Consistency amidst life's difficulties.
There's a great book by Aubrey Marcus titled Own your Day, Own your Life - which essentially promotes the idea that building a day of beneficial, productive and healthy habits, over time leads to a successful, fulfilled and healthy life.
It's a very simple concept and feels somewhat surprising that the concept needed to be elaborated into a book.
Obviously, we all know that healthy habits over time would surely accumulate into a healthy and happy life.
I think most of us try our best to practice it as well... but somehow it doesn't always seem to work out.
It fluctuates based on motivation, emotions, stress, and situations that feel external to our control.
Try as we may, life seems to unravel these healthy habits and take over in some way until, in a few months, you're sort of back where you started, scrambling to re-ignite or re-invent your relationship with HEALTH again.
So what is the answer?
How do we stay consistent?
Is there a secret psychology hack?
Well, how about I start with the bad news and finish with the good...
BAD(ISH) NEWS: There is no secret and there is no hack.
Your relationship with health practices is going to fluctuate and evolve and change - which will make it, at times, feel out of your control, inconsistent and irregular.
Now your relationship to those words will determine the way you feel about those words when they apply to health behaviours.
What I mean by that is; if you struggle with the idea of irregularity or inconsistency ... then the chances are, when you feel this way about your own health regime, you're going to start to think badly of yourself.
You're going to begin to lose self-trust and self-efficacy which we know from research is a surefire way to diminish our motivation to engage in health behaviours even further.
It becomes a bit of a self-fulfilling prophecy.
The less trust we have in ourselves, the less motivated we feel to do the thing that will help us build back the trust.
GOOD(ISH) NEWS: This is the work.
Everything I mentioned in the bad news section is the journey. It is the process.
Health behaviours are at the mercy of your moods, emotions, motivations and situations.
They will be subject to inconsistencies and things that are out of your control.
What determines your strength and efficacy is NOT whether life derailed you, but whether you were able to pull yourself back onto the path at the earliest convenience.
Furthermore, when you get 'back on the path' do you spend the next few months berating yourself for coming off it?
Did you spend the next few months waiting for the next failure?
The next time you would not be able to 'stay consistent'?
Or
Are you developing the ability, nay, the resilience to recognise that THE OBSTACLE IS THE WAY.
The thing that takes you off your path is the lesson that will help you find your way back to the path.
Babies, relationships, break-ups, promotions, demotions, loss, grief... all of these things hold within them the key to more strength, MORE consistency, MORE resilience.
Each of those potential 'de-railers' are like dumbbells in the gym. We don't hate the dumbbell because it's heavy and will be heavy when we lift it. We see it as the very thing that's going to challenge us and create the adaptation we are wanting.
Likewise, those things in life that are making it 'hard' for you to stay consistent are like dumbbells - some are heavier than others, some will challenge your ability to stay consistent more than others - but ultimately they are ALL making you stronger.
You know what else helps?
Having a structured, follow-along programme to follow.
Join the In-situ community, get your own program and let us help you build strength, resilience and a perkier butt.
