In this episode of Inside Treasures, Phoebus takes a deep dive into the concept of consistency—why it’s so difficult to maintain, and how it can both help and hinder your progress. He explores the mindset behind consistency, shares actionable strategies for overcoming inconsistency, and highlights the importance of focusing on progress rather than perfection. Tune in to discover how to create meaningful change in your life without letting the pressure of consistency weigh you down.
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Phoebus delves into the often misunderstood power of consistency, breaking down why we struggle to maintain it and how it shapes our growth. He offers a refreshing perspective on letting go of perfectionism and focusing on sustainable progress. This episode will guide you through practical ways to align your actions with your goals, helping you build a life that truly reflects what you want.
00:00 – Consistency
00:30 – Intro
00:55 – Lack of Consistency
01:32 – Consistently inconsistent
02:34 – Realise where you are consistent
03:09 – Finding Stillness Course
04:40 – Consistency in Time
05:22 – How consistent do you want to be?
06:23 – Competing consistencies
07:26 – The stings of incosistency
09:29 – Gap vs Gain
10:23 – Get yourself off the hook
11:05 – Ideals will squash you
12:23 – What you focus on
13:03 – Obstinance is not freedom
15:07 – Consistency is a step
15:36 – Are you setting yourself up for failure?
17:53 – Focus: Force & Power
19:18 – Practice: Your one thing
20:48 – Be comitted to a cause
22:29 – What are you willing to let go?
25:11 – Too much pressure
26:34 – Stop fighting You
27:20 – Opportunity to work with me
28:23 – Outro
00:01 Consistency, consistency, consistency. What is it about consistency that gets us all going all wound up when we’re trying to create things and we
find that we’re not being consistent and we start, we want it to be more disciplined and actually to get there. But there’s so much like
discrepancy, there’s so much a play when it comes to discipline because. And consistency, the way that we work and the way that we function is
like we crave consistency, yet we feel that we don’t have it.
00:31 Welcome to another episode from Inside Treasures. My name is Phoebus and I love to challenge myself and those around me for the purpose of growth.
I’m here to help you heal, change and grow.
00:43 In this episode, we’re going to be talking about consistency. How consistency can help you shift gears and how consistency at times can keep you
back and getting the things that you really want. And I’m sure that you’re listening to this episode because you feel there’s something about you
and consistency at play that you haven’t been able to kind of manage and cope with.
01:04 So what is it? Consistency is. Has different ways of actually expressing it. We think of consistency as a way of repeating something in a way that
it works as a pattern.
01:18 Now, as human beings, we are built to be consistent. Actually, our behavior tends to be quite consistent in the way that we behave. And that might
be that.
01:29 I said that I want to go to the gym, but actually I’m not going to the gym. That’s being consistent on being inconsistent. Consistent.
01:35 Do you see the twist there? It’s all about like, we’re trying to be consistent, but we’re being inconsistent, but we’re very consistent in the way
that we’re being inconsistent now, following that pattern, we understand that. Actually, I feel, and I see myself as not being consistent enough,
but maybe I’m actually more consistent than I’m thinking that I am. And this is the bit that I want you to change in your mind.
01:59 That changed a little bit of the narrative on how things work out for you. Because when you approach something and you want to be consistent but
you feel you’re being inconsistent, guess what’s going to happen. You’re going to show up a lot more inconsistently than you would like to because
you view yourself as being someone who is inconsistent.
02:19 From that space, we understand that the way that things work is like, well, I’m trying to build consistency, so I can’t really lie to myself and
say that I’m being consistent when I’m not, but it’s realizing that you’re consistent in certain parts of your life. Realize in which parts of
your life are you being consistent. This is a big key because it will help you uncover and understand that you have the resource within you.
02:44 You have the capacity to be consistent. You just haven’t been consistent in this area of your life. For example, I haven’t been consistent in
going to the gym.
02:56 When it comes to consistency, another thing to realize is that it depends on the time frame. It depends on the expectation. Are we overperfecting
in our minds? Do I want to be at the gym every day? Every single day at 05:00 a.
03:17 m. a quick announcement. I’ve been working behind the scenes for the past few months around a course called finding stillness.
03:41 Finding stillness is about helping you to create that space in your life, to create deeper connection, primarily with yourself, but then as a
result, with the people around you. It has to do with cultivating more self love, more understanding, more acceptance towards yourself, your
thoughts, your emotions. Finding stillness is something that I personally find it very important and crucial.
04:34 If you’re interested, go to my website, inside treasures.com and look for the course finding stillness finding stillness is about pressing pause
in life, about you finding the time and the space and cultivating that and create that in order for you to experience a moment of bliss, which you
get to create a moment of space, a moment for you where you can sit back and actually see your life for what it is. It’s about presencing yourself
in what is going on every single day, in every single moment. That doesn’t mean this is what you will do, because in a way that can also sound
tedious, but it’s about improving the quality of your life by presenting yourself more and more and more.
04:48 And there’s so much abundance of gifts that comes as a result of you. That is a consistency timeframe. So it’s the timeframe and how we play with
time that actually we need to be aware of.
05:18 Because there’s a difference between being consistent throughout the day, let’s say for me, eating like proper meals, or whether I’m being
consistent during my week or every two weeks or on my month. Because there’s certain things that we can actually do every single day with other
things that we want to do every week, especially when you’re working with yourself and you have your own things that you want to be, you know,
progressing towards. This is really important for us to remember because it’s like, okay, I want to be consistent with this.
05:50 I want to be consistent with creating content. How consistent do I want to be? Do I want to be consistent every day? Do I want to be consistent
every week, every month? Do I want a certain result at the end of the month? Because that is different requirements and require different part of
my energy and input towards that. So to what degree and to what timeframe do I want to be consistent? It’s really important to weed all these
things out because they get complex.
06:10 When you’re going on your day to day and you’re living your life, it kind of gets in the way because you’re fighting and struggling with
discipline and being consistent. But at the same time it can be so difficult because it’s not really clearly defined or what we have defined. It’s
quite perfectionistic.
06:34 So it’s all out there and it’s just like, yeah, from zero to one, I want to be working out, you know, every single day. But I’ve been a cosplayer
for the past three years, so how’s that going to work? And again, part of it is like applying the pressure in the right points. So if you’re
trying to be consistent at too many things at the same time, you need to realize that this is going to be a roadblock for you.
07:00 This is going to be get very hard because if I’m starting at the same time to be consistent, meditating and exercising and journaling and I’m just
starting today at the same time, yes, you could do those things. Yes, you can start small days, you can be very determined, but realize that the
different forces pulling you in different places, the forces and things competing for your attention. And yes, you can stack your habits, but it
takes time.
07:15 And I find that once we find consistency in one thing, that is when we can actually truly live consistency and stacking habits. But if you’re
starting all out, you’re spreading thin. And even though we’re doing one thing at a time, you’re always going to have these competing forces.
07:35 And this I’m going to get back to at the end of this episode because I want you to think and consider what are the places that you can be more
consistent with and what kind of things you’ll be willing to let go. But before I get into that, I want you to consider something. Because the
biggest trip for me and consistency hasn’t been about not being consistent.
07:56 It has been about when I break my consistency or what I think should be my consistency and focusing on that gap and how that gap is making me
feel. And I’m sure it’s making you feel in a similar way. So let’s choose like any goal, whatever, any task, anything that we want to do
consistently, I’m going to use as an example, meditate every day.
08:12 So I’m going to think about the time frame, 15 days, and I’m going to think that I want to meditate either every single day or six days a week or
five days a week, whatever it is for you. But think about it this way. Right now I don’t have it as a goal.
08:17 It’s kind of my mind. I’m not really focusing on it, I’m not being consistent. I do it whenever I feel like it.
08:31 So it’s something that I want to do and some days I do it, some days I don’t. I’m not trying to be consistent, but I would like and prefer it to
be consistent. So yeah, I’m a bit like light with it, right.
08:42 So in like a 15 day time frame, I meditate twice. Once on the first week, second on the second week. As an example, maybe I do another one, the
third one.
08:58 I really feel like it. You see there we have 15 days and three of them we got to meditate on the next example. Think of it as if you’re setting
the target of meditating for five days a week or six days a week.
09:18 So in those 15 days you would expect that if you’re doing six weeks that you meditate for twelve days and you have three days gap. Now, when you
go on your day today and you’re like, I’m being consistent with this and I really care about this and we’re really passionate. We kind of exclude
all the other stuff that you’re trying to do.
09:33 From that space, though, you can see that you missed a few more days. So instead of doing twelve, you’ve actually done nine. So the problem
becomes that we focus at the gap versus the progress.
09:46 The way to focus on the progress is we’ve done nine. And this is amazing because before, when we didn’t have it as a target and we weren’t being
as consistent, we actually did two or three. And this is far lower than setting the target.
09:58 So the space that you actually covered is from three to nine and you see that we’ve done six more days. Again. Is it perfect? Is it consistent? Is
it every single day? No.
10:19 The problem is when we think ourselves as less of and as not being as successful because we focus on the four, five, six days that we missed,
because we’re like, well, I put myself that target, I wanted to meditate every day and I haven’t done it every day. And instead of focusing on the
benefits that we get from it, we’ve actually been focusing on what’s lacking. We’re focusing on the gap.
10:33 We’re seeing how we’re not as consistent as we’d like to be. And we start to beat ourselves up over and over and over again. And we start to feel
bad about ourselves, about us being inconsistent with how we go about and meditate every single day, which we don’t have.
10:55 So we get frustrated with what we’re doing. We get frustrated with ourselves instead of opening up, instead of embracing the progress, instead of
embracing the change, instead of thinking, yeah, things could be better. But it’s knowing when to apply pressure to keep yourself on track and
also knowing when that is actually putting you in a state that you are feeling worst about yourself.
11:40 So in that part is about learning how to get yourself off the hook, how to give yourself some space, how to reorganize your day so you can
actually focus on thing that you want to do. So what I want you to get through out of all of this discussion is the fact that sometimes we think
about consistency and we think about measuring ourselves against a perfectionistic idea and against this ideal of what it’s like to do these
things every single day and how perfect your life will be as a result of you doing that. But that is your mind and that is your projection and
that there’s insecurities that are coming up in the way that you view how something should be versus how it is is, and how you can make something
work for you.
12:15 The whole point of being consistent is to be able to grow and improve yourself and to be able to achieve specific results in your life. If your
effort in the process of being consistent is actually backfiring you and making you avoid the thing that you want to be consistent, if it’s making
you feel worse than you actually would be if you weren’t striving for it, then this has the reverse implication of what you want it to be. Instead
of being consistent and trying to create the results that you’re trying to create, you’re shrinking and you’re viewing the world in a way.
12:39 And in a sense, that makes you feel bad about the thing that you’re trying to create and make, and it makes you feel bad about yourself. Again,
it’s where we focus on, are we focusing on the growth? Are we focusing on the progress? Are we focusing on the extra effort that we put in? Is
this consistency and extra effort creating the result that you’re after. Because sometimes we try to be consistent.
12:55 We are being consistent, but nothing is happening. It’s the usual, I’m knocking myself my head on the, on the wall. And this is something that we,
like, we all do at times, and we get so persistent and we get so fixated about being consistent that actually it’s not really working for you.
13:25 Because the more that you try to do that and you go over and over and over again, it’s backfiring all the time. And sometimes this obstinacy to
keep pushing this obstinacy to keep trying to be consistent instead of liberating you and freeing you, it’s communicating backwards to you that
there is something that you need to change. So the thing that you want to be consistent with might not necessarily be the thing that you need to
be consistent with.
14:07 Sometimes we think like, I want to be consistent in how I achieve my tasks, but actually we’ve been very consistent procrastinating, and if we
were to move beyond procrastination, then they will be more consistent. So when you’re being inconsistent, the thing that you get is that there’s
something behind the thing that you’re trying to achieve. What is the thing that you’re resisting against? What is the thing that is not really
working out for you? What is this? What is it about this but stopping you from being consistent? What is it about you that stops you from being
consistent with this particular thing? Again, narrowing down, not that I’m not ever consistent with anything.
14:16 You’re very consistent. Keep that in mind and then view yourself from that angle. And also find out ways that you can become more consistent.
14:47 Find out ways that you can overcome the obstacles, the resistance, the fear, whatever it is. What kind of emotions sit behind that? What kind of
emotions come in that stop me from being consistent? Is it the way that I view myself? Is it that I view this being difficult? Is it that I’m
afraid? Is that I’m afraid of failing? What is it specifically for you? Because that way you start to unlock, you start to pick the lock and every
pin that you lift, then you’re able to progress. And that is the whole thing to remember.
15:00 You’re starting from point a again, the 15 days you risk point b. If you left everything to just b, then yeah, you would have that random success.
But now you’re being more intentional.
15:25 And don’t think because you’re being consistent on every single day that that is going to solve all your problems. Consistency helps. Intentional
consistency helps, but in the way that it becomes a step for you, for your growth, for your progress, for the things that you’re trying to achieve
and change in your life, not in the way that I’m feeling bad about myself.
15:36 Some of it can help at times because it’d be like, okay, enough is enough. I need to be consistent with this. This is important and this is where
I want this to go as part of the next level of the conversation.
16:04 Early on, I spoke about being consistent and I spoke about different things pulling our attention at any given moment in our life. The different
forces at play, the forces are pulling us in different direction, all competing for our attention. The problem with that is that not only do we
have outside expectations and demands from our time, attention and ourselves, but we also have our own internal ones.
16:17 So I need to do this for my mom, I need to do this for my sister, I need to do this for where I’m working. And then I want to meditate, I want to
exercise. All these things are energies that they’re pulling us apart.
16:39 And it depends on what we’re focusing on and how focused we are in a given moment. Again, through our life, through our day, we’ll do different
things, but it’s where we concentrated on and we were able to isolate our attention and focus on the thing that we’re working on and that can
allow us to progress. But that’s like a little bit off topic.
16:51 What I want you to realize is that consistency works in the same way. If I’m trying to be consistent on too many things, I’m setting myself up for
failure. I’m making my life a little bit more difficult.
17:12 And then I put the blame on me, judging me about being inconsistent in my life, but I’m already setting the stage to fail. I’m already trying to
do too many things. I’m already trying to be consistent in things that demand my consistency and effort and progress.
17:30 And the more that you go throughout your day, the more you expend that energy. And if you’re not replenishing your energy, it’s very hard to do
this. Some things will be easy, some things will be second nature, but they most probably are second nature because you spend enough time so they
don’t require as much effort.
18:02 So when we build consistency and discipline coming from that place, we need to exert some effort, we need to influence the way we behave because
our previous consistent way of being would behave differently. So as we redirecting our life and changing channels and changing from one group to
the other, we need to be able to exert some force to change the direction of the stream. It has force, it has momentum, it has a way of being and
going.
18:25 Now, if I’m trying to create too many channels, of course that energy from the river is being diffused into smaller and smaller parts, so it
doesn’t have that much force and power. And here comes the question. If you want to be consistent and more consistent in your life, that’s a
generality.
18:31 It’s a generalization about who you want to be. You can view yourself that way. So you can definitely start there.
18:51 You can start identifying the parts where in your life you have been consistent and then see where you’re doing it right now. So you start to pay
attention to where you get things right from. That, though, you think in your life you want to be consistent, you want to build habits, you want
to do this and that and the other.
19:12 But like I said, there are too many things pulling you around. And if there are too many things pulling you around, you can direct your energy,
you can direct your attention, and it’s harder to progress on many fronts. We’ve seen that in many, like of the big wars, that they were trying to
have too many battlefields.
19:41 And when you have too many battlefields, you begin to lose the word because all your energies and consistencies are being torn apart. So what is
the one thing, the one thing you want to be consistent with? What’s the one thing that you’ve been trying to be consistent with? But now, all of a
sudden, if I was just consistent with that, I’ll be so happy and it would make me truly feel that I’m being consistent. Notice that.
20:04 What is that thing that you want to do that you feel will give you that x result that will help you in your life and your brain will come up with
a thousand things, especially when you go into morning routines and evening routines and this and that. There’s a whole list, an array of things
and desires of things that we want to do and create. Again, our mind is pulling us around.
20:18 But what is it that you truly want to do? You say you want to be consistent. Consistent with what? Define that consistency. Define the thing,
define the timeframe.
20:29 For how long? Because sometimes, like, I want to be consistent indefinitely, I want to meditate every day for the rest of my life. Indefinitely.
That’s a big ask, that’s a big commitment.
20:53 It’s not that you’re unable to do it, but it’s that you’re putting too much pressure on your shoulders when all that matters, because did I
meditate this morning? Have I meditated today, kind of meditate. If I haven’t right now, that’s building the consistency. But you see, it starts
with a commitment, a commitment to a cause that you have a commitment to something that is meaningful and useful to you.
21:10 Because without that, doesn’t matter. You can be inconsistent with what we can all be consistent at things, but what is it that you truly want to
be consistent with? For how long? Good. Register.
21:30 Then now comes the tricky part. It’s not choosing the thing that you want to be consistent. Are you willing, are you willing to let go of other
things that get in the way of you being consistent? And that includes other things that you’re trying to be consistent with.
21:46 So if I want to meditate, for example, and I also want to exercise, and I don’t have a primary place that I’m focusing on, I will once do this,
once I do the other. Sometimes I get them both right. And again, I’m building progress because I’m working.
21:53 I’m working on my progress of doing the thing that I want to do. But at the same time I’m diffusing my energy. I’m getting confused.
21:58 I don’t know which one to do first. I haven’t thought about it through. And that’s why, like routine can help.
22:08 Because, like, first I do this, then I do that, then I do that. These things can help, but at the same time, it’s just like, oof, I’ve done all
this. That’s been hard work already.
22:29 And if it’s paying off, dividends go out. But if it’s holding you back, then something has to give. If meditating, for example, is your number one
thing, the tip of your spirit, the thing that you want to do and feel and experience all the time, whatever that is, I’m just giving you an
example.
22:56 Then that means that you need to be willing to put all your efforts and all your energy in that thing. But in order for you to be willing to put
all your energy and focus and attention into that thing, you have to be willing to let go of some things. So what are you willing to let go in
order for you to be able to do this? Anything that you want to do, in order for you to focus on the tip of the spear, it doesn’t mean that you
won’t do anything else.
23:15 But what are you willing to give up, especially when it comes to the context of consistency? I want to be consistent on a, B and C, but primarily
I want to be consistent on a. So I’m willing to let go momentarily because that’s the problem. It’s like we’re thinking, oh, my God, but I really
want to do this good.
23:25 B and C can go for now, for the next week, for the next two weeks, for the next month, whatever that is. Forgive yourself. Create that space.
23:56 Create that space in you. Take that step back and say, I’m willing to create that space for myself to be, because I truly value a right now. And I
want to place all my attention on being consistent and about learning to be more consistent and about learning how to be more compassionate with
myself when I’m not being consistent and about seeing the things that I allow to get in the way of me and the thing that I want to be consistent
with and finding that commitment in you.
24:03 It’s a razor. It cuts. If you want to be consistent, you better be very decisive on things.
24:20 You better sit behind the decisions that you’re making. And in that way you’ll get more and more progress, you get more and more traction, you get
more and more consistency. And guess what? When you get that level of consistency, you’ll be looking at yourself as being more consistent.
24:49 And when you want to introduce B and C, you’ll be able to apply yourself again, because now you’ll have the momentum, you have the discipline, you
have the consistency of doing the a thing. You can slowly start diverting your attention to b, but making sure you don’t lose out from a, because
the minute you start do that. A will need less attention, less energy, but it still needs something to maintain, to maintain the momentum, to
maintain the speed.
24:59 You still need to be able to act on it. And you will notice that sometimes you get really confident about how you manage a and being consistent.
And you might start adding B, C and D.
25:18 Then you’re getting all excited thinking you can do it and it might work for a while for you. Well, then all of a sudden you take a sharp turn and
it all gets derailed and you’re like, what happened? Well, what happened was too much consistency. What happened was adding too much pressure on
the system.
25:35 The system is not able to cope and manage. That’s why for me, in my book, you go back to step a. What’s the number one thing that I’m willing to
be consistent with? For how long? For how much time I need to meditate.
25:42 It doesn’t have to be 20 minutes every day. My minimum is three minutes, five minutes. Whatever it is, I’m giving it as an example.
25:59 I need to just get out of the house. I don’t need to have this big goal about exercising, having a high bar helps. Having a high bar and a vision
can really help us and pull us forwards, but sometimes it can also push us backwards in the way that this feels and seems to be too much for my
life.
26:06 So actually, all I need to do is get out the door. All I need to do is put my running shoes and be out the door. That is the thing that I need to
be consistent with.
26:15 That is the thing that I need to win. Once I do that, the rest of the things, they kind of take care of themselves. I will go for a run.
26:28 I will go for a walk. It kind of happens. The resistance for me might be just getting out the door or when I wake up, when meditating is getting
here, sitting here, meditating, like, that’s the thing that I need to do.
26:35 And if I just do it very quickly, then there’s no resistance and there’s no inconsistency. There’s no discipline. Fight again.
26:55 You don’t have to fight with yourself. That’s the thing that I’m trying to get out. Don’t fight with yourself because that makes you feel worse
about yourself, about who you are, about who you are in this world, about the things that you’re creating and who you’re being.
27:01 So do be consistent. Have that. Make it your badge of honor.
27:14 Work with it, but don’t make it so that when you look in the mirror, you feel worst about yourself. Have it so it serves you. Have it as a tool to
feel better by yourself.
27:26 Not worst. Have it as a way of you creating the life that you want to live. Just for this week and this week only, if you find consistency is
something that you need help with.
27:37 You need some support with. I have two spots available, and it can really help you to kind of shift the gears. The things that I talk about in
this episode, you find the need for more support.
27:46 It will give you more clarity. It will help you understand yourself more. It will help to reorient the way that you live and how consistent you
are in your life.
28:10 I really enjoy working with other people, and whenever I speak to somebody else, I find that there’s common ground that we can build a space, a
platform that we can create so you can work for them and create the consistency that you want in your life. And also we be able to mess around a
little bit with your thinking and see how you view in the world and how you can change that. To enable you to get more of what you want in life.
28:26 Send me a message on Instagramitetreasures. Or go to my website, inshitreasures.com and just find a way to reach to me and we can arrange that.
Thank you for tuning in to another episode from Inside Treasures.
My name is Phoebus and until next time, my friend, let peace guide your life. Let love guide your heart and reason guide your thoughts. Until next time, keep shining.
PS. If you want to find stillness in your life and connection with yourself. Join the online Finding Stillness self-paced course.
❤️ Support at: Donate
Episode Summary In this episode of Inside Treasures, Phoebus unpacks the powerful dynamic between our words and actions, revealing how alignment between the two can lead to personal growth and transformation. He explores the significance of integrity and how being honest about our intentions and actions is key to creating meaningful change. Get ready for […]
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