Before choosing a new measure of success, check in. Have you ever caught yourself forgetting why you chose a certain path, goal, or experience? Have you ever been so 'in' it that you forget 'why' you chose it? 'It' can be anything from an experience to a place, to a relationship, to a career, to a cause, to a change, to a challenge, and/or to an opportunity. Whatever 'it' may be, chances are that you're aiming for a result that matters to you. Here, my invitation is to tune in with 4 questions:
1. Why does 'it' matter to you?
2. What changes for you if you 'achieve' what you want?
3. How does it contribute to your community's well-being, as well as your own?
4. How do you want to *feel* once you get 'it'? This question will help you understand your Feeling Goal.
If the answers to these questions are *your* starting point, why change your measure of success when you (technically) either get 'it' or you don't? Because *how* you get there or get 'it' is a worthy 'result' or 'outcome' in and of itself. How so, though? The key here is that, whatever happens, making consistency the new measure of success adds to your life, purpose, community, and well-being. This reframe allows you to develop practices that can help you feel the way you want to, even before achieving the final goal. This can lead to a virtuous cycle whereby the process of getting to where you want to go is as fulfilling as getting there. That fulfillment can then be fuel for you. This fuel then makes it easier to come back to the practices, places, experiences, and relationships that add to your purpose.
Once you're clear on *your* Why and what your Feeling Goal is, I invite you to take a big picture moment. Ask yourself 1 question: what if every touchstone on the path towards what I want can also change my life?
This is where consistency as a new measure of success comes in. When navigating 'in between moments' in the midst of chronic overwhelm, change, challenge, and opportunity, consistency is the skill that allows you to come back to a practice or touchstone without judgement. Through a morally neutral lens, practicing consistency as a measure of success removes punishing judgement. This practice can then shield you from the type of harshness that keeps you from picking a practice back up from where you left off. When consistency becomes a measure of success, you lessen the inner conflict of going from 0 to 60 versus going nowhere at all, the debilitating view of success and failure as mutually exclusive, and/or the difficulty of navigating gray areas as threats to your physiological safety.
By staying consistent, your nervous system can gather enough information to register that your efforts are not putting you at risk. This then supports your nervous system flexibility or your capacity to adapt to change over time. Here are 5 questions to consider when deciding what to be consistent about?
What do I need to be consistent about in order to feel the way I want to feel in the process of getting to where I want to go?
What practices, experiences, places, and relationships add energy to my path on the way 'there'?
How might I meet myself with loving kindness when I am temporarily inconsistent about about engaging with the practices, experiences, places, and experiences that make getting to where I want to go worth it?
What type of support do I need in order to practice consistency as a new measure of success?
How might I support someone else or my community in practicing consistency towards a goal that adds to the goals they're working towards?
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