2 Keys to Consistency
To celebrate the beginning of June, I want to highlight one of the keys that will be most important to our success in dream chasing: consistency. Yesterday marked two months of my website being live. It marked 27 blog posts that were consistently posted on the Monday, Wednesday and Friday schedule I had planned for. It marked 38,644 words written (my current manuscript has 64,942 words which is about 105 regular printed pages to give you a little bit of context).
I want to pat myself on the back a bit as I enter June. I have officially written consistently for two months. That may not seem like a big deal, but this is a big win given that the last two years of working on this dream have been very off and on. It reflects a newfound seriousness and commitment to my dreams. It’s also a huge step that I have had enough confidence to publish my writing for this many weeks. This website was a big step, but launching it was not the only step I needed to take. It would not be enough for me to set a website live and publish a few blog posts. Success on this front meant and required consistency.
I know these two keys to consistency sound like no-brainers, but it’s important that we lay out the no-brainer facts anyways. It’s very easy to overlook something simply because it is assumed. When we believe something should be completely obvious, we can easily miss it because we don’t put any effort into analyzing it. In the challenge by Andy Frisella called 75 Hard, people commit to doing two 45-minute workouts (one has to be outside), drinking a gallon of water, following a diet (any diet as long as it includes no alcohol), reading ten pages, and take a selfie every day for 75 days. If you miss or mess up one thing on the challenge, whether you were on day two or day 74, then you start over completely. In his book by the same name, he notes that the selfie is often the most common reason people have to start over because it is so simple and obvious that it just gets forgotten.
1. We have to be serious about our dreams
We have to be serious about our dreams to achieve them. Sure, every dream on that list sounds nice, but that doesn’t mean it will go through the process of becoming a vision and then a goal (if you remember my post from a few weeks back when I took us through the life cycle of a dream). Not every dream will become one that we are serious about. Seriousness requires a closer look.
We get to decide which dreams we become serious about. And when we choose which dreams, we have to follow through. We are playing this game, trying to achieve our dreams, and if we are going to play, we might as well try to win. What’s the point of betting if we don’t think we stand a chance? We’ve all played games with people who take it far too seriously and people who couldn’t care less. And while a “couldn’t care less” person is probably annoyed by the “way too serious” person, that serious person usually wins. It doesn’t matter if we are playing Monopoly (my personal favorite) or chasing our dreams; seriousness will usually win out.
I know there is such a thing as beginner’s luck. I know that hard work doesn’t always pay off. But I also know that in so many cases, it does. And we’re not just talking about a board game; we are talking about our lives. If the rule is hard work pays off, then the exception is beginner’s luck. Odds are good that the person who has studied the chess board will win more often than the person who just barely knows which piece moves which way. Do we really want to live our lives hoping that we are the exception to every rule? Do we really want to risk our dreams by not taking this seriously?
Seriousness means we carefully consider our dreams. It means we don’t enter the venture of pursuing light-heartedly. It means that our dreams stay in our minds constantly. We approach the world, our actions and our decisions with our dreams at the forefront. Every choice we make is considered under the pretense of, does this move me closer to or further from my dream?
2. We have to commit to our dreams
While seriousness reflects a constant mindfulness of our dreams, commitment goes beyond that. We are committing to more than just thinking about and planning for something. We are committing to bringing our dreams to life in the world. This is a big deal and can mean a very long-term commitment depending on our dreams.
My writing dream will take at least ten years to bring to the fullness that I dream of today (although I’m sure that will change and grow as my dream does). But I have also chosen this dream as my life path. Even if I hit the markers of speaking in front of an audience, having a specific number of readers on the blog and publishing my book, this dream will journey with me for the rest of my life.
When we commit to our dreams, we acknowledge the process that will bring them into the world. We decide to follow through no matter how simple or grueling that process is. It’s like we are signing a contract with our dreams. Our spouses signed a literal contract, threatening jail time, with their dreams of military service. While we don’t have to be quite so literal with signing a contract, we do need to make that commitment. It is only with such a strong declaration of loyalty to our dreams that our dreams can, in turn, keep their promise to come true.
We won’t take these steps with every dream. Some dreams on our list are just for fun. We wrote them down because if they happened—great! If, in some way, the universe is listening and wants to magically drop them out of the sky, then we will happily accept the reward. But those aren’t dreams that we will go crazy out of our way to achieve. For example, my dream house has many different features, but most are on my “nice to have” list. Location, size, bedrooms and bathrooms will always be the priority, and unless I build a house from the ground up (which I’m not all that interested in), then I probably won’t find a house with everything on my list. I can commit to finding my dream house. I can commit to making the money to afford it. I can commit to the motivation for having it. I can commit to searching high and low for it. But if it comes down to it and I find the perfect house that happens to be short a bathroom, doesn't have a sunroom or has a skinny ladder pull down to the attic, then I will let those pieces go because the fullness of my dream house will still stand.
There will be dreams that we become consistent in pursuing. There will be dreams that we are serious about. There will be dreams that we commit wholeheartedly to. It is only with these keys that we can become consistent, though. And consistency will be the biggest key to our success. We can achieve things with random spurts of activity. But a consistent approach will always get us to our dreams as quickly and ethically as possible. I may have written a manuscript with sporadic activity, but the only way to get published is to show up consistently for you, the reader, on this blog and social media. That’s why the second step of dream achievement is “stick to the plan” and why I get to be proud of myself for making it this far on the website. We have to be consistent, and with our consistency will come our success.