Becoming Consistent

How many times have you started on a project or goal, whether it's to get organized, lose weight, train for a 5K or get out of debt? For me, these are some of the most started themes of my regular day-to-day life. My trouble is never getting started (well sometimes!), my trouble is consistently doing what it takes every single day until I've reached the goal I set for myself!

Yesterday I had one of those Come to Jesus meetings with myself. It was easy since yesterday was Sunday and I actually forced myself to get up and go to Church. I realized as my emotions were churning on the way out of my driveway, that I have started a million things and that God knows every single one of them. He loves me even though I've probably only actually completed one or two successfully. See, God doesn't expect us to be perfect. He kinda already knows we're not perfect because HE's the one who made us that way. God wants us to learn to be consistent.

When you learn to take a few daily steps toward your goal every day, you develop a muscle memory that becomes a habit. You have to continue to take those same daily steps every single day in order to reach any worthy goal. Some people think it takes 21-28 days to develop a habit. I disagree. I think it takes "as many days as it takes" until the daily steps become automatic. It may take one week to become a habit, or it may take one hundred. What matters is that the more often one is consistently taking that daily step toward her goal, she will get closer and closer and eventually will obtain that goal. Consistently taking those daily steps is the key.

I started a challenge with myself last week; I even announced it to the Universe . I challenged myself to blog for 30 days. I made it three days into the challenge before I let life get in the way. I have 1,000 excuses for why I didn't follow through. I even had plans and dreams of overcoming the missed days and actually played out in my mind how awesome the posts would be and how people would be magically changed by reading them. The trouble is, those plans were never followed through. So the magic never made it from inside my head to here on this blog.

I am aware of my lack on consistency. I am determined to learn from this problem and to correct it. I am reading books that will help me overcome it. I am blogging about it in an effort to recognize and understand why I do it. And I am praying that God will give me the strength to move past it.

Whatever dreams or goals you may have missed due to your own lack on consistency, I ask you to forgive yourself (I forgive me)! I ask you to dust yourself off and get back on that horse! (Dusting myself off)! Let's move past the stopping points and continue to take daily steps to make our dreams a reality!

"Brethren, I do not regard myself as having laid hold of it yet, one one thing I do, forgetting what lies behind and reaching forward to what lies ahead." Phillippians 3:13 KJV

Read The Compound Effect by Darren Hardy, The Slight Edge by Jeff Olsen