HOW TO DEVELOP A STRONG CHARACTER

 Consistency

The journey of a thousand miles begins with a step. As familiar as people are with this saying, it is a surprise that a lot of people who step out in life are focused more on that first step than they are on completing the journey. The instant nature of today’s society has hugely affected the desire to find consistency and stay at it.

I wrote on dedication in our last Monday post, and I am glad we got positive feedback from people on it. It is a joy to see that our work is being as helpful as we desire, and we ask to that effect that you tell us in the Comments section what you find particularly useful to you.

Consistency could simply be defined as deliberate repetition of a particular process, method, or formula. It is a firmness of constitution of character; it is the harmony of conduct or practice with profession. It might not be as talked about as the other virtues earlier discussed, but make no mistake about it; NOTHING grows and increases without consistency. Even in the negative sense, no bad thing happens and gets cemented without consistency.

What you are today is a function of what you have been consistent with. A lazy person today is one who has consistently kept at it, and it is the same with a hardworking person. If we go further and use football as an example, for a team to win a league, take Manchester City winning the Premier League as an instance, they had to consistently produce excellent results, and win a lot of games. A club like Norwich City on the other hand, kept on producing woeful results, and they got relegated from the country’s elite league.

Research has shown that a calculable formula for your success or failure is simply a product of your average effort and your frequency (the number of times you put in that effort). A perfect example of this is how saving ₦500 for 100 days would give you ₦50,000. If you skip a day or increase or reduce the amount, your resultant savings would be consistent with what you put in. this is also seen in the tertiary institution; a student’s final CGPA is a product of his consistency in producing the kind of results he got on the average.

Why Should I Strive For Consistency?

I was having a talk about consistency with someone, and he said, “Why should I be consistent? Isn’t change constant?” this fellow, like a lot of other people have missed the mark from the off. Consistency is not about sticking to mundane activities. It is about finding and working with proven success formulas, as you grow in depth and width. A consistently successful person is one who multiplies what he has, not one who just stays as he is. The parable of the talents is a great example of this. The servant who got one talent thought he was being consistent by burying the money he was given, but the others who multiplied their capital were the consistent ones. Consistency does the following for you:

1. Speedy Growth

So long as you keep engaging consistently in productive and fruitful tasks, you would find your growth come faster than you probably would have thought. It doesn’t appear overnight, and sometimes it may look like nothing is coming out of your effort, but stay persuaded. A woman is not bothered if her baby doesn’t come out in the first month of her conception, not even in the first six to seven months. In fact, she is worried if the child comes out at all before her EDD (expected delivery date).

This is the same with the efforts you put in when trying to be consistent. The growth curve of life isn’t always straightforward, but if you keep at it, you would find your success.

2. Image Building

Almost everyone, or everyone, actually, is known for what they are consistent in. this is with the exception of few sudden breakout cases, which also fade quickly if there is no consistent effort to maintain the newly found success. There are people who are known for being smart, others for being artistically gifted etc. and this is because they stuck to what they are good at.

Consistency, therefore, helps build an image of you, and that image is what people would carry in their minds.

3. Specialisation

Whoever is consistent in a particular endeavour eventually builds it up as a second nature. A person who saves money consistently automatically learns to be more prudent. A singer who devotes three hours daily to singing lessons would do well in music and even someone who wonderfully plans to fail would also master the art of failing.

4. Better Time Management

A person who learns to be consistent and acquires specialisation in what he tries out finds that his mastery helps him save time. When you become consistent in a skill or a chore, like laundry, for instance, you find out that you can do more in less time, and it helps you manage your time better.

Tomorrow, I would tell two stories, and one would be about this blog and how cultivating a habit of consistency has helped us achieve so much in little time and with limited resources.

How To Build a Life of Consistency

As consistency and dedication share certain things in common, you would find a number of points repeated, but that just makes your work easier. So, let's go to our guide:

1. Renew your mind

Consistency, just like courage doesn’t come overnight. You have to transform your mind by immersing yourself in certain practices that condition it for success. This is absolutely necessary as all journeys start from the inside. You have to flush out every feeling of cowardice by changing how you feel, think, and act towards things.

This is a lifetime process, and you have to be intentional about it. Cut off things that discourage you, things that make you feel little, things that make you afraid, or things that may have hurt you in the past.

2. Identify Target Areas

What and where do you want to build a consistent habit? Is it in your finances? Is it in your academics or in relationships? You can hardly do it all at once, so look for a good place to start and start there. It won't be as easy, and you might have relapses, but keep on going, you'll get there.

3. Try Form a Team

Teams are cool when trying to achieve certain goals, and building a consistent habit is one of such places where you may need a team. If you move with the right people, you'll receive sufficient human assistance to do the things you are seeking to be consistent in and it'll make your journey sweeter. 

4. Never Look Back 

A lot of people have a feeling of achievement even they begin to build consistency, then they try to relive the old life they once had, and boom, they're back to what they tried to break free from. 

Never look back at what you left behind, it'll draw you back and reset your progress. 

5. Repeat Over and Over

This goes two ways, two scenarios with the same instruction. Sometimes, the above listed steps work; sometimes they don’t, not immediately. The formula is hardly wrong, but there is the occasional exception to the rule. Whatever the outcome, repeat these steps. If it works, your confidence is built and you’ve made progress. If it doesn’t work, it’s probably because you missed something in your planning. Not to worry, review your plan, and try again. You will get it right.

Now you know how to develop a consistent character, and I’m trusting you'd be more focused after reading this. Let me know what stood out for you in this post, and if you have a story for us, mail it to us at twwblog1@gmail.com

Stay safe!