Being consistent is BOOORRIINNGG… yet it’s still the most powerful principle that has ever helped me in my life.
When I first heard the term consistency, I thought it was just about doing a good habit over and over again until you reaped the benefits.
But it’s not. At least, it’s not the whole picture. What people don’t tell you when they talk about consistency is that you have to fight off so many distractions.
You see, consistency is absolutely about doing the right action to get the outcome you want, but it is equally about not being distracted by our phones, by shiny objects we think are shortcuts, or by shifting our focus to entirely different goals.
That was a massive lesson for me to learn. If you have set a big, worthy goal for yourself, it is probably going to be really challenging. It is going to force you to become a completely different version of yourself.
If it didn’t require growth, the goal would be easy and you would have already reached it. Let’s use fitness as an example. People think that losing 20 pounds should be simple. It is not. That process is hard. You have to consistently work out, even when you don’t want to, and most importantly, you cannot eat whatever you want.
You have to budget your food just like you budget your finances.
It requires deliberate effort and an upgraded version of yourself. It is tough, and that is exactly why people struggle with it. This is even before we take into account people who struggle with a complicated relationship with food, medical conditions, or physical limitations.
What most people do when they take on a big goal and it gets challenging is they choose to set a brand new goal. They pick something that might feel easier to hit in the short term, but it is 100% a distraction from the main objective.
I had to learn to stop lying to myself about this. I used to tell myself I could work on four or five big goals at once. Maybe I could handle the workload, but I sucked at all of them and many of them went completely unreached.
If you focus on five goals at once, everything takes longer, some will fail, and others will be done in a mediocre manner. If I take on four, I might do a slightly better job, but it still won’t be excellent. But if I focus on three, two, or just one big goal, I will completely dominate because my energy isn’t fractured.
If you are still telling yourself you can successfully do five massive things at once, I hope you realize that it is just a masked form of distraction and procrastination to avoid doing the real work that actually moves the needle.
That is what I had to learn, and I keep having to be reminded of that lesson over and over again.
Doing one thing for a long time toward a goal that actually matters to you, a goal that you know will make your life better, your family’s life better, and help you become the best version of yourself, is tough. It can feel boring because you are always working on the exact same things.
But there is so much fun and beauty within that repetition.
Yes, the day to day journey can look boring from the outside, but the overarching theme is deeply exciting because there is progression. You are becoming the exact version of yourself that you were created to be.
This process comes in waves. There are big waves and small waves, and it will constantly ebb and flow. Sometimes it will feel so mundane that you will want to distract yourself with other goals, with social media, or with new ideas. Other times it is going to be incredibly exciting, and you won’t believe how far you have actually come.
My piece of advice for my younger self in this scenario is simple: when it is exciting, enjoy it and go along with the ride. And when it is boring, remember that it is not going to be like that forever.
The boring phase is when most people quit by default of distraction. The people who get ahead and reach their goals are simply the ones who are able to endure these bouts of boredom. This capacity is ultimately the thing that helps them stay consistent.
A lack of consistency and self-sabotage do not only come from a lack of feeling worthy. Sometimes it stems directly from our short attention spans, our incessant need to be stimulated at all times, and the craving for something new.
This is my reflection on distraction because I have to continuously catch myself on a daily, weekly, and monthly basis. I have to force myself to go back to the basics, to keep things simple, and to do the boring, redundant actions that actually compound over time.
Anytime I have a brand new idea or a project I want to take on, I put it through a strict filter:
What do I want my life to be?
What do I want my relationships to be?
What do I want my health and fitness to be?
Is this new idea a distraction or just a short-term spike of dopamine from starting something fresh?
Is it actually going to make a difference in the long run, or is it distracting me from doing the core work?
To be completely honest with you, another angle to this whole thing is that it is genuinely hard to have a lot of free time where you are alone with your own head. A lot of people, myself included for a very long time, didn’t have the ability to just sit still with no music, no distraction, and just listen to what was inside.
For a long time, looking inward meant facing trauma, grief, and unresolved things. It wasn’t until I truly worked on myself and took dedicated time to be alone in my own thoughts, diving into all those quiet corners, that I started to develop peace from doing nothing.
That is how you eliminate the guilt of resting. That is how you start to find peace with just being you in the present moment, even when nothing is happening.
I hope this resonates with you, because it is easily one of the biggest lessons that has helped me at this point in my life. I am incredibly happy that I spent those hundreds of hours alone in my head to get to this point.
Sincerely,
Maxime
