Top Reasons You’re Struggling with Consistency (& How to Fix Them)

Dr. Christine Li [00:00:00]:
Welcome back to the Make Time for Success podcast. This is episode number 239. I think it's time that we got into the topic of how to stay consistent, because I know for so many of us, the topic is just one giant mystery. So it's time to explore what we're doing inadvertently or on purpose. Sometimes that might be blocking our ability to be consistent in our behaviors, our actions, our habits, our routines, and then really just start to change things around so that we can enjoy the rewards of being consistent. Like feeling proud of yourself, like seeing real change in your life and getting over the part of you that continuously feels like it just can't. Let's get you back into your power so you can feel like a superhuman, because you really are. Let's go listen to this episode together now.

Dr. Christine Li [00:01:07]:
Hi, I'm Dr. Christine Li, and I'm a psychologist and a procrastination coach. I've helped thousands of people move past procrastination and overwhelm so they could begin working to their potential. In this podcast, you're going to learn powerful strategies for getting your mind, body, and energy to work together so that you can focus on what's really important and accomplish the goals you want to achieve.

Dr. Christine Li [00:01:35]:
When you start living within your full.

Dr. Christine Li [00:01:37]:
Power, you're going to see how being productive can be easy and how you can create success on demand. Welcome to the Make Time for Success podcast.

Dr. Christine Li [00:01:51]:
So, you know, I like to solve client problems. I like to help them get to the bottom of their issues. And very recently, I surveyed my current clients in my Simply Productive program about the topic that they wanted assistance with the most. And in a way, to my surprise, their answer was consistency. So maybe I shouldn't have been surprised, because consistency is something that we crave that sometimes can feel difficult to come by and difficult to maintain. So I'm going to create this episode alongside with my Simply Productive clients and help you to investigate what might be getting in the way of you being more consistent with your habits and routines, and also to provide some advice and some steps for how to make sure the consistency stays in your routine. So first, let's talk about the factors that might prevent you from having easy consistency with your preferred habits. The first item that I came up with was that there must be something interfering that makes sense.

Dr. Christine Li [00:03:18]:
If we aren't able to get to our destination, in this case total consistency, then there just must be something blocking us. One thing that might be blocking you from being more consistent is if you are consistently giving your time and energy away to Other people, people instead of prioritizing what you need. So another word for that would be people pleasing. And if you are consistently choosing people pleasing, that's where your consistency is going. And then it's no surprise that you feel like when it comes to your own personal habits or professional habits, you don't feel so consistent. So if you are prioritizing people pleasing, my suggestion would be to rein that in, to curb that. Because it is my true and deep belief that when we take really high level care of ourselves and ourselves first, then we get to do all the things. We get to feel great about our consistency, our wellbeing, our productivity, our presence.

Dr. Christine Li [00:04:26]:
But then we also get to help other people as well or better than we were before when we were just prioritizing people pleasing. So make sure your attention is on what you need and that will boost your ability to stay consistent with yourself and your plans. The other thing that might be interfering with you being more consistent is if you are really used to being a certain way when it comes to productivity, you might be particularly picky about how things are done. You might be perfectionistic. You might see yourself as only being able to do certain things at certain times of the day. Things like that. Rigid thinking about when things can be done can also prevent you from feeling like you have enough time and energy and the bandwidth to stay consistent in your habits. So check yourself.

Dr. Christine Li [00:05:28]:
See, am I being a little too rigid with how I have been doing things? And can I open up my heart and my schedule and the way I do things so that I can squeeze a little more consistency in my game? The second major point I have about the things that might be getting in your way is, is about handwriting. You might not be writing things down. And when we don't write things down, I think it's just easier for the thoughts to drift away, for other things to become distractions and distract us from our path. And we can just plain forget what we were intending to do. Just because life is busy or because we're forgetful, doesn't matter why. It just matters that we are forgetting. And so we want to prevent that forgetfulness. We want to make sure that we are consistent and we're checking our tracking sheet or our notes or our schedule and planner every single day so that we know, maybe even multiple times a day when we're checking, that we are on schedule for our consistent behavior, for making sure dinner is planned in time, for making sure the laundry is done on schedule.

Dr. Christine Li [00:06:48]:
Whatever your habit is, make sure you've got it written down. You're tracking it, you're praising yourself when you are checking the box off that the thing is done. And then use writing things down as just this easy free technique that can be really fun. Actually put some stickers on there if you like that kind of thing and just make it more fun and reliable. So make yourself more reliable by writing things down. I think it's a really great habit to get into and it prevents you from being really fuzzy about what you're doing. You get really specific when you start writing things down. All right.

Dr. Christine Li [00:07:27]:
The third major segment of things that might get in your way from being more consistent is lack of clarity. You haven't really been very clear and you haven't really defined with great specificity what you actually want to see. And that fuzziness again keeps you feeling like, oh, well, I could be doing this on Wednesday and then change it up on Thursday. And again, it just leaves room for inconsistency when you don't know exactly what you're trying to be consistent with. So write it down. Have your specific goals, be really detailed about how that's going to look and how you want to feel at the end of this process of building your consistency muscle and your consistency practice. I do think it's a daily practice and we can develop this as just a general stance of how we approach our habits. Instead of going the roundabout procrastination, fill in the blank excuses kind of way of doing things, we're practicing being more like a laser beam.

Dr. Christine Li [00:08:47]:
And oftentimes it's a real time saver, it's a real energy saver, it's a real empowerment move even to just decide, I'm going to do this like a laser instead of delaying all day long on the one thing that I have to do to stay consistent today. So, oh, I have one more, one more major topic that gets in the way of our being consistent. And this is a big one. This is how we're treating ourselves emotionally. Chances are if you're not staying consistent, there's some sort of negative feeling state entwined with your efforts that maybe you're trying to motivate yourself by feeling guilty, which when you think about it, it kind of makes no sense. Right? Why would we do more things because we're feeling guilty or sad or bad about ourselves? So my suggestion here is to eliminate the guilt. Just forgive yourself for whatever you're yelling at yourself about, decide today's a blank slate, brand new day and decide you're going to move forward guilt free. You're going to feel Motivated, you're going to feel calm, you're going to feel like there's ease ahead.

Dr. Christine Li [00:10:06]:
And you're not going to guilt yourself into taking action. Instead, you're going to inspire yourself to take action. Get excited about the you at the end of this journey that feels really accomplished, that that goes to the gym regularly, that eats healthily, that gets seven, eight hours of sleep. Whatever your chosen habit will be, that's up to you. That's not up to me to decide. That is purely up to you. But my role here is to make sure that you are not dragging yourself to that end goal and that end celebration point. I would love for you to kind of float and glide and skip over to that goal and be happy about this chance to experiment with your habits, to experiment with how consistent you can be, to experiment with this new reliability within yourself that you could begin to build and trust as you go forward.

Dr. Christine Li [00:11:08]:
It's a really wonderful process. Again, it is a practice. You need to be kind to yourself for this to work. And remember, always have pen and paper by your side to make sure you don't get into that fuzzy state where anything goes. All right, the next part of this episode is about a few remedies that I have come up with that I've seen go really well with my clients and that my clients have shared with me as well. So I have five remedies to share. The first one is based off of one of the things that is a blocker. You want to know what you want and you want to know how you want to feel.

Dr. Christine Li [00:11:52]:
So basically this is a reinforcement of get clear and put everything on your schedule so you don't have to be thinking about it all the time. You just know you have a game plan, you have a framework, you have a blueprint, you have, you have a task list, whatever you want to call it. You have clarity at the get go about what you need to do. And then you create your schedule around that so that you have a better chance of being successfully consistent. The second remedy is you need to have commitment. This word commitment is huge. It's a huge concept. And, and it is the thing that will make or break whether you get to the finish line.

Dr. Christine Li [00:12:39]:
If you are solidly committed, which means you are not going to let anything else get in your way from you moving from point zero to the end goal. If you are fully committed, you have just by your commitment, basically ensured your consistency in your behavior. It sounds funny, right? It's that a mindset can make all the difference. The more I Do this coaching and studying about human behavior, the more I am a believer that our beliefs are really what guide us, what structure our experience, what shapes our reality, and what gets us to be the consistent person that we wish to be. So practice commitment. Make sure that is part of your strategy. Make sure you are solid in your commitment, in your heart. If you find you can't be committed for whatever reason, and again, no judgment, then decide to scale back on your goal.

Dr. Christine Li [00:13:41]:
Maybe instead of going to the gym five days a week, you say, you know what? Since I'm a little worried I can't be committed to that goal, I'm going to try three times a week. Because three, three times a week is fantastic. Especially if you can nail that in terms of consistency that you're actually showing up at the door of the gym three times a week. Celebrate, celebrate, celebrate. And remember, the commitment comes first, action later, and then celebration comes at the end. Although you could be happy throughout your journey, of course. All right. The third remedy that I have for you is write things down as they should happen.

Dr. Christine Li [00:14:22]:
So make sure you are an accurate journaler. You are predicting how your week is going to run and you are stating with certainty how things are going to play out over the course of the week ahead of you. One of the best things I learned early on in my curing my own procrastination journey was that when we write things down in our planners, it's not just fantasy writing. It's not a game. It is actually saying, I commit to doing the things that I'm writing down. That one piece of advice really sharpened my own ability to stay true to my word because I wasn't playing with time anymore. I was saying, I know I have this block of time now. What am I going to do with this time? And I practiced making my plan be a one to one match, a perfect match with what I actually did.

Dr. Christine Li [00:15:23]:
And that again upped my productivity game tremendously. It tremendously helped me to get rid of all the procrastination I was used to doing. I just allowed my plans to set the stage, set my mood, set, everything. And that really, really helps. So try that if you are not doing that currently and you'll find that you have more time to play with than you actually thought you did. Because now you're actually taking control over your time and that free time. All right. The fourth remedy that I have for you is the important one.

Dr. Christine Li [00:16:06]:
A very, very important one. You want to evaluate what is going on when you're not able to be consistent. What is happening when you decide you want to run away. What is happening when you get nervous or you get frustrated or you get irritated or you get exhausted? What was going on either in your mind, your heart or. Or in your actions? Typically, there is something that you can easily pinpoint that caused you to feel frustrated, irritated or exhausted. And all you need to do, instead of backing away from your plan to be consistent, all you need to do is say, I'm going to fix that trouble spot. I'm going to fix that hiccup moment of mine. I'm going to eliminate that excuse that I came up with because I got scared all of a sudden.

Dr. Christine Li [00:17:03]:
And I'm gonna get back into tracking, I'm gonna get back into that consistency. And that is the way towards developing the consistency muscle. It's basically saying, I'm not gonna give up no matter how hard this seems, no matter how inconvenient it might feel, because I know that once I do it, it's going to feel much less difficult and much more convenient in my life and how I run my life. And then I'm going to have my consistency to celebrate and be happy about as well. So question, what is going on when you feel like you can't be consistent? And then the last remedy I already mentioned in tip 4, which is really don't give up, because the only thing blocking you from being consistent is, is likely you. So decide instead of thinking, I'm stuck here. I've tried. I've tried five times.

Dr. Christine Li [00:18:02]:
You want to say to yourself, I have nine million more possibilities to explore to help me build this pure, rock solid consistency? Really, there are 9 million possibilities. I am not exaggerating. So decide I'm going to experiment some more. Decide I'm going to listen to this episode or once more, twice more, just to make sure I understand what are the basics that I need to make sure that I'm in top form, I'm not overwhelming myself, I'm not yelling at myself for any reason, and I make sure that I see the habits and routines play out exactly as I envision them playing out, because that absolutely is one of the possibilities in front of you. So grab all of this information, grab the opportunities in front of you, forgive yourself for everything that you haven't been able to do up to this point, and decide, I am all powerful from here on out. Consistency is going to be just one of my magical tools in my magical tool set. It really works that way when you allow your heart and your mind to open up to the strength and ability within you. You have got this.

Dr. Christine Li [00:19:19]:
You know I'm supporting you. I'm so happy that you're here and listening and absorbing all of this. And maybe some of you are taking some notes on that piece of paper that I keep mentioning. If you would like another piece of paper to help you on your journey, I suggest you request the free download that goes with this episode and it's going to come to you if you go to maketimeforsuccesspodcast.com/consistency again maketimeforsuccesspodcast.com/consistency Consistency is what makes this podcast come to you every Thursday. I will see you next week. Take care and enjoy. Bye.

Dr. Christine Li [00:20:03]:
Thank you for listening to this episode of the Make Time for Success podcast. If you enjoyed what you've heard, you can subscribe to make sure you get notified of upcoming episodes. You can also Visit our website maketimeforsuccesspodcast.com for past episodes, show notes, and all the resources we mention on the show. Feel free to connect with me over on Instagram too. You can find me there under the name Procrastination Coach. Send me a DM and let me know what your thoughts are about the episodes you've been listening to and let me know any topics that you might like me to talk about on the show. I'd love to hear all about how you're making Time for Success. Talk to you soon.