“Life is more about consistency than intensity. Intensity steals the limelight.” * These two sentences captured my attention the other day. A very obvious thing and yet it shows our tendency to be fascinated by extraordinary achievements and events that almost always overshadow the basis of anything remarkable: the often mundane regular repeated practice.
Just think about it, how many times are we attracted by an image of someone repeating the same activity every day, systematically working towards one’s goals, one step at a time. Never. We are always captured by intensity. Extraordinary achievements, grand speeches, spectacular pieces of architecture. There is nothing wrong with that but are we perhaps giving intensity more credit that it deserves, fixing deep seated issues by quick and “ intense fixes” as opposed to systematic, constant and repeated smaller actions over time?
Take building muscles, whether physical or mental ones. In both cases, you need regular and systematic action over a period of time. You won’t build any muscle, in fact you will seriously hurt yourself, if you train 5 hours straight. It is similar with mental fitness. You need to stick to regular mental exercises to rewire your brain and build mental muscles.
Similarly, you don’t build friendships overnight by giving someone one large gift. You spend time, listen, talk, experience, share, give and receive. You are vulnerable and with time the other persons equally opens up. All this is not possible after one meeting only. It takes regular, honest and meaningful interactions. Or take romantic relationship. We often tend to think or imagine situations in terms of intensity; amazing gifts, spectacular holidays, Michelin restaurants, flamboyant declarations of love. You name it but what really matters is consistency; consistently being there for each other, consistently listening to each other, consistently showing up during hard times.
When I was a kid, my parents would always tell me that I needed to have “ sitzfleisch”. A literal translation from German means one’s behind, to have the flesh to be sitting on. Endurance would also be a good synonym too. In other words, they wanted me to sit and systematically study for as long as i necessary and a little more:-). And I did for somehow even as a child I realised that education was the only escape from the demagogy, grimness and oppression of the communist regime.
Fast forward several dozen of years, I might still have some of that “sitzfleisch” but most importantly, I am well aware of how much benefit has the constant dedication to language learning or other disciplines brought me. Darren Hardy in Compound Effect sums this up when he says that “small, unsexy but smart decisions ( and actions) made consistently lead to incomprehensible and incredible results.”
So why do we sometimes quit without having given ourselves the time to see the results of a dedicated and consistent work ?
Which areas of your life need constant and repeated action as opposed to a quick intense fix?
Which part of your life are you taking shortcuts instead of going the consistent way?
*Angela Duckworth
Excellent point well made Viktoria. As you said, persistence doesn’t have good press, but certainly brings the results over time. I guess the real question is, what can we do to make consistency attractive?