Cause, no matter what you do, it’ll feel like you haven’t done enough…
But, if you’ve come this far, I’m sure you did. So, be proud of yourself.
Conclusion
That’s all for me today!
I hope this article provided you with some inspiring tips on how to be more consistent – as I shared what has personally helped me the most!
Now, I would like to know from you:
Q: “What’s one goal do you want to be more consistent with?” – Let me know in a comment! 🙂
Until next time,
