Tired of Breaking Promises to Yourself? Here's How to Keep Your Word

In this episode, Dr. Christine Li explores the challenges of staying consistent with habits and explains why relying on motivation alone is unreliable. She shares actionable strategies for cultivating true consistency, focusing on increasing personal capacity, practicing positive self-talk, being present, simplifying routines, and reducing mental "noise." Listeners will learn how to move from dissatisfaction to satisfaction by keeping their word to themselves and embracing new habits with greater success.

Timestamps

• 00:00:00 - Dr. Christine Li introduces the episode on consistency and motivation
• 00:02:02 - Importance and benefits of consistency in life
• 00:03:25 - Example of trying to quit coffee and the challenge of maintaining consistency
• 00:04:34 - Why motivation is unreliable for consistency
• 00:05:24 - Introduces the concept of capacity as key to consistency
• 00:06:50 - Explanation of capacity versus motivation
• 00:08:06 - How maintaining capacity leads to easier consistency
• 00:09:12 - Emphasizing everyone's unlimited potential for growth and change
• 00:10:42 - Consistency as a vehicle from dissatisfaction to satisfaction
• 00:11:49 - Acknowledging sources of dissatisfaction and calling them out
• 00:13:03 - Tips for gearing up to be more consistent
• 00:14:29 - First technique: Positive self-talk and reframing identity
• 00:15:01 - Second idea: Be present to make better choices
• 00:17:24 - Third idea: Avoid overwhelm and overscheduling
• 00:18:40 - Fourth idea: Eliminate fear from the process
• 00:20:09 - Fifth idea: Simplify the process and plan responses in advance
• 00:21:07 - Sixth idea: Reduce "noise" such as comparison, excuses, and distractions
• 00:25:11 - Recap: It's about keeping your word to yourself, not the habit itself
• 00:27:14 - Free download offer and episode wrap-up

To get the free download that accompanies this episode, go to: https://maketimeforsuccesspodcast.com/consistency

To sign up for the Waitlist for the Simply Productive Program, go to: https://maketimeforsuccesspodcast.com/SP

For more information on the Make Time for Success podcast, visit: https://www.maketimeforsuccesspodcast.com

Gain Access to Dr. Christine Li’s Free Resource Library -- 12 downloadable tools and templates to help you bypass the impulse to procrastinate: https://procrastinationcoach.mykajabi.com/freelibrary

To work with Dr. Li on a weekly basis in her coaching and accountability program, register for The Success Lab here: https://www.procrastinationcoach.com/lab

Connect with Dr. Christine Li

Website: https://www.procrastinationcoach.com

Facebook Group: https://www.facebook.com/groups/procrastinationcoach

Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/procrastinationcoach/

TikTok: https://www.tiktok.com/@procrastinationcoach

The Success Lab: https://maketimeforsuccesspodcast.com/lab

Simply Productive: https://maketimeforsuccesspodcast.com/SP

Transcript

Dr. Christine Li [00:00:00]:
Welcome back to the Make Time for Success podcast. This is episode number 295. If you have ever struggled with consistency or being consistent, then you're gonna love this episode because in it I describe why motivation is not the perfect vehicle for becoming consistent. We all try to be motivated, but it oftentimes doesn't work out. Yeah. And in this episode, I'm also gonna break down the strategies for really upping your chances of succeeding with being consistent. And that is because we're gonna lean towards possibilities instead of thinking, ugh, we're just not cut out for this new life, this new being, these new habits, because in fact, we really are. Okay, let's go listen to this episode together now.

Dr. Christine Li [00:00:58]:
Hi, I'm Dr. Christine Li, and I'm a psychologist and a procrastination coach. I've helped thousands of people move past procrastination and overwhelm so they could begin working to their potential. In this podcast, you're going to learn powerful strategies for getting your mind, body, and energy to work together so that you can focus on what's really important and accomplish the goals you want to achieve. When you start living within your full power, you're going to see how being productive can be easy and how you can create success on demand. Welcome to the Make Time for Success podcast. So today's episode is on the very big and very important topic of consistency. I think this is an important topic because The clients that I work with really seem to desire more consistency, and they seem curious about how to become more consistent.

Dr. Christine Li [00:02:02]:
And of course, in each of our lives, consistency tends to bring about a lot of benefits. It brings about good health. It brings about healthy finances. It brings about Let's put some ideas together for you and let's make the idea of consistency more appealing to you. If you feel like you're someone who isn't a consistent person or you have difficulty with maintaining better habits, I hope that this episode really breaks it down for you and makes you feel like you have access to personal consistency. as well. I really hope that is the case. So the first idea that I want to share with you about consistency is we think of consistency oftentimes as a motivation issue.

Dr. Christine Li [00:03:25]:
When, let's say, we say, let's, as an example, deciding you're going to quit coffee. I just made that up. So you've been a longtime coffee drinker, you have a very positive association with it, But you're thinking for your health and maybe for your nervous system, you're going to quit it and just see if you can stay clear of it. And you do this for a good 2 or 3 days, but then on the 4th day, somebody offers you a hot steaming cup of joe and you wonder to yourself, should I take it or refuse it? And what do you do? And. I'm going to say that it would be understandable if you just accepted the kind gesture and you loved the aroma of the coffee, and all of a sudden your consistency and your intentions are now gone for the moment because you've broken that streak of yours. You decided, I'm going to break my word to myself. I'm going to just take the coffee, enjoy myself. And forget this all ever happened.

Dr. Christine Li [00:04:34]:
And that has happened, I think, to everybody on the podcast listening and also myself multiple times. So many times we can't even count these moments in our lives when we've broken our consistency dreams. And that is, of course, okay. But I wanna let you know that oftentimes this consistency concept is maintained not out of Our motivation, because our motivation goes up and down. When somebody offers you a steaming cup of coffee that smells delicious and you're feeling a little tired in the morning, it's really hard to feel motivated to steer clear of it. And that is why motivation really is probably not where you want to put your eggs in the basket. I'm going to mess up the idioms. It's not where you want to hold up your consistency.

Dr. Christine Li [00:05:24]:
You don't want to use motivation as the— Yeah. the way to maintain consistency because it is so fluctuating and because it is unpredictable and because there are kind people who are offering you coffee all the time, probably. So let's move away from the idea of motivation in general. I myself tend to use other factors like, okay, what is my purpose? What is my goal? How much time do I have? The kind of more the real stable factors that I can bank on. I think that was the phrase that I really wanted to— Reach for instead of the eggs in the basket? What can I bank on to help me stay consistent? And for you who are listening, I want to offer one thing that you can consider. Instead of using your motivation, which again does go up and down all the time, understandably, I would love for you to think about your capacity. And capacity just means how much room do you have in yourself, in your body, In your mindset, in your day to be consistent. And I believe that if you really take care of your capacity, your bandwidth is another way of putting it, your bigger mindset, your life energy, if you take care of your capacity, you're going to have a much better chance of staying consistent.

Dr. Christine Li [00:06:50]:
And I will explain because this may not be obvious to you because it's, I think, much rarer to talk about our capacity than it is to talk about our motivation. We talk about motivation all the time. Oh, I don't feel like it. That's a motivation comment. And when you say to yourself, oh, I don't feel like the person who can be consistent, that's a capacity comment. And I will explain more. When you take care of yourself on a day-to-day basis, when you put yourself first, starting from the time you wake up to the time you put your head on the pillow, you are managing your capacity. You are telling yourself that you believe that if you take care of yourself well, and if you keep practicing that practice of living well, of good self-care, of good habits, of high motivation when you can do it, of keeping to your word, of cleaning up where you created a mess, of cooperating in projects that light you up, when you're following your dreams.

Dr. Christine Li [00:08:06]:
Those are all ways of nurturing your capacity of saying, my life is good, my life is safe, my life is healthy, and I'm growing within my own life. That is what I mean by capacity. And I believe that when you have this desire to maintain yourself at high capacity, that just means these tasks that you need to maintain consistency for your health or your finances or your tidiness and Lack of clutter, those things just seem so small because you are vibing. You are vibrating with joy and good health and good intentions and a sense that things are gonna work out for you. All right? When we quit our streaks, it's kind of saying, you know, this really was a bad idea in the first place. You know, I'm really not the kind of person who succeeds at things. You know, this may have been too high a bar to set for myself. And those are all negative thoughts about you.

Dr. Christine Li [00:09:12]:
You are of unlimited potential. If you've listened to this podcast and me speaking on this podcast for any length of time, you know that I want you to believe that. I want you to know that, that you have so much untapped potential because we all do. Not because I'm telling you, it's because It's the state of being human that there are more things for us to try. There are more identities for us to grow into and to accept and to embrace. And there's more time for experimentation. We so often lose sight of our unlimited potential because we are running on autopilot. We are running on automatic process.

Dr. Christine Li [00:09:57]:
We are running on the habits that have already been established. We are eating the same foods, talking the same talk, doing the same habits, even if they're frustrating to us, even if we know we could do better, until we decide, you know what? I'm responsible for my own capacity. If I'm frustrated with my coffee-drinking habit for whatever reason, it is my responsibility to change that around to the point where I am satisfied. Yeah. With it. So we're really talking about how to move from dissatisfaction to satisfaction. So you see, consistency then becomes just the vehicle. It's not the be-all end-all.

Dr. Christine Li [00:10:42]:
It's just the way to get from dissatisfied to satisfied. And when you keep quitting on yourself by not being consistent, you're going to completely zing yourself back To the dissatisfied state, even though that hot cup of joe tasted great and it brought you back all those stimulated, taken care of feelings, those good emotions that you pair and have paired with that cup of coffee, it will eventually bring you to a feeling of, oh yeah, I didn't really want that. I wanted something different. So you're gonna land yourself back into the dissatisfied state. So now I want you to think for yourself, what in your life today is causing you some sort of dissatisfaction? Big, small, medium-sized, does not matter. You know in your heart of hearts what is making you dissatisfied. Maybe it's the clutter. Maybe it is the fact that you haven't tried the thing that you know might be really interesting for you.

Dr. Christine Li [00:11:49]:
Maybe it is the fact that you haven't set up your dental appointment, even though, you know, it's been too long. So whatever it is, decide for yourself, I'm dissatisfied with this. I'm calling it out. I'm naming it for myself. So I give myself more room, more capacity to change that situation because living with dissatisfaction It's not preferable, I would say. It's not preferable for any of us. Some people use dissatisfaction really well because they use it as a trigger to say, oh, now I know where I need to go, how I need to move, where I need to take action. And you can certainly use that as a strategy too.

Dr. Christine Li [00:12:32]:
But I would say the overwhelming majority of people use dissatisfaction as a way to stay in the status quo. As a way to stay unchanged, as a way to say, I'm not ready, I'm not good enough, it's not time. And really all we've got, ladies and gentlemen, is time. So let's go use it in an active way, in a way that will allow us to feel more satisfied than not every single day. So now that you've thought about what might be making you dissatisfied, I want to give you A shortlist of things to keep in mind while you are gearing up to try some sort of consistency to bring yourself from dissatisfied to satisfied. So I will say we will start off with one of my favorite techniques of all time. You want to have positive self-talk. If you're saying to yourself, I'm a coffee junkie, I'm an addict, I can't break this habit.

Dr. Christine Li [00:13:37]:
You are basically reinforcing the identity of dissatisfaction of the stuck person, and you're speaking about yourself very negatively. So instead of doing that, let's try on something new and let's have you speak to yourself like you are your favorite person in the world, because why wouldn't you be? And you admire yourself so much. And you believe in your potential 100,000%. And so then instead of saying, I'm a coffee addict, I'm a coffee junkie, you're saying to yourself, I'm learning how to live coffee-free. That's just an example of something that you could do. It is much more pleasant. It is more neutral. And it's even making you think positively, oh, that maybe it is possible.

Dr. Christine Li [00:14:29]:
For me to be coffee-free at some point, right? No urgency, no rush, no pressure, no judgment. Just the possibility opened up for you instead of slamming it down by saying, you know, don't even think about this. You're an addict. Get over yourself. You don't want to talk to yourself and you don't want to treat yourself in that way because nothing should be slammed shut for you. Everything is open. It's all pure possibility for you. So first technique, speak positively to yourself.

Dr. Christine Li [00:15:01]:
Use positive self-talk. The second idea is to be present. When we are present for ourselves, we tend to do the right thing. I'm just going to put that out there. And it's a— that's an opinion of mine. That is not fact, I will say, but I do believe that to be true. And I will give you an example from Earlier today, I believe it was, maybe it was last night, where I came home and I was feeling a little flustered. And I've been getting these kind of spam-type emails, and I've known to just delete them and go past them and ignore them.

Dr. Christine Li [00:15:39]:
And last night I came home in this more disoriented state. It wasn't terrible. I just wasn't feeling myself. Hmm. And one of these emails came into my view. And I said to myself, oh, here's another one of those spammy emails. And because there was a name that seemed familiar on the email, I clicked it. And indeed, it was a spam email.

Dr. Christine Li [00:16:04]:
I just knew immediately, as soon as I clicked into it, I knew, oh God, why did I do this? But again, these things are understandable. We're human. But I think in that moment, I was not being present with myself. I was still thinking about the car ride home. I was thinking about the event I had gone to last night. I hadn't really fully rooted myself even in my office chair before turning on the email and just scanning things. So I wasn't present. And so I made a decision that I, you know, so far everything is okay, but it was a decision that I do regret.

Dr. Christine Li [00:16:41]:
So one tip here is To just say to yourself, what do I need in this present moment, right? Do I really need that coffee, or can I say a polite no and just continue this streak? You want to be present so that you can make the better choice, whichever one that is for you, right? It might be the better choice to accept the coffee in that moment, right? Maybe it's your boss offering it to you, I don't know, or something else that is important to you. But also important to you is the idea that you've set this streak idea in your Mind. So let that at least be in the conversation that you're having with yourself when you're present. Decide with your higher self in the conversation. The third idea for maintaining consistency successfully is you want to try your best to not be overwhelmed and to not be overscheduled. I think being overscheduled and being overwhelmed really go hand in hand. You're literally saying to yourself, I'm going to do more than time allows when you overschedule yourself. And you're basically setting yourself up for not being fully present because your anxiety is going to be running a little bit high because you've got so much to think about.

Dr. Christine Li [00:17:58]:
Thinking of visiting your cousin, you're thinking about celebrating your nephew's birthdays. All these things are in your mind all at once. And It's difficult to be present if you're feeling overwhelmed all the time. It's difficult to be consistent if you're feeling overwhelmed and you need the coffee to get over yourself or to calm yourself down, even though it can also be used to stimulate you and get you revved up. People use coffee for all sorts of things. But again, if you're feeling like you're running too hard, It's going to be more difficult for you to keep your consistency and to keep yourself true to your own word. Fourth idea here is you want to eliminate fear from the situation. The situation is you want to clear yourself of coffee.

Dr. Christine Li [00:18:49]:
And maybe you're saying, oh, but what if I can't enjoy breakfast with friends anymore? That might strike fear in your heart, but I want to say to yourself, What if you just drank water instead and still enjoyed the conversation? We are so good at scaring ourselves. We are so good at generating random fears. We are so good at generating relevant fears. But guess what? We're also really good at centering ourselves back to our present situation, back to our goals, back to our higher self. It's not that difficult. We're just so used to living and swimming in fears all the time. But I would love for you to get better at just saying to yourself, I'm grounded. I can do this.

Dr. Christine Li [00:19:36]:
I can try on this consistency for a while. And I am excited to live into the new part of me that has that consistency locked in. So no fear. You're developing your bigger capacity. Yeah. So no fear is invited in that journey. The next idea that I have for you is a way to just increase the chances that you're going to be consistent, and that is another favorite tip of mine. You're going to simplify everything.

Dr. Christine Li [00:20:09]:
You're going to make everything really small, really low-key, and really simple, right? If you Let's say, go back to the quitting coffee idea again. If you say to yourself, not only am I setting the goal of quitting coffee for a month, I'm also going to have a list of things I can say to people when they're offering me coffee, that is simplifying it for you. It may sound like you're making it more complicated, but you're just allowing your brain to know what to do ahead of time. And that, I think, Is simpler for you. You don't have to get agitated. You just know this person's coming at you with the coffee and you just say, no, not today. Thank you so much. You can say, I'm all set, right? You can have all of these different phrases at the ready the next time somebody's coming at you with the invitation to break your own streak of consistency.

Dr. Christine Li [00:21:04]:
You don't have to follow along. All right. And the very last tip I have is to reduce the noise. Now, what is the noise? Noise is anything that would take you away from your goal of being consistent with any of these habits, any habit that you choose, anything that you've decided you want to move from dissatisfaction to satisfaction with. And I've made another list of things that I consider noise. First thing is comparison. If you're thinking, well, they get to drink 3 cups a day, why can't I just have 1? Yeah. That one feeling or thought or comparison is gonna knock you off your game.

Dr. Christine Li [00:21:46]:
You're gonna say, well, one doesn't matter. And then all of a sudden you've broken your word to yourself. So avoid comparison with other people because people have very different habits. You don't wanna compare yourself to other people. You are you. That's it. End of sentence. Full thought.

Dr. Christine Li [00:22:01]:
That's it. Noise is also your excuses. Your excuses are probably lining up ready to say, no, no, no, no, no, you don't have to do this. Yeah. You don't have to be that regimented. You don't have to be that healthy. You don't have to be that joyless. Whatever your brain is coming up with, those are fears.

Dr. Christine Li [00:22:21]:
And the other side, the flip side of a fear is an excuse, right? Is when you're just letting yourself off the hook because you know what? Your brain is afraid somewhere that you're going to do something new and hurt yourself. So remind yourself, you don't need excuses anymore. You're a full-grown adult. You've got this covered. Another piece of noise is saying, I don't feel like it. It's just having this kind of fleeting thought of just in this moment, I don't feel like keeping my word to myself. Let's practice getting over those fleeting thoughts and just letting them float by. They will leave you alone when you just stay grounded, stay present, stay true to your goal and your word.

Dr. Christine Li [00:23:00]:
Noise is also distractions. If you kind of wear your willpower down by, let's say, surfing social media all day long and not giving yourself a break and overworking and getting yourself into other people's business all the time, that is very stressful business, then you're going to feel distracted and you may fall vulnerable to breaking your habits and your new habit and that consistency streak. And again, it's understandable, but is it desirable? No, it's really not because you want to learn that your word to yourself is now rock solid and that will just make everything else easier. You won't need the coffee if you are always keeping your word to yourself and you're always successful and you're always feeling energized. It's like this natural energy that we are now tapping into and unleashing. It's that possibility. Yeah. And that excitement that we all have connections to.

Dr. Christine Li [00:24:02]:
Another thing that constitutes noise is not planning things, right? When everything is loosey-goosey, when you don't plan, let's say, let's say you're trying to lose weight and you have no idea what your meal plans are, you're probably setting yourself up for more inconsistent behavior. So I believe a little bit of planning goes a— Right. really long way. So if you're not a planner, and I'm not a natural planner myself, I'm with you. Just try 5 minutes of saying, what can I do ahead of time to ensure that I get to go to bed tonight knowing that I've maintained another day of consistency? Is it writing it down in my paper planner? Is it telling somebody, let's do this streak together? Whatever it is, do some planning for yourself to up your chances of success. And then the final piece of noise is just really denying the fact that you can be successful. It's really saying to yourself, I'm a failure, or I'm not good enough, or this month is not my month. It's anything that's negative is also noise.

Dr. Christine Li [00:25:11]:
And we've all got noise in our brains. We can't avoid that. We're not robots. We're very complex. But we also just have to give ourselves a shot at succeeding. So use these tips. Review this podcast episode. Listen to it over and over again if you like and if you have time to do that, because this will remind you, you know what? You've got all the tools you need.

Dr. Christine Li [00:25:35]:
You've just got new habits to experiment with and to grow into. You really can do this. You've done this so many times before. Let's do it in a way that's now meaningful in your adult life. I think It will be a good thing. Now, let's go to wrap up this episode. We are just going to say as a recap that we're not going to make it about the habit. It's not about the coffee, right? I used the coffee as the example.

Dr. Christine Li [00:26:04]:
And really, mind you, if you're a coffee lover, that's great. That's— I have no problems with that. That was just an example I created on the spot. But it wasn't never about the coffee. It was about your word to yourself. It was about what you want for yourself. It was about desiring satisfaction instead of dissatisfaction. So take this moment post-podcast episode, and thanks for being here, to decide what am I going to take action on today to move myself closer to being consistent in this new positive way for myself, a way that I really care about, a way that I choose consciously, and a way that's going to benefit me.

Dr. Christine Li [00:26:44]:
Yeah. From here on out. I wish this for you. Please share this episode with anyone who might be struggling with a habit or struggling with an old identity. I think this is a great one to share. And thank you so much for your support of this content, my show, and this content again, because it's important. I really do think it is so valuable to us as habit seekers and habitual creatures. So let's do this together.

Dr. Christine Li [00:27:14]:
If you would like a free download to help you maintain consistency, I have one created. It is from an earlier episode on consistency, and that was episode number 239. And that episode was entitled Top Reasons You're Struggling with Consistency and How to Fix Them. So you can get the download that I created for that episode by going to— maketimeforsuccesspodcast.com/consistency. Again, maketimeforsuccesspodcast.com/consistency. Thanks so much for being here and enjoy this new streak of yours. Bye-bye. Thank you for listening to this episode of the Make Time for Success podcast.

Dr. Christine Li [00:28:03]:
If you enjoyed what you heard, you can subscribe to make sure you get notified of upcoming episodes. You can also visit our website, maketimeforsuccesspodcast.com, for past episodes, show notes, and all the resources we mention on the show. Feel free to connect with me over on Instagram too. You can find me there under the name procrastination coach. Send me a DM and let me know what your thoughts are about the episodes you've been listening to, and let me know any topics that you might like me to talk about on the show. Show. I'd love to hear all about how you're making time for success. Talk to you soon.