Consistency or Convenience?

Consistency. 

It's a tricky thing. It seems so easy.

Some things you are consistent with without even thinking about it: brushing your teeth, driving a car, loading the dishwasher. Or maybe some things that don't necessarily serve you like that cappuccino every morning, turning on the tv before bed, mindless Facebook scrolling on your lunch break...

Here's the thing. What you choose to be consistent with will define your life. Those choices define who you are today and who you will become tomorrow, next year, and 50 years from now. It's called the compound effect (if you're a Darren Hardy fan) or the slight edge (if you're a Jeff Olson fan). 

small, seemingly insignificant steps repeated over time lead to...your life.

Most people let the consistency of bad habits lead them to a life they don't live to the fullest. So many people allow the consistency of bad habits to compound over time to create a life unlike the one they have envisioned for themselves, sometimes a life they actually hate.

Such a simple concept, you'd think it'd be an EASY fix. But simple and easy are not the same thing. When we get down to it and try to use this compound effect to our advantage, it gets tougher than we want it to be. Jeff Olson says it this way, "the repeating of simple daily disciplines versus a few errors in judgement."

Did you see that? Disciplines.

When that word FINALLY stuck out to me, everything changed. You have to be disciplined in order to create new habits. You want to lose weight? Okay, the first two days go GREAT but then you see a donut at work and tell yourself, "oh, I've been so good the past two days so this will be fine." See? No discipline. I'm not saying you can't LIVE or ENJOY yourself or have treats from time to time...I'm saying you gotta stay disciplined. You have to do what you said you were going to do instead of letting excuses and "justifications" get in your way and throw you off course. (...because I know you know that one donut is going to lead to throwing the whole day off and then you telling yourself you "can't do it" then giving up entirely.)

It's just like with my workouts. I committed to doing P90X3 over again and there are so many days that I put it off till my daughter's nap time but then something comes up and I find it's 1030 pm and I still haven't fit it in. It'd be really easy to come up with an excuse or justify doing it in the morning...but I promised myself to stay DISCIPLINED through this workout program and this WFPB challenge  

Here's the thing. There's ALWAYS going to be an excuse. It's NEVER going to be convenient. There will ALWAYS be something that comes up or some event or party or holiday or tradition that will try to get in the way. 

There's Thanksgiving, then the other side of the fam, then the leftovers, then "oh Chic-fil-a just sounds so good today," then Christmas traditions are coming, then "okay, yep, my new year resolution will take care of it all," but then there are the new years parties, the football games, birthday parties, donuts that sweet coworker brought into work, Super Bowls....

....there will ALWAYS be a way for you to come up with an excuse.

You have to figure out what your priorities are. 
(Hence why I've been looking up WFPB Thanksgiving recipes all day.)

So. What do you TRULY want?