Some scattered thoughts on consistency
Well, hello. This is The Daily 5 with Aurooba. That's me. Where we reflect on creating our best lives a little bit every day. Here we go.
Aurooba:I've been thinking about consistency a little bit. In some ways, this podcast, this challenge I've set for myself to publish 100 daily episodes is more about consistency than anything else. Can I show up every day for 100 days to do this one thing? And here's what's been rolling around in my head a bit. Consistency in this case is not defined by the same caliber of output every day, but by the fact that there is output every day.
Aurooba:Not every episode is great. And some are just, I don't know, odd or have pseudo points and therefore are essentially pointless in some ways, but there's an episode every day. And here we are at day 60, the 60th episode. And that's kind of neat, isn't it?
Aurooba:Not every day is awesome, but in creating something every day, I've created at least a few episodes that I'm pretty proud of. That very popular story of the professor who told half his class to make as many pots as possible and the other half to make one perfect pot comes to mind. I've practiced and tried so many different things in these last 60 days. I've done episodes where I'm excited, thoughtful, downright mad, reflective, nostalgic, grateful. Most episodes are inspired by my daily life and learnings.
Aurooba:I think of that episode about not being serious, but rather being sincere. And I feel pretty great about that. I think about the episode I did when the phrase slow is smooth, smooth is fast got stuck in my head, courtesy of my husband. And I tend to grin because damn, that one made its way into ears I did not expect. That sounded weird, but you know what I meant.
Aurooba:You know, there are at least 2 TikTok inspired episodes this season. And one that was inspired by watching one of my neighbors try to leash their incredibly energetic dog. Yeah. Try to guess that one. Sometimes it's the act of showing up at all that makes you consistent.
Aurooba:Expecting every time to be a winner or amazing or perfect is ridiculous. The desire to be consistent by definition requires you to be adaptive so you can remain consistent in an ever changing environment with factors outside your control or planning. A lot of people associate consistency with inflexibility. A lot of people associate consistency with chipping away at something slowly over a period of time in sort of equal chunks. And sometimes consistency does show up as inflexibility or as slowly chipping away at something.
Aurooba:But I think a lot of the times consistency is about showing up and adapting what you do to the needs and requirements of the day, which could be ever changing.
Aurooba:The Requirement Room in Harry Potter is incredibly consistent. It shows up when you really need it and it shows up in one particular place. But it's different every time. It adapts to the needs of the person who asked it to show up, who compelled it to appear in the first place.
Aurooba:So many things we think are at odds are usually just two sides of the same coin. And when you find a way to create harmony between them, you often get something stronger. Consistency and flexibility are a little bit like that. They aren't parallel concepts. They frequently intersect.
Aurooba:So like many things, like many words, consistency means something different in different situations, in different contexts. And that is true about everything. That does not mean we don't know the meaning of consistency. It just means that there is more than one meaning that can be ascribed to the word. And that is okay.
Aurooba:And perhaps that is good and makes life more interesting, more flexible. You know?
Aurooba:Thanks for listening. Same time tomorrow.