Bloom Your Mind

Ep 111: Consistency

• Marie McDonald

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Do you want your big idea to stop being just an idea? Or are you constantly starting and stopping, never actually reaching your goals?

In this episode, I dive head first into the second main ingredient for you to reach your goals. Consistency.

Whether it's starting a business or building healthy habits, they rarely become reality overnight. It happens bit by bit, by just getting better and better at noticing what feels like us and what doesn't.

And learning how to turn the volume knob in your brain really helps you stay consistent no matter where you are in your journey to making your idea real.

What do I mean by that?

You'll hear more of that in this episode.

What you'll learn in this episode:

  • How small, regular actions, lead you towards achieving your goal
  • Managing your thoughts using two volume knobs metaphor
  • How consistent practice can help you live more authentically
  • Examples of how consistency can be applied to various aspects of life

Mentioned in this episode: 

How to connect with Marie:

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We'll take all these ideas and apply them to our lives. Follow me on Instagram at @the.bloom.coach to learn more and snag a spot in my group coaching program!

Welcome to the Bloom Your Mind podcast, where we take all of your ideas for what you want, and we turn them into real things. I'm your host, certified coach Marie McDonald. Let's get into it.

Hi, everybody, and welcome to episode 111 of the Bloom Your Mind podcast. Today we're talking about consistency. 

I love consistency, I chase it, sometimes I catch it and sometimes I miss it, but here's what I have to say. It comes up over and over and over again. A couple episodes ago, I recorded something on commitment, an episode on commitment, and along with commitment, these two things predominantly make the difference in the people whose ideas become real and the ones whose ideas stay ideas, because commitment is the thing that causes us to prioritize the things that we want, the goals that we have, who we want to be in the world, over everything else that's competing for our attention, our time, our energy, our love, our mental focus right, and consistency is the thing that allows us to take, step by step by step, towards the thing we're trying to make real. 

Consistency creates progress. So, somebody was asking me the other day she has a few kids, I have a couple of kids, and she said Marie, what the hell, how do you keep your car so clean, and I was like, oh, cause I don't like a messy car makes me grumpy. And she's like, yeah, yeah, yeah, but how do you keep it clean? And I was like, oh, because I'm like a dictator about people taking their crap out of my car, excited my kids are about what we're doing, or they're like running away. 

I make them come back. I say, hey, hey, hey, here's your backpack. Hey, I'm a human too. Help me unload all these groceries, whatever it is. I have my children and their friends even, and adults for sure, who are with me. Take everything that they brought into my car out of my car, including nasty trash. Okay, cause I'm not having it. 

I have noticed, though, that anytime I don't do that, it becomes very difficult to keep the car clean. If I start to let myself have, like you know, apocalypse trunk, I start. If I start, ever you know, building up, I might need this, so I'm going to keep this in my trunk. Oh, I might need this, so I'm going to keep this back here. It's a slippery slope y'all, so I do not allow myself to do that anymore. I am very consistent with taking everything out of my car every time, and that allows me to keep my car clean. 

There are so many other things like this, okay, so I want to just share three ways, aside from keeping your car clean, that consistency makes your ideas real. These three ways are number one, literally, logistically, like keeping the car clean. I'm going to go through some things where consistency creates the result that we want through action, okay, so like actual, literal actions. The second thing is how consistency creates peace of mind and allows us to make our ideas real when we are consistently authentic, and how that works in the day-to-day as far as what I've found to be true. And the third thing is consistency of mindset, and I'm going to give you a real fun example for that, one which happened last week. So, first of all, I gave you this example of my car. The second example here I'll give you a few of these is my house. 

I often have people come to my house and say oh my gosh, please come to my house. How is your soap clutter free? And first of all, I say don't look in the closet, that's in the hallway, because that's the one that I haven't cleaned up. But secondly, I have to say it's the same thing as the car. Every single time. Every night, everything gets put away. 

Every night, anything that is in the communal space gets put away, and also throughout the day I have my children and anyone that's in my home help me pick up what we just used and put it away, because I find that if I am not consistent in that way, then everything builds up and creates a mess. I'm the same with filling my house up. I don't have knickknacks. I like to have a very clean, beautiful visual space because it makes me a non-grumpy person. I am in a good mood if everything is clean and functional, and I like to be in a good mood. 

I like to be someone who people like to be around, including myself. I like to like to be around myself. So, I know that if I clean out my car and I clean out my house every single day, that consistency creates an environment that brings out the best in myself and also allows me to not have to have, you know, days where I have to have big cleaning projects. Best case scenario sometimes after travel it gets a little haywire, but I'm saying for the most part wire, but I'm saying for the most part Now the other things. 

That consistency is super important to me around is my health. I have noticed that when I consistently commit to exercising in some way every single day, even if it is a little thing, I stay in good health. When I start making my routine sort of slap shot and happen whenever I can make it happen, everything slips. That consistent routine for me is every single day. I also know that for many people it's three days a week or four days a week, whatever it is that consistency and health habits is everything the same thing with consistency in diet or in, if you're you know, cutting out refined sugar, or in how often a person drinks alcohol. Whatever that is. It doesn't have to be all or nothing, but consistency creates the most successful changes to people's health habits that I have seen and that I've experienced in projects. 

Consistency is the thing where if I take baby steps towards a project, I get there. If I wait until I'm going to have time to do a big chunk of work, I don't get there. Two examples are this podcast I am dedicated and committed to consistently producing an episode every week. Because I've done that for almost a couple of years now. I am at 111 episodes. When I was recording the Bloom Room content, I recorded one set of content, one video, every single week. When I did that, I knocked out so much. I created so much progress in my content when I've approached projects, by waiting until I can schedule a time to record six videos, for instance, it does not happen. I never have that much time. So, with projects it's the same. If I do something consistently over time, taking little steps, I create much more progress in the long run. 

Now, one other area that I want to say before I move on to authenticity is that in relationships, consistency is something that I have noticed keeps them really strong. So, in my primary relationships with my husband and my children, if something comes up that feels like it needs to be repaired, I repair it right away. Every time. 

If I am grumpy with my kids, or I have an off day, or I see their little faces and I noticed that something that I said hits them in the wrong way, if I can't repair it right in that moment, I do it before the end of the day, no matter what, the sooner the better. I will apologize to them, I'll clarify something, I'll say sorry, I was grumpy, and I will repair it with them in whatever way I need to right away, and I do that with my husband too. If something is coming up between us, I do not let it fester. 

The consistency of taking care of those things right away has kept my relationships with them really clean and clear and healthy. So, we know that consistency with health habits, with projects like the podcast, with health habits like exercise, with relationships, by making sure we're addressing things that are coming up with cleaning with a car, with a house these are all the examples we've gone through so far is key. 

One more example I want to give is with schedule. Every single week on Monday I spend an hour planning my week. I look at all the projects that I have, all the clients I have, all the things I'm responsible for and I color code my calendar and plan the whole thing out. Every single time I do that, I feel free. I get to roll through my week just doing what I already planned I would do, knowing it's in line with all my priorities and that I've looked at everything I'm responsible for and checked it off the list. It creates mental freedom, and I know that I'm in line with what I said I would do. 

Anytime I do not do that. Anytime I skip my planning hour for the week. It is a shit show. Not only do I miss things and miss things I'm responsible for, or places I'm supposed to be or, you know, show up at the wrong appointment at the wrong time or whatever but I also have this feeling throughout the week that I'm missing something of like almost like anxiety, like oh gosh, I know that I didn't look over everything that I'm responsible for this week, so who knows if I'm going to miss something or not show up for something important. 

So, another area where consistency is super important, and you'll see that in all of these things, taking a little bit of time to clean things up at the moment creates long-term progress and long-term health. And this is exactly what I see with the people in the Bloom Room and the people that I coach to make their ideas real. Progress doesn't happen in a big blast. 

Progress doesn't happen in a moment of motivation and inspiration and dedication. When you're really excited to do something, you might have a sprint and make some great progress, but when we really want our goals to be reality, when we really want our ideas to become real, consistency is the thing that makes the difference. 

I also want to just say that the second thing that we're looking at with consistency is authenticity. I think sometimes authenticity is like this big buzzword, you know, that sort of creates a utopian view of what a person can be. Are you authentic? Are you genuine as a human being? The answer can't ever be yes, because we live in a series of moments and we're variably authentic or genuine depending on the environment around us and how sleepy we are a million different factors, right? 

So if we want to feel at home in our own skin, if we want to feel like we're choosing ideas to make real that are a reflection of who we are, that are a reflection of who we are, not who we think we're supposed to be, if we want to feel that true feeling of authenticity that comes from knowing you're always going to say really what you think and not what someone wants to hear, all of that happens in a series of infinite moments that we're living in and it all comes down to consistency, to consistently checking in with ourselves and saying how do I think about this? 

What do I think about this? Do I actually want to go to this thing I'm invited to? Do I actually want to say yes? Do I want to respond to this text right away? Do I actually want to wear this? Does this really feel like me? 

And if that is a consistent practice where we're asking ourselves in every moment what do I actually want? What do I really feel right now? What do I want? What's true for me? Then we can never be going for perfection, because we're never going to get it a hundred percent right all the time. Sometimes we'll think we want something, and we find out it's actually not what we want. 

So that practice of being authentic is all about consistently practicing, checking in with ourselves and shaving off little by little the things that don't feel like us. Have you ever seen, you know, like a Greek or a Roman marble statue? When I was in art school, studying in undergraduate art school, studying sort of the great masters and how all of this was done, I was, for some reason, just so mesmerized by the idea of marble statues being shaved off from a big chunk of rock. 

Off from a big chunk of rock, like somehow the sculptor is finding the shape of the person that they're carving inside of this giant, like massive piece of marble, right, like how is that even done? It's little bit by little bit, and that's how I think of us and our authenticity. We don't magically appear like that marble statue all at once in the form that is our most ideal, authentic, genuine self, 100% of the time. 

It's a process of moment by moment, shaving off, saying no to the things that don't feel like us, recognizing the ways that we're people pleasing or the ways that we're meeting expectations that we've been socialized to meet, and all of a sudden shaving that off and becoming a little bit more ourselves, taking the shape of our authentic selves a little bit by a little bit, by just getting better and better at noticing what feels like us and what doesn't. It's a lifelong practice, so authenticity is a practice in consistency too. 

Okay, so far, we've looked at two things. We've looked at how consistency impacts our success in making ideas, real projects, ideas for how we want to live, the environments we're in, our relationships, our time management all these things are impacted by consistent action. The second thing we looked at is that consistency is the way to create a feeling of real authenticity in our lives. And the third thing that I want to look at is how consistency helps us with our mind state, with our mental state, with mental management, with our mindset and I have a great example for you. 

So last week I did my second photo shoot of all time, and it was so much fun, it was a blast, and in the weeks leading up to it was the opposite of smooth. I had this photo shoot scheduled for December and then things were all wonky and messy and I rescheduled it for January. As January approached, it was right after the holidays and so many things were going wrong. 

So, what I want to share with you is how consistency took sort of a messy situation and turned it into something that was successful and really enjoyable and fulfilling to me. Okay, so logistically, the photo shoot had so many things that went wrong with it. 

I invest in photo shoots because you have to take pictures, to have pictures who knew, and you have to have pictures in order to sell a brand right, and the work that I do out in the world requires me to have a brand. The work that I do to help people make ideas real and to coach people requires that I reach out to the world through whatever digital means I can, as well as the in-person outreach that I do, to find the people that need me and that want to do this work. 

So, in order to do that, I need to take pictures, and I need the pictures to really capture the feeling that I'm trying to get across Right, and it's kind of fun. I've gotten more and more comfortable with it. It's gotten more and more playful for me. As I've done this work, though, I have realized you have to invest in these photo shoots and find a photographer that you're comfortable with and also for me. 

I am not into headshots and like things that feel inauthentic. Again, I'm constantly shaving off the things that don't feel authentic to me, and I've noticed that, like a lot of the pictures that I see out there don't feel like me. So, I like to be wild, I like to be real, I like to be authentic, I like to have other people in my pictures, because that's what the bloom room is all about and that's what my work is all about. 

It's all about not just me, but me and other people together, me supporting others. It's really about them, about you, not about me at all, and so having a bunch of pictures of just me doesn't feel right to me. So, I have invested in these photo shoots, and I also had a bunch of people invited to this photo shoot, and here's what happened. 

Number one I have had an injury, and my body was not feeling good, and my last photo shoot I had been exercising consistently for like half a year to a year, and I felt great. I loved the way that my body was moving in space. I loved the way that my body was moving in space. I felt like I could, like you know, be comfortable in my body and also my clothes were fitting well, and I felt just good in my body, which is good for a photo shoot. This time, not so much, I had this injury. I have not been able to exercise. 

My body feels sort of like in pain and kind of clumsy and different than it usually does. So that wasn't feeling great and so I really had to coach myself around that I didn't want to spend a lot of money on clothing, and so I had some clothing that I had gotten together for the photo shoot, which is a big, important part of it, and I just had not had time to try it all on. But I thought, oh, that stuff's great. 

The night before I just did a final sort of setup of all my clothing and the very night before I realized how the clothing that I had was not great for the photo shoot. It was not capturing what I wanted to. It was kind of like all too dark or didn't fit right. All these different reasons. The night before my son was awake all night and I got like no sleep. Before a photo shoot, you need sleep, you need rest. 

The morning of everyone was late. My kids were late to school. I had an appointment that day that I was late to. The person that was supporting me with my hair and makeup was late. I was late to the photo shoot because of all these things, and I also got behind a truck that was going 10 miles an hour for a very long period of time. 

So many different things had gone wrong that morning. Everything was so much harder than it was the first time around. But I knew that I was super committed to this photo shoot, to putting myself out there, because it's not about me, it's about the work. So, who cares if I'm in the right outfit or if I feel great in my body, or who cares if I'm a little bit late? Right, I am trying to create and learn as I go and be with people in a non-dramatic, fun, real way, because it's important to me to be of service. 

So, whatever happens on this photo shoot day, I really needed to manage my mind to not let any of these things that were not going the way. I wish they would be going to take the wind out of my sails. I needed to get myself where I needed to be in my mind. So, here's the exercise that I recommend doing for consistency in mind management and the example that I want to use from this day. That was a photo shoot. That was a photo shoot. 

I want you to just imagine that you have two volume knobs in your head. One of the volume knobs is on these automatic thoughts that come through your mind that your mind is always going to offer to you about every circumstance that you find yourself in in life. Your mind is always just going to offer you thoughts. One of the volume knobs is the automatic thinking that happens. 

It represents all of those thoughts rolling through your mind. The other volume knob is your intentional thinking, the way that you contextualize or reframe your perspective and offer yourself a more helpful thought to what is automatically happening in your brain. And all day long, on the day these things were happening. 

I was turning down the volume on the thoughts that my mind was offering me. I would recognize them, acknowledge them and then let them go. Just turn down the volume, and instead I would choose a perspective that was a little more helpful to me and turn up the volume on that thought. That way I'm not invalidating or gaslighting myself. 

Everything is just not going well today, and I had to just acknowledge that feeling and that thought and then turn down the volume and replace it with there's plenty of time, no matter how much time we have, it's just a construct. If I'm five minutes late, it's only five minutes late compared to what time I thought I was going to start. So, let's just make the start time five minutes later. 10 minutes later, it's all going to be worth it. 

When I finally got behind that truck, after all the things that had gone wrong, I started thinking is this just not meant to be? Like what is happening? So many things have gone wrong today. Maybe this is just not meant to be. I'm just not ready for this. Acknowledge those thoughts and turn down the volume, let them go. 

And I just told myself yo do not follow that logic. That is not going to be helpful for you right now, and I turned up the volume on, like, just the thought that I need to let those thoughts go and everything's going to happen as it happens, I'm just going to be here for it. 

I had the thought oh my gosh, this is all like with the wrong clothing and being late for everything and not you know, all of these different things that were going wrong. I have invested in this photography and I'm wasting this investment. I don't have money to burn. I'm not going to like. This is money that I'm wasting on this photography. 

And I just acknowledge that feeling and that thought and just turn down the volume and let it go. And instead, I replaced it feeling and that thought and just turned down the volume and let it go, and instead I replaced it with I'm going to have pictures at the end of this. Maybe they'll be perfect, maybe they won't, but I can have a sense of humor, and I can write really well, so I can just write captions and emails and posts to go with. Whatever pictures come out of this, no matter what, I'm going to walk away with pictures. 

I also gave myself the thought and termed up the volume on the thought. This is going to be fun. This is an amazing experience. Who gets to do this? I'm so proud of myself for getting to a place where I can be up in front of a camera. It's so uncomfortable for me and it used to be so uncomfortable for me a little less now and I'm so proud of myself for the ways that I've grown. And this is going to be amazing. This is going to be fun. Who gets to do this? This is the best. 

I can trust their eyes, the people that are supporting me, to help me make the best of this. I can trust my people, my friends that are there, the photographer, and it felt good, honestly, to turn up the volume on trusting the people around me to carry me through something that was a little lumpy and hard. I had the thought I can't thank them enough. Oh, it's uncomfortable that they're helping me, it's uncomfortable that they're here. 

There's no way I could thank them enough and make this worth it to them. And then I just turned down the volume on that and replaced it with all I have to do is say thank you. Thanking them is enough, and this is a fun experience for them too, and also, I can respect them enough to trust their yeses and their nos. If they didn't want to be here, they wouldn't. If they didn't want to be doing this, they wouldn't be. And I can respect them by not second guessing them right, we're all having fun. 

This is a great experience for everybody, and anytime I thought about my clothes not being right or my body not feeling good or whatever, I acknowledged it, turned down the volume on that and just thought you know what I can love myself, in all of my shapes, in all my looks, in all the ways that my body feels. I can be grateful for my body. And you know what? No matter what I look like, my energy is awesome. So, I kept turning down the volume on the things that were not as helpful to me, without gaslighting myself. I just acknowledge them and let them go. That's not helpful. 

And I turned up the volume on the thoughts that were helpful to me through consistent work throughout the day. That consistent work of managing my mind, not gaslighting myself, not beating myself up for the thoughts that were there but just letting them go over and over. Acknowledging them and letting them go and then choosing something different led to the most amazing day. 

There were disco balls and spotlights and friends toasting outside. It was one of their birthdays and they came on their birthday to take these photographs. There were bright colors everywhere. We were cracking up. There were incredible props everywhere. 

I got to wear a flower suit and one of my favorite friends wore a flower suit too and lifted me up in the air. I had these incredible photos with all of these people because, little by little, I shaved off the inauthentic fears that weren't serving me, that were from some kind of threat, scanning or negative bias that all of our brains have. I just shaved them off and let them go, and what it created was this incredible experience of people around me in these bright colors, in this beautiful, incredible supportive environment, and a bunch of pictures that feel like me. 

The photographer said to me you know what I love about your brand, Marie, is that your whole work is to turn ideas into real things, to support people, to make their ideas for the world into real things, and what's so cool about that is your brand can be anything. 

Whatever your idea is for what you want to do, we can do it. Whatever your idea is for what you want to do, we can do it, and I loved that she said that, because that's totally who I am. I believe things are possible. I believe your ideas are possible and that we can make them real, and by just being consistent moment to moment. I got to have that day, and I get to do this work, and through consistent action you can too. That's what I've got for you today and I will see you next week.

If you like what you’re hearing on the podcast, you've got to come and join us in the Bloom Room. This is a year-round membership where we take all of these concepts, and we apply them to real life. In a community where we have each other's backs, and we bring out the best in each other. We're all there to make our ideas real, one idea at a time. 

I'll see you in the Bloom Room.