Weekly Letter: The Power of Consistency
Over 15 years ago, I’m sitting in a manager meeting at a restaurant I was the bar manager for. The owner is leading the meeting and in this meeting we had some new assistant managers in training.
“McDonald’s is always busy,” the owner begins, “but their food isn’t the best. So why are they constantly so busy?”
“They’re fast,” said one person.
“They’re cheap,” said another.
“Nope,” he says, “they’re consistent. People know exactly what they’re getting, how much it will cost, how long it will take. No matter where you are, you know what you’re getting when you pull into a McDonald’s.”
Several years later, I’m reading Michelle Obama’s autobiography and she said the very same thing about McDonalds. When she was on the campaign trail, she leaned into McDonald’s because she knew how it would treat her system, this was after some incidents with food from well-intentioned preparers left her not feeling very well.
Maybe when you drive by a McDonald’s you think about something else (the McRib maybe?), but I think about that meeting. For some reason, the owner’s observation stuck with me and over the years, I keep coming back to it in different avenues of life.
To be consistent is incredibly powerful and often the unsung hero. At work, you don’t rely on the person who is always late or who you don’t know, you give things to the person who you can count on. But how many times are we not that person for ourselves? Why are we so resistant to having consistency because it helps perpetuate balance in our systems of function?
In practice, Yoganand says practicing a little bit every day is better than only practicing a lot once a week. But practicing once a week is better than nothing. Anything that you can do to create consistency quickly has a domino effect.
Consistency doesn’t even need to start with the biggest of changes. It can begin small. For years I would bring my coffee to my early morning classes on Tuesdays and Thursdays. Coffee in the morning was my habit and so I would always make a cup before going to teach. But I noticed that I often didn’t drink it and it would be cold by the end of class. So I started bringing water to drink and most of the time, I drink at least half of what I bring. There are various articles about the health properties of drinking water first thing in the morning and while I’m not sure how much I’m noticing any long term effects just yet, the short term improvement on how I feel on those mornings by beginning with a glass of water is noticeable enough to incorporate it more often throughout my week. Maybe next year I will have more to say on that.
Here are a few other things I do regularly that have compounding results towards my personal goals:
-I have scheduled reading time for at least 20mins no less than 3 times a week.
-I start my personal practice each week with a reading to keep me focused
-I eat something green every day
If you want to read an excellent book on building consistent habits, read James Clear’s, Atomic Habits.
~Carmen
