This is more self-reflective post than anything else. A selfish experiment of thought, and self-provocation. Do read it, but with a pinch of salt. It can also be considered as an excuse to not write something more worth your while, and readable. Or an excuse to write something on the lines of Whose Line Is It Anyway? The show’s premise stands tall here - Everything is made up, and the points don’t matter.
This year there seems to be this disconnect between consistency in all things to be done, and I. It’s been more chaotic. I mean inconsistency is about chaos. And, as a species we’re averse to chaos. Sure, we’ve been wild, we’ve been orderless too. But, as time goes on, we tend to shift over, and say hello from the order side. Obviously so, me being me I starve myself of everything until I can figure out the why behind a problem like this. The problem of so much chaos, and inconsistency within, with, and around me. And, that’s exactly what I did. Here’s what I found out:
Follow along:
Inconsistency’s Roots:
Do keep in mind that this applies to my problem of being consistent with things, goals, to-dos, and just about everything else I lift a finger for; of seeing things come to completion, staying motivated even under the most bleakest of situations, and coming up on top of everything while still alive. We may think that it’s an easy thing to achieve, to be consistent in something regardless of what happens to us, or around us. It’s not. It probably requires the same amount of energy to keep positive always as the energy required to protect ourselves from depression or complete demotivation.
- Self Motivation: It’s required. More than anything else, this one point is key. Why do we wake up everyday, from our beds? What keeps us self-motivated to reach our goals? The word ‘self motivation’ is misleading, as I understand it. It requires the help of others around us. It requires a lot of their energy as well. Who do we go to when we’re low? Who helps us, without knowing they do so? Who do we think of when we wake up from that bed, everyday? I think if my own selfishness requires me to wakeup everyday, become a gung-ho spirit every moment of every day, chase after the same things day after day no matter what then I’d sooner give up than do all of that. Think about it. I think there has to be someone around when you achieve all of those, when you chase all of your dreams, and for us to stay motivated consistently - day, after day, after day.
- Inspiration: Getting inspired by other things, and people is also key to consistency. Something or someone to look up to, to become better than them. These are goals that go a long way to keep us consistent with whatever it is we’re chasing after. Again, note people are involved here, in this process of staying inspired. The make, and do things that change you.
- Success paralysis: Everyone has their own version of what success is, and is not. Then there’s a global version of what success is, and is not. Add to that mixture the what we as individuals know, and understand of the word failure; and, how the world understands, and derives the word failure, you’ve got a potent mixture of cosmic level philosophies. While there is no term such as ‘success paralysis’ in existence - all of these self, and world imposed definitions of success, and failure cause a certain kind of paralysis. A fear of moving forward. A fear of letting go of something that no longer works or adds to our bottom line of goal achievements. Then there’s this culture of getting back up, no matter how hard you fail. Getting up while not noticing the scars, and scrapes you carry forward that go without notice until it’s too late. Paralyzing success or your definition of it, in the process. When in doubt, it’s time to change. It’s time to recoup, and get a fresh start at something entirely different.
- Laziness: Time is a made-up construct. It really doesn’t exist in the sense we believe it to exist in. Thus, there’s always tomorrow. And, tomorrow never ends. Until it does. But before it does, there’s a whole pile of things to do. And no time to perceive it done. And, because it’s a made-up construct I’d like to argue that it runs differently for each of us. For some it’s as fast as lightning; for others as slow as a snail. While there may be nothing wrong with our individual perception of time, we do tend to take it for granted. More than we’d like to admit to. The only way out of this sinkhole would be the whiplash ourselves out of it. Every single time. This too requires copious amounts of energy though.
- Procrastination: Superposition-ed with laziness, procrastination is really something to be wary of. Think quantum entanglement with laziness. The more we procrastinate, the more lazy we get. The more laid back we’re the more time slows down. The more time slows down, the less we achieve. Unless, we’ve achieved all. Unless, we’re successful. Breaking down things, and mentally preparing ourselves for the task at hand helps. Tremendously so. So does having a unshakeable routine. Routine routs both, procrastination, and laziness. On the flip side, it gives you hardly any room to change, grow or just go with the flow of things.
Sleep: It's better than that milkshake of yours writing.
- People support systems: More points in this list hinge on, and around people. They offer us a kind of support system - good, or bad doesn’t matter. What matters is that these support systems help us achieve. They provided for us something that works for us. Remove these support systems, seclude yourself, and everything just starts unraveling. Slowly, but surely. That’s when you realize that dependence is a boon, and a curse at the same time. Just like a photon. When no external support systems exist to help you achieve what you really want or help you understand what is it that you’re really after, it is exactly then that you start asking the right questions. Questions like why are we even doing this? Why bother with it at all? This further brings about breakdown of routines, and consistency. It also leads to a big change within. In the best of cases it leads to new routines, and new support systems that are stronger than the previous ones. Alas, it takes time to come to point where a new support system emerges. Where we ourselves try to motivate, inspire, and somehow support our beliefs in conquering our soon-to-be achievements.
- Teamwork failures: If you happen to work in a team, you undoubtedly will, at points, find yourself demotivated, constrained, and turned-off from achieving a common goal. And, that’s normal. What’s not is that this continues on forever. It’s not normal when something that happens between a team takes a toll on something that all within this team agreed to achieve when they started out. When we started out. What do we do when we end up here, as a team? Where do we go from here? What’s left of the word team? Some questions to think about. More often than not, whenever I’ve found myself here, I’ve had the tendency of giving up. Mostly, I’ll slow down, and observe; I’ll try to wait it out, and find out if anyone else beside me notices what’s coming. Or notices that something needs to be done to get us all back on the same page again. Which leads to either abandonment or stronger bonds. Again, more often than not it leads to the former. Again, this whole thing leads to inconsistency while you find yourself in this crisis mode with your team. You find yourself detracted, demotivated, and uninspired. Even more so in case you decide to abandon the goal that was to be achieved together.
- Pitfall of purpose: We, as a result of our reasoning skills, need a purpose to feel fulfilled. We need to have goals, start lines, and finish lines. This so that we can sip on some tea, on a veranda overlooking a green field of tea leaves, in some nondescript village/town, and ponder back to the good ol’ days. We need definitions. We need the outcomes of our goals defined. Fortunately, or unfortunately life’s without definition. That’s exactly the reason we’ve philosophical studies, religion, and God. So that, like science, we start at an arbitrary point, and just take it from there. Wherever it leads, and make these adjustments along the course of things, and life in general. I dub it as the pitfall of purpose. Finding a purpose for us, is like finding a IRL dragon. Maybe it exists, maybe it doesn’t. But unless it’s your goal to find one, it leads to inconsistency. And, it leads to something we collectively deem as failure. More often than not, when we do find a purpose it may not be all we expected it to be. It may not be all we wanted it to be. Or it may never be. Trying to find a purpose is not experiencing the here, and now. Here, and now matter. Because, we all have a limited supply of seconds. And we need each of those ticks of the clock to tick off that list.
- Carnival of life: Circumstances change. People change. Situations change. For better or worse, everything changes. And, how adaptable we’re to these changes is proportionately related to keeping true to our end set of goals. To staying consistent, even if nothing around us is. Easier written than done, of course. It takes a really, really huge chunk of energy to stay adaptable. To stay on our guard, to calculate for every possible variables in a world made up of variables. All this to stay constant, on the heels of goals, and achievements.
- Abundance of knowledge, ideas, and possibilities: It’s world full of knowledge with the Internet at our beck, and call. It’s a world full of promising possibilities, and ideas. The thing is there are too many of those ideas, and too many of those possibilities. Maybe because of all that knowledge easily accessible so via the Internet. Freely available so. The thing is we’ve had access to knowledge, limited or otherwise from the time when the Internet wasn’t the Internet. We just limited ourselves to what needed to be done. We limited our possibilities to what we could do. We limited our ideas to what we could achieve with what we had in our hands. Now, with our hands out there grabbing as much of knowledge as we can get our hands on, as much of social updates as we can get our hands on, and as much of ideas we can lay our hands on - our hands don’t seem to hold much in terms of a winning hand. Too much available too easily does detract. It does make us inconsistent. Makes us fall to temptation of knowledge, ideas, and possibilities; all the more so because its easily available, and so very very accessible. Today, as I type this rant of a post - I am taking philosophy classes online, iOS development classes, learning psychology, learning Tango, taking RoR classes, and learning to speak Japanese. While being consistent in everything. What a jack of hands, is in my hands. And what a Jack, I am. The only way to finish, and successfully so finish all those courses, and put to use would be to take each of them up individually. Curbing my enthusiasm with respect to all the others.
- No goals: This year started on a very high note of having no goals, and playing it by ear. Six months down, and I already know that it was a mistake. That we require a form of end result to keep at it. The journey matters, only when there’s a road that leads somewhere; lest we aimlessly roam around doing nothing. That’s exactly how I feel today. No goals, is not better than having a goal. Having a goal to look forward to by the end of a year, does make your more consistent.
Now that I’ve outlined everything I’ve experienced so far into this year. What do I do about it? That matters the most. On becoming consistent, I’ll just have to keep trying. That has become my goal this year. The only goal I’ve so far, this year - to become consistent in everything I do. How? I don’t know that yet. But, I’ll be at it. And, when I do know more I’ll make sure everyone else does too!
Also published here/on medium.
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