Haven’t we ALL heard that one before? I remember my old volleyball coach in middle school would always tell us this story at the beginning of every season: “Practice doesn’t make perfect. You can practice spelling the word cat as K-A-T. You can practice spelling it all day, but you’re still spelling it wrong. Perfect practice makes perfect.” Huh, isn’t that an intimidating way of thinking when you’re in sixth grade? Now at the age of 24 (almost 25, ugh), I see where my coach was going with this statement, but it can be a dangerous school of thought.
I’ve always wanted to be THAT girl. You know what I’m talking about… the pinterest girl. The one who wakes up early in her pretty pajamas, does her skincare, drinks a ton of water, does breathing exercises, drinks matcha, does pilates, has a smoothie bowl and starts her day. Now you might be saying either a) why can’t you just start doing those things, Alexis? Or b) Damn, that’s a lot of shit to do in the morning LOL. But seriously I have always strived to (or thought about striving lol) to be this girl. Instead, most days I grumble out of bed and the first words out of my mouth are, “I need coffee.” Don’t get me wrong, I’ve TRIED to be this girl, but I always seem to fizzle out after a few days of starting the routine. So I started to think about why I was struggling so much to adapt to this new routine and I realized it was because I was trying to do “perfect practice” instead of just maintaining consistency.
I was talking to my therapist about this and he noted that I am consistently setting myself up for “failure” if I give myself these unattainable routines. What he means is that it really is quite unattainable for me to start this new routine and assume that I can keep it up. Sure, it’s one routine but it’s made up of SO MANY HABITS. Now it’s often said that it takes ~21 days to create a habit and then another 90 days of repetition for it to stick. THAT’S KINDA A LONG TIME?? He told me that I should create smaller, more attainable benchmarks when it comes to this so I can consistently meet the goal and feel accomplished. So instead of me adding 17 steps to my current morning routine, I can decide that for the next month I want to journal 3 sentences every morning. You might think that’s too easy, but I think that’s just the point!! We want our routines and habits to feel easy so that we can maintain this consistency.
I would say that one of my biggest downfalls is consistency. I have struggled with it for so long and it has caused me to miss out on many opportunities and lose so much motivation. I’ve always had this idea that if I can’t make something perfect then I shouldn’t do it at all. What I’ve started to learn is that it is better to be consistent → wrong → learn, than to do nothing at all.
How do you maintain consistency in your life?
xo, Alexis