Secrets to Consistency: 6 Simple Tricks

It’s just a few months away from New Years and for many the resolutions set with good intentions are already starting to slip. 

Struggle with consistency? Don’t worry, you’re not the only one! 

In fact, next to lacking energy, this is the number one complaint I hear from people I work with. 

Ironically, if we were more consistent with taking care of ourselves we’d have more energy for life, get more done and feel more at ease. 

Obviously, learning how to stay consistent is as important as learning about diet, exercise and mindfulness — because if we’re not sticking to a practice we can’t get the benefits! 

I struggled with consistency for so many years, and even though I fell in love with Yoga and healthy living early on in life, I didn’t get the powerful life-changing benefits until I learned how to make it part of my daily life…consistently!

What’s the secret? 

I shifted my perspective on health, myself and learned simple habit science tricks that made it so much easier.

Here’s what helped me, and I hope it helps you too! 

6 Secrets for Consistency:

1. Get Real and Be Yourself 

Too many times I tried to be healthy in a way that worked perfectly for someone else who had a completely different life, body, health and mentality. Then I’d struggle and feel like a failure when I couldn’t live up to the expectations or get good results. When I started tailoring my lifestyle practices to suite my constitution and got real about what I could and wanted to do…Voilà! I started seeing results, feeling better and most importantly LOVING my new healthy habits. The more they fit my life and who I was, the more I loved and stuck to them.  

2. Cultivate the Belief and the Actions Follow 

Our thoughts become our words, our words our actions, our actions our habits and our habits become our life. The starting point, therefore, must be our thoughts. So often the beliefs we have about ourself don’t match the actions we want to take in life. As long as they don’t match we’ll self- sabotage and struggle with change. But I can tell from personal experience and working with hundreds of people, when we shift to a perspective and belief about ourself that matches our visions, magic happens and our behaviours change automatically.

3. Couple New Habits to Old Habits & Get Specific

This is a brilliant life hack from the habit science gurus and helps us remember to do new habits like meditate, drink more water or do morning exercise. Have you ever wanted to start a new habit, but then just to forget to do it? That’s because our brain functions based on triggers and sequences. Rather than simply say, “I’m going to meditate every night.” We need to get more specific and couple it to something we already do every night, like “After I brush my teeth I’ll meditate for 10 minutes sitting up on my bed.” We rely on the consistency of the old habit (brushing teeth) to trigger the new habit (meditation). Eventually the sequence become routine and meditation becomes another consistent habit.

4. Find the Right Replacement Habit

Another profound insight from the habit science gurus is realising that all habits, good or bad, have a benefit. That’s right, your bad habits have a benefit otherwise you wouldn’t do them. It’s nearly impossible to just quit an old habit cold turkey. What does work is replacing it with a new habit that has the same benefit but without the negative impact the bad habit has. So ask yourself, what do I really get from my bad habit and can I get that in a better way?

5. Let Go of Perfectionism  

You know the saying, ‘throwing the baby out with the bath water’? Well, that’s what perfectionism causes us to do. Perfect is subjective and pretty much a myth. So expecting perfection is choosing to set yourself up to feel like a failure. This often leads us to give up on something without acknowledging the benefits just because we didn’t do it perfectly. This is completely illogical and unfortunately all too common. I’ve learned letting go of perfectionist ideals allows us to stick to practices, learn and grown more, to feel comfortable in the space of the unknown and discover new powers within that reveal to us how perfectly imperfect we all are. 

6. Support, Community and Accountability

No man (or woman) is an island. And when we feel like one life get’s a whole lot harder. After teaching nearly 20 Yoga Lifestyle Courses I’ve seen what a powerful impact community, support and accountability have on creating consistency. I think there are a few key reasons. First, knowing others are in the same boat quiets the “Somethings wrong with me” voice that causes us to give up. Second, when we speak our intentions to others we’re more likely to stick to them. Third, sharing the journey makes it more enjoyable, and when we’re enjoying something we want to keep doing it! So find yourself a community of people who support you, I know this has changed my life with for the better yoga, business and more. 

Source: morganwerbet.com