A few months ago, I dragged myself through 10,000 steps with the stomach flu because I couldn’t bear breaking my streak.
That’s when I realized consistency had become my master rather than my tool.
I write a lot about consistency here, and I want to say from the start — I believe in it wholeheartedly. Like in the I have read Atomic Habits at least three times kind of way. I believe that living a life of peace, alignment, and success is built with discipline being a core part of your lifestyle.
As James Clear said: “Most people overestimate what they can do in a day, and underestimate what they can accomplish in a year.” When you look at small things done over a long period of time, you can see the immense power of small habits and incremental progress.
Routines, habits, projects — all rely on consistency to build and grow.
I have been sober for over 10 years and it has been the greatest gift in life.
The power of choosing this lifestyle over and over again has transformed the person I am today.
With all that said, I think consistency can also be a trap.
Because it can be easy to think that things are ONLY worth doing if we can be consistent. And this type of black and white thinking doesn’t lead anywhere good.
Two Sides of the Same Coin: Never Starting
This could look like never starting or trying something because we don’t believe we can be consistent at it.
When I was quitting smoking, the looming thought of “NEVER doing it again” hung over me like a dark spectre (which is weird to me now, when I find smoking gross, but then, it seemed like doom).
I was travelling, in my mind, to a future where I could see only a barren landscape. Where I would never again take a drag over a cup of coffee, or smoke when I was nervous. Never again enjoying this habit that had been part of my daily life for 15 years.
This made even trying to quit smoking seem futile.
Or it could just be the idea that we’ve failed so many times before (it took me 7 attempts and a bazillion patches to quit smoking) that we “just can’t” be consistent — so we don’t try because we don’t trust that we ever could be.
I’ve been told I’m consistently inconsistent, and this is usually where that crops up.
Two Sides of the Same Coin: Never Stopping
On the other side of the coin, consistency can look like holding on to a routine SO tightly even if it hurts us because we’re afraid if we deviate from the routine at all, it will be lost forever. We rigidly hold on to habits, even if they no longer serve us.
We convince ourselves that the only way to succeed is to never slip.
This has been a problem for me too. Right now, I am on a 1555 day streak in which I have walked a minimum of 10,000 steps per day. I have a streak of tracking my food in My Fitness Pal for 3,857 days. I can get so stuck on a streak, I can’t stop.
Like even the day after running a marathon, I still walked 10,000 steps, (for perspective marathon day was over 60,000 steps!) even though my body ached and groaned with every step I took. Because I was afraid to lose the streak.
To be fair, I have been diagnosed with OCD in the past, but even so, I think we can all get stuck in consistency, even when we need a rest, or it’s not the right time, or it’s causing us more stress that progress.
The worst part is feeling that if we miss even a day of the routine, habit, or project — it’s evidence.
Evidence that we are unreliable, undisciplined, a failure.
Even one break becomes a clear reason to quit.
Built on Fear
It’s clear the driver behind both sides is fear. Fear of starting, of stopping, of failure. Consistency is only useful if we manage it, instead of it managing us.
What we need to do is build trust, the great antidote to fear. To see ourselves in a new way, to believe that if we fall off, we can come back, without a spiral.
So how can we move toward consistency in a way that brings us more of what we want and less of what we don’t want? Adaptable while still holding on to our discipline?
The Power of Restarting
1. Expect Inconsistency
Every time you demand 100% consistency from yourself, you are setting yourself up to fail. Because when slips happen—because life is unpredictable and perfection is impossible—disappointment can be crushing..
Now James Clear has a: Never Miss Twice model, and I LOVE that, but let’s face it, sometimes we are going to miss more than twice. And if we immediately start to judge and shame ourselves, that’s going to become a sneaky moral doom spiral.
But if you expect to be inconsistent—when you deliberately make room for it in your approach—you can start to just see it as part of the process. Falling off can become part of the journey instead of proof that you are a failure.
This also helps you to plan for slips and how you will get back on track, without hating yourself in the process. As Jillian Michaels famously said: “Don’t slash your other three tires simply because you got one flat.”
2. Restart Smaller
It will be so tempting to come back big, soaring in at full speed, to make up for lost time, but that’s the opposite of what you wanna do. Going from 0-100 is exhausting, overwhelming and stressful. Which can kill any attempts to come back to the thing.
Ideally, pick a part of the project, routine habit and commit to doing that one part again, and only scale up when that starts to feel natural.
3. Practice Flexibility
If you’ve ever struggled with consistency, a big fear that creeps in is that once we get something going, we don’t trust that if we stop, that we can come back. We grip our routines tightly, avoid breaks, and assume that there is no coming back again.
The problem here is that only convinces us that if we don’t maintain these rigid routines, everything will fall apart. If we stop, we will never start again.
Real sustainability is in letting go of this rigid mindset, to intentionally take breaks. And the best time to practice this flexibility isn’t when everything is falling apart—it’s when things are going well.
Practicing taking intentional breaks when things are going well teaches your brain that breaks are part of the system. And every time you choose to take a break and then come back, it serves as proof you can restart — and this helps build trust in yourself.Subscribed
4. Embrace Imperfect Restarts
Since we started with expecting to be inconsistent, we also need to embrace that sometimes coming back to it will be messy.
It can be tempting to wait until we feel ready. That when things align, or our motivation is back in full swing or we have a new technique that will make things easier, is the right time to come back.
But waiting to feel ready keeps us stuck.
You don’t need to wait for things to feel differently to return. Even if your return is small or clumsy or awkward, you are still moving things forward.
Maybe you do 5 minutes of your workout, 1 minute of breathwork, a one block walk around your neighbourhood. It all counts.
The goal isn’t for a perfect restart, but rather smoothing the path between setbacks and comebacks. The more you practice returning, the more you show yourself that you can.
This is how you build self-trust. Returning again and again, even if it’s messy.
5. Reassess Regularly
Blindly following goals day after day, year after year, doesn’t make sense.
It is so important to periodically question whether the habit/routine you follow still serves your goals or if it needs modification.
Maybe you weren’t moving at all, so you need a big, exciting and ambitious exercise goal, but now you’re in the swing of things, and you can scale back a bit. Four workouts instead of five.
For a long time I had a rule that I had to run 100K a month, rain or shine, injury or no. I thought this was base training, and I refused to budge on my goal. That is until my achilles tendon told me otherwise, and I had to take a big break from running.
Coming back to it, I now approach running with something is better than nothing. No strict mileage, just get out there, enjoy, and do what I can.
Letting go of rigid expectations and revising your goals and habits is key to sustainability.
Come Back Strong
Changing our relationship to consistency is possible.
Demanding 100% consistency keeps us stuck in a cycle of burnout, blame, and overwork.
Embracing inconsistent effort over time keeps us moving forward.
Ditch Stress 
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