What if You Stopped Aiming for “Consistency”?
Okay, so here’s the thing. Basically anywhere you turn in the self-help world, you’re going to hear about how small, consistent efforts are the way to make big changes in your life. “It’s all about building healthy habits! Do a little bit every day!” It’s not bad advice, it is 100% true that small, consistent effort does make more long-lasting, sustainable change than new year’s resolution-style upheavals like “I’m going to suddenly go to the gym three times a week starting tomorrow!” I’m all for building consistent habits.
And also, both habits and consistency are ROUGH for neurodivergent brains, and I don’t know if it’ll work for you.
Story time: I got advice from a business mentor to schedule a weekly block of time to work on my business, and protect it fiercely, and I love the organization of a scheduled event, so I tried it. But then about three weeks in, it wasn’t new and exciting anymore, and I had a hard week at my day job, and I got to the hour before my blocked off time and I shut down. I had a meltdown, I cried and hid and spent an hour trying to force myself to focus on things that I was “supposed” to do, and felt massive shame that I couldn’t “just do it.” Because the commitment had become a demand that my brain could rebel against (if you haven’t heard about pathological demand avoidance/persistent drive for autonomy, you should go check it out, it’s a big AuDHD thing and it’s ROUGH, it’ll be a future blog post).
Here’s the rub: forcing yourself to try to do something consistently when your brain isn’t consistent is a recipe for bad times. I can’t guarantee that every Friday afternoon my mental health will be solid and my brain will be ready to focus or be creative, sometimes that’s going to be a meltdown day. And if I try to force myself to do the thing anyway, instead of listening to my body and mind and giving myself kindness, I destroy any trust in myself. I don’t make myself feel safe, I prove to myself that I won’t take care of myself, and I reinforce a negativity bias in my brain that this commitment is a terrible experience, which just makes the next time harder. It’s likely that the neurotypical people giving this advice intrinsically understand that, but my black-and-white brain takes consistency to mean “ALWAYS FOREVER NO EXCEPTIONS.” And then when you miss a week or two or get sidetracked, your brain serves you thoughts like “I’ve failed, it’s no use, I’ll never be able to hold to my commitments, I can’t trust myself, this is just another thing I’ve screwed up because I’m lazy/flaky/broken.”
So what would it look like to let go of consistency as the goal? What do we reach for instead? If you’re anything like me, you’re thinking something like “if I don’t try for consistency, I’ll never get anything done.” I get it, it feels impossible to release yourself from the shame-fueled force that you’ve been operating from forever, because it feels like the only way to motivate yourself. And to be fair, if you get rid of shame as a motivator, you might start with getting a lot less done. But what I’ve found is that it’s because a lot of things that I’m forcing myself to do aren’t actually as urgent or important as I think they are, and my brain needs time to catch up on the lifetime of rest that I haven’t been taking. No human is going to just sit on the couch forever, you will still have desires and dreams and things you enjoy or want to achieve. You’re not going to flip a switch and be a couch potato forever, your brain will still want to try for goals. It’s possible that you’ll notice the things that fall away weren’t actually important for your peace and happiness in the first place.
So what if, as we’re trying for that goal, instead of aiming for consistency, we instead embrace the idea of faltering and restarting. What if any effort is progress, whether or not it’s consistent? If I start brushing my teeth every day and then stop for two weeks, stopping doesn’t erase the progress of the brushing that came before, my teeth are still a little bit healthier than they would have been if I’d never started in the first place. Every time I try to start exercising and then the habit falls away, that doesn’t mean the effort was a waste, my body is still a small bit stronger and my heart a little bit healthier than it would have been if I’d never started. At the very least, a “failed” effort gives me information for where I lost motivation and what I might be able to try differently next time.
We think “starting over” means you’re back at square one and all the progress you made has disappeared, but I don’t think that’s true. I think ANY effort is progress, and I’d rather celebrate that progress than shame myself for stopping, because that positive feedback loop is a lot easier to use as motivation to start back up again.
(It’s worth noting that ADHD brains especially have a complicated relationship with habits, and don’t build habits and routines the way neurotypical brains do, so trying to hold yourself to consistency here can be especially exhausting and harmful).
Okay, dude, great in theory, but how do I make it happen? Ironically… a little bit at a time. This is the part where I’d suggest actually getting out a journal or piece of paper, or maybe a notes app on your phone. Writing it down actually engages more areas of your brain, which helps with solidifying the processing and making it stick. Then answer a couple questions (shouldn’t take more than ten minutes, and you can break it up and return to it later!
Journal Prompts
What goal am I working towards? How am I aiming for consistency here, and how well is it working?
When I fail at being consistent, what do I think about myself? How do I feel? How does the idea of restarting feel?
What could I practice thinking instead that would make me feel a little bit better about failing and restarting? Examples include:
Any effort is progress
Restarting is not the same as starting over
I have more information/tools now than I did last time
Nothing has gone wrong here
This doesn’t mean anything about me or my worth
Take the best thought from the previous question and make it visible and hard to miss. Write it on your bathroom mirror, put a sticky note on your desk, tape notecards up around the house, set it as your password, play with what works. The more visible it is, the more opportunities you’ll give your brain to practice the new thought. Leaving it in the journal and closing it is ADHD kryptonite, because the minute the journal closes it’s out of sight and no longer exists.
Finding new thoughts to practice and a way to help them sink in is an art form, and it’s not always easy. If you’re getting stuck or feeling frustrated, reach out, I’m always happy to help troubleshoot! What goal do you want to play with rewiring in your brain, and how does being okay with restarting make it easier?
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