098 The Power In Compassionate CONSISTENCY

We’ve been told for years that consistency is the golden ticket to success.

Wake up early, hit your steps, stick to the plan, no matter what. 

And sure, that works… until it doesn’t. Especially in midlife, when your body, hormones, energy, and nervous system all play by new rules.

In this episode, I’m reframing consistency... shifting it from rigid repetition to something I call compassionate consistency. 

It’s about staying in right relationship with yourself, honouring your rhythms, and creating trust in your own follow-through… even when life isn’t neat.

We’ll explore:

• Why rigid routines can backfire for women in midlife
• How your nervous system really responds to repetition
• The difference between self-consistency and routine-consistency
• Tiny, grounding rituals that anchor you without pressure
• The power of values, motivation, and self-honesty in building sustainable change

This isn’t about doing more... it’s about holding more.
 Not punishing. Not perfect. Just present.

Press play to discover why slow, steady, and self-aligned will always beat hustle in the long run.

If you’re ready to step off the treadmill of “shoulds” and build rhythms that actually work for you, we can explore it together.

 Book a free clarity call, and let’s talk about where you are now, what you want next, and how we can get you there in a way that feels sustainable.

 Book your Clarity Call here

Thanks for listening to Rooted In Presence

If you’d like to get in touch with a question about today’s episode or find out how I can support you with coaching, here’s how to reach me:
📧 Email: carlykillenpt@gmail.com
📱 Instagram: @thestrongbonescoach

Do you crave unshakable confidence in your strength from midlife and beyond? Would you love to achieve your goals without sacrificing family time or self-care?

Ready to take your strength to the next level? Start building a stronger body and healthier bones with my Strong Bones Starter Kit—your step-by-step guide to safe and effective strength training at home.
👉 Click here to learn more and access today

🌟 Stay connected and inspired with daily wellness tips on Instagram @thestrongbonescoach.
🌟 For tailored advice or personal queries, email me at carlykillenpt@gmail.com

Thank you for being here, and I look forward to supporting you on your journey to strength, health, and confidence! 💪🦴✨

Transcript

Carly: 0:47

Hello, lovely people and welcome back to The Strong Bones Coach Podcast with me, your host, Carly Killen. And today I wanna start this episode with a question. Let me ask you something as we begin, what is your relationship with consistency? Does it excite you? Inspire you or do your eyes start to roll and your chest starts to get that little bit tighter every time you hear the word. Maybe it brings to mind another thing you are meant to be good at. Another thing you should have figured out by now, but what if the problem isn't your lack of discipline? What if it's the kind of consistency you've been taught to chase? We're told consistency is the key to transformation. Wake up early, move daily, track every bite, follow every plan, and sometimes this works. And yes, these things are important to a degree and can be helpful. In midlife, when our bodies shift, our energy fluctuates and our nervous systems grow a little more sensitive. That narrative often turns into shame and exhaustion. So today we're talking about a different kind of consistency, compassionate consistency, one that honors your values, your energy, your live reality, one that helps you build rhythm without rigidity. So let's take a breath and let's get started. So let's talk about the myth of consistency to start with. And we've been taught that consistency means repetition, same time, same routine, same results. And of course, there's comfort in that. It's predictable, it's measurable. It works really well in systems, built on linear productivity, corporate schedules, gym plans, even smart goals. Structure does offer safety. It says, if I do this, I'll get that. And that's helpful until it becomes a demand, until it doesn't bend when we need it to soften. And as we hit our midlife, by its very nature, it asks us for more nuance. Because when we're living in evolving bodies, bodies that are shifting hormonally and emotionally pressure can start to feel like punishment. So this is where compassionate consistency comes in. It's not just discipline for its own sake, but devotion to what matters. Not pure control, but actions taken with care. So think of structure like the banks of a river. It doesn't block the flow, it holds it. It gives direction, meaning, and without it. We are just a puddle scattered, stagnant, not going anywhere, but when we pair structure with compassion, we get something far more sustainable. Now let's address what many people think. When we talk about being more gentle, being more compassionate, they can see it as being a bit of a soft touch. Then if you coach with me, you'll know that I'm anything but a soft touch. We do coach with compassion, and that doesn't mean inconsistency. So what does compassionate consistency actually look like? What if consistency wasn't about doing the same thing every day, but about returning to your core values no matter how your day looks? You might walk on a Monday, stretch on Tuesday. Wednesday might be a rest day. Each day can be different, but every day honors the same thing. Your clarity, your presence, your self-care. And of course, this doesn't mean absolutely everything needs to be different either the consistency within a resistance training program, for example. There's benefits to repetition, but on those days when you know you just don't have it in you, it's okay to take a little step back, maybe even to lighten the load. Over time, it builds something deeper. Our self-trust, because our nervous system doesn't need perfection. It's craving predictability, but not in the sense of rigid routines in the sense of reliability, and that's personal reliability. To yourself knowing that even when plans shift or your energy dips, you can still respond to yourself with care. You won't abandon yourself. And here's where your values come in. When we connect with our bare bones of what we want, what we value, we create solid anchors. It might be a value such as freedom, clarity, kindness, maybe a value vitality. And each day we move in small ways that reflect those values. And the why behind your actions is just as important as the actions themselves. It helps you notice when a choice is truly aligned or when it's rooted in old patterns like people pleasing or fear. And that's the work. It's quiet, it's subtle. It's very powerful. So let's give a little nod to the science for a moment here. Our nervous systems are pattern seekers, and if you're somebody that likes to watch clouds and see pictures, or you find faces in the floor, tiles in your bathroom, you're not alone here. And perhaps You'd Like to learn through repetition, that helps you to build a bit of a baseline of expectation. But it is all about that baseline being safe, But when we say expectation, we don't mean expectation from others. Again, it's more of a reliability. When that repetition is safe, it can start to integrate. When it feels stressful, when it sets off our fight or flight process, we want to reject it. It can feel like a threat even if we inherently know that our life isn't actually in danger. We have a beautiful concept here called cardiac coherence or heart brain coherence. This is a state where your heart, your brain, your breath, your nervous system, they're able to sync up. And you can build this through intentional breathing. Now they talk about a gold standard of being five seconds inhale, five seconds exhaling. But you might find that that feels a little slow to you, especially if you've been in a rush or you're not really accustomed to this style of breathing. There's a lot of science behind this, and it actually helps to support your heart rate variability. Which is a way that your body can experience stress and come back down to baseline as quickly as possible. The quicker we can do this, the quicker we can respond to life stresses without it derailing our whole day. So we don't need to be perfect with this. It does create a lovely signal that you're safe. We don't need to brace that. We can rely on the next breath, and over time those moments create a new baseline of calm. And I've actually done a YouTube video that you can have a look at. So if you're not sure how to do this, I have linked it in the show notes, and I will take you through a few minutes practice of this heart coherence breath. So perhaps take a look at that after you've finished listening to the episode. here's something super cool. Our brains are actually wired for this too. It's a principle called homeostatic plasticity. It means your brain is always seeking stability. Even during change. So when life does become unpredictable, your body and brain want to adapt. They want to find a rhythm. You just have to give it a chance. The problem being, we often override these signals. We rush, we people please, we say yes, and we mean no. We fill every gap with action instead of a pause. So this is where we can use our compassionate consistency. As a start to coming home to yourself, the practices that say this moment matters, I matter. I'm here, and let's lean in a little bit more into the self consistency, the self reliability that can really be supportive for us. So when we're looking for self consistency and not just routine consistency, it has a very different impact. Perhaps I can offer a little visual for you here. Imagine two people, one person hitting every single workout no matter what, whether they're sick, whether they're sore, because that's what the plan says. Whereas we have another person who misses a session, but they check in. Did I need that rest? Or am I just avoiding discomfort? Am I procrastinating? Or was this a genuine need to take a step back Today, that first person is following the rules. The second we're building relationship trust, self-awareness, and that is our self consistency. It's how we can be reliable to ourselves and for many women, this is radical. We've been trained to override, to earn our worth by pushing when that fails, because it always does. We think that we are the failure, and I hear this all the time, if I listen to my body, I'd never do anything, but that's not true. You would, but you'd do it from a place of self-respect, not self abandonment. So maybe the day you skipped a workout, you were low in mood. Maybe you did avoid discomfort, but not because you're lazy, but because no one taught you how to hold discomfort safely. And that's not a flaw. It's a pattern. And when we notice patterns, we get the chance to rewrite them with compassion, not from a place of fixing. And this is a way of gently reparenting ourselves. This is self-leadership, and it's noticing the moment you turn away from what you need. And gently staying with yourself. So let's get a bit practical, as I often like to do on this podcast, and we have behavioral science that shows that small habits formed in consistent contexts can become automatic, which is great. We need certain things to be automatic, otherwise we'd never managed to brush our teeth. We would take forever deliberating over which foot to put forward next. So habits are a great way to save ourselves some time and brain space, but when life becomes too automatic, it starts to feel robotic. It can feel like life is passing you by and you wonder what day of the week it even is. This is where one week starts to run into the next. The only thing that really feels like it breaks it up is a holiday. Now life's too short to let it go past that way. So this is where ritual comes in. Routines give you function, rituals, help you feel you don't need dramatic ceremonies, and just a few meaningful moments. A slow inhale when your feet switch the floor. A little word card to remind yourself of your intention. Maybe you can spend some time making that coffee in the morning, noticing the smells, the sounds. Maybe do it the long way round for a change. It just gives you a moment to check in with how you're doing things before you're reacting. So each ritual can be small, but it starts to build some trust within yourself. So this is how we can bring these into real life. You can have the one breath anchor feet on floor, one deep breath. When you wake up the values, post-it, perhaps put all your values onto separate post-it notes. I like to put them in a little jar and you can pull one out each morning. See how that value shows up for you today. It's not there as a rule. It's not there to hold you accountable. But I like to have a little check-in at the beginning and the end of the day just to see, did I manage to work that in today? Did I feel like I stood by this value, or did it just not show up? It just gives you a gentle moment of mindfulness to start and end your day. You can also have a bit of a pause protocol. Hmm. Maybe just to ask yourself, what do I need before you step into a scrolling session or heading for a snack? And perhaps we can even create a micro movement habits. Perhaps you can introduce a stretch when you pass a certain spot in your house. Your office. Yeah. Maybe you get other people doing this too. And also we can have a ritual of return. Did you miss something? Are you worried that it's gonna drop outta your routine? And remind yourself you're here. You can still return, you can realign. It's not having to be stopping and starting. It doesn't have to be all or nothing. This is true, compassionate consistency. So a gentle reminder for you today that you don't need to be perfect. You just need to be present. You don't need rigid plans. It's rhythms that help you respond to life that will support you here, and you don't need to wait for Monday to start again. You can begin now with one breath, one value, one return to what feels good to you. Compassionate consistency isn't about doing more. It's about staying with yourself through the mess, the shifts, the softening, even when that feels like a struggle. And it's building the kind of trust that doesn't collapse when life changes. And that is where real transformation begins. So if this episode resonated with you today, perhaps you want to share this with a friend that could also do this message. If you feel like you could do with more support as to do this work, I would happily walk beside you. You can get in touch by booking a free clarity call on my website, carly killen.com. So I'll leave you there for this week. Take care and I'll see you next time.