S5E38: The dark side of consistency
Full transcript:
Good morning, happy Wednesday and welcome to the Language Confidence Project, the daily dose of language courage for people who love languages and those who really don’t, but have to learn one anyway. And today, I just want to check in with you and see if the idea that we need to do things consistently is getting in our way.
Everyone tells us how important it is to be consistent. That success isn’t about greatness, it’s about consistency, that we are what we do every day. And it gets drummed into us from an early age and that message never changes: habits matter.
But there is a real downside to the pressure to be consistent. Specifically, when we take the idea that we are doing very well to do certain things consistently, and we morph it into a narrative that we are the kind of person who is consistent, and make it a personality trait and a standard that we … well.. consistently hold ourselves to. And that means, that we need to be consistent in everything in order to keep aligned with our value of consistency.
And that sounds great when it works. It makes it easier for us to show up every day in our studies, or our fitness journey, or whatever it is, and every act of consistency feeds into that loop and it creates a circle of joy and affirmation in which we can congratulate ourselves on doing and being what we said we would do and be. It’s great in the sphere of studying, and getting useful stuff done, and being reliable. But now let me ask you two questions:
1) How many things have you been afraid to start, or never started, because you were worried that if you did start, you’d have to do it every single day or see it right through to the end?
…Because you worried that starting this thing might be like getting on a train that you can’t get off until you reach the next station? How much does the mantra that we are a consistent person get in the way of the ability to experiment, to just, do things for a bit and see if we like it? And if we do start, it’s probably because we’ve created ourselves a little loophole by putting into the container of a 10-day challenge or a weeklong challenge, and we’ve told ourselves that as long as we complete the challenge, we’ve lived up to our consistent value.
2) How many things are you still doing that probably aren’t serving you any more, or you know that they’re not really the best way to get the results you want, but you started so you’re gonna finish?
Because you’re not a person who leaves things half done, or who breaks a streak, or who quits a challenge halfway through? Because deciding you’ve had enough would become a direct attack on who you are as a person, rather than just, a decision about what you do with your time?
The ability to be consistent, to show up every single day or every single week or every single time for the things you’re invested in is truly a valuable skill. Small acts, repeated over and over again, can bring about the most magical results. But consistency is never the whole picture, so you have to make sure that that identity that you carry about yourself is flexible enough and nuanced enough to allow some things to just ebb and flow into and then out of your life. And you’re allowed to unchain yourself from the notion that consistent people do everything consistently. You’re allowed to experiment. You’re allowed to try things. And within that, you’re allowed to break streaks. And you’re allowed to refuse to finish things that aren’t working.
And as always, if you know someone who would love this episode, or who really needs to hear this message today, please send it to them! And if this episode or the whole podcast helps you, please leave me a review on whatever podcast app you usually use to help other language learners to find me. Let other language learners know that they don’t have to do this alone. Have a wonderful day, and I will see you tomorrow.