Consistency ≠ Sameness

It can be as dynamic as you are 🪻

Consistency used to feel like such a violent concept in my body.

Growing up, I was taught that a trustworthy entity is one that shows up the same way everyday. That consistency is proven through constant output or a fixed presentation day in and day out.

But as a creative, intuition-led person with a mood disorder –and beyond all that, just a human being– that kind of standard is impossible to sustain.

We are dynamic creatures with fluctuating needs, desires, and perspectives. So it’s natural that the way we show up for ourselves and our work has to be flexible enough to expand and contract as we do.

Photo by Jon Flobrant on Unsplash

Living Infrastructure

It’s far too easy to forget that we ARE nature. And nature sustains itself because it responds to the present. Nature adapts and endures due to its cyclical wisdom.

Anything stagnant, anything that refuses to change is devoid of life. Think of water. Stagnant water feels inanimate and unappealing. Whereas a flowing creek is abundant, brimming with life, energetic.

Part of how lively a river or a forest feels is in the understanding that it is always changing. Even if the changes are micro-adjustments that aren’t visible to the eye. You can feel that the vitality comes from its continuous movement.

I bring this up because dominant culture’s definition of consistency has always felt stifling for this exact reason. Consistency as sameness, rigidity, or an unchanging routine is neither appealing nor realistic.

The resistance I feel around that interpretation of consistency is because it is at once, terribly boring and brutal on the nervous system.

• How are spoonies supposed to show up the same everyday if their capacity changes by the hour?

• How is a creative meant to have unwavering output when life happens in ebbs and flows?

• Why would an ADHDer commit to doing x habit forever when experimentation feeds their desire for novelty?

Consistency ≠ Sameness

Consistency is not sameness. It is not an unwavering routine.

Consistency, in the way that you’re craving it, is more of a felt sense of safety. An embodied knowing that you will attend to the things that matter at a pace that suits you.

If your body doesn’t feel safe in your current understanding of consistency, then it’s probably an inherited definition that doesn’t account for you and your needs.

Consistency isn’t meant to be a fixed output completely unaffected by your energetic or external realities. It’s an internal experience that helps you show up reliably for the parts of your work that you value.

… or at least it can be.

Questions of the Week:

• What do you currently believe about consistency? Whose definition are you holding?

• When you think about consistency, what parts of your body get activated? What does it feel like?

• Are there people in your life or on your internet who model a version of consistency that feels accessible to you?