Consistency is the crossroads of not just being prepared for life but of doing life: motherhood, adulthood, relating to others, having a clean house, building a business, you name it.
Having success in any endeavor will depend on your ability to be consistent. Even in the arena of education and grasping new concepts, as a homeschooling mom I’m telling my kids all the time the need for their consistency.
Consistency is simply sticking with a task, goal, mindset or routine until it’s accomplished. Thing is, as we found in my previous post on doing things in bits, there are many tasks in motherhood that do not come to a concrete completion. It is only a continuous loop, a cycle.
Wanna catch up?
The Preparation SERIES
I’m Not Prepared! – Get Prepared.
Preparation Comes by Consistency (you are here)
Preparation on Purpose + Resource List
A continuous loop does not have a finish line. Now that’s the turning point we have to come to, and come to quite quickly y’all!
I didn’t get that mindset turn for years. Avoid this wrong mindset.
We are trained to believe that areas of life can be seen as a ladder that has a top or that life is a racetrack with a finish line. Thing is we are never to the finish line.
If you are a Christian you know this more than anyone; when this life (physical body life) is over – it’s not over. Even the things you do here will carry over there. When it comes to routine tasks like laundry or grocery shopping there is no end. Tasks need to be done over and over as long as we have the people (or objects) in our lives.
So consistency is no longer a marathon we are running thinking that slowly we’ll get to a finish line. No, instead we need to change that mindset to think more along the lines of a cycle. Like the cycle of harvest time and sowing time or you can think of birds in spring.
For a number of years, we lived in a rented house. After the first couple of years, a springtime came where a bird built a nest on the inside roof our of front porch. It was an open porch so the bird flew in and out freely. Slowly the nest was built from what appeared to be hay, even though we lived in a very urban-like suburb. That bird sat in the nest and my kids and I watched, day after day to see if the bird would have babies. Sure enough, there were babies and the birds grew until it was nearing summer.
One day my son came sadly to me saying that all the birds had flown away. Again, sure enough, there were not in the nest. Hanging around our backyard and garage was what looked like the same birds. They would come and go and finally, the day came that we didn’t see them, but we had also moved on in things in life and forgot about those birds. The following year birds came and nested in the porch roof again. My son was sure, and we all wondered, was it the bird that had grown up in that nest the year before. Maybe, but we’ll never know.
Each year after that there was a nest and two or three new babies.
Even watching the birds there are definitely points of completion but with each following year, the cycle continued. Over the years you can stand back and see there really isn’t a completion point.
Just like if you decided to have a laundry day, you have completed it for now, but stand back and see the next day or 2 days or maybe for your family, a whole week and doing the laundry has to be repeated. Repeating the cycle on time, each time (as health and other responsibilities allow) will mean for you consistency.
And I promise being consistent, in the bits, will push you ahead and allow you to be prepared. So think not just of completing your nest, or raising your kids, that’s the big picture. But really we need to think about the small processes each day, each week needs to be consistent.
- Dishes
- Laundry
- Food
These are you number one areas that you need to find what works for you so you can repeat the cycle on time, each time. If you are consistent you will be ahead, allowing yourself to be prepared for what’s next.