Consistency
Consistency is a topic that confuses me the most.
Once upon a time till 2018, the only consistent thing in my life was inconsistency.
In 2018, I made a lot of deliberate choices in life (some hard ones and some super hard ones). I took accountability for my career, relationships, learning, health and myself.
I founded my impossible dream (Xperian), lost a lot of weight, was able to run a marathon, built Women in Products India, redefined design education in my own ways, picked up teaching as a part of my polygamous career and even started writing on the internet. In short, found myself, made meaning and took ownership for my life like never before. Doing all the above needed amazing level of dedication and consistency at my end. I did it relentlessly.
After 18 months, I started feeling the burn out. Slowly I realised that the grind was stressing me out. Till then I didn't know that good things can cause bad things in life. Me being me, I pushed it hard and took 18 months to 24 months. Things started getting worse and going south.
With the onset of pandemic, a whole new level of stress started creeping in. I could not keep up the consistency in all the activities I was doing. I was crumbling and spalling everyday. My context begged me to do something and do it immediately.
As an extremist, I just stopped a lot of activities that I built with so much rigour. I stopped running, I stopped building communities, I exited a few investments, I stopped our consulting practice 💯 and more. I just stopped things I could stop. Things I could not stop was going on at its pace.
Either I was cracking it everyday or I stopped it all together. I was either black or white. I operated more like a binary code. Slowly I started understanding the concept of taking a break when life happens and restarting activities.
It took me 12 months to even fathom this idea of altering consistency, pausing and restarting.
I must say it feels so much better to not let go of consistency and keep doing at a different pace. For example, instead of writing everyday, the consistency can be changed as writing once a week or even once a month. If push comes to shove, stop it and restart it when possible. Life happens to us and it is ok if our priorities shift in that period of time.
Beating ourselves up and holding ourselves to a rigid high bar, brings in a lot of frustration and unhappiness despite doing good work. This post is to tell you, it is ok to stop, pause and restart.
It is your life and you are the captain of the ship. Steer it in the right direction. Pay attention to the right priorities. Honestly, no one even notices that you stopped a little or paused a little. Life goes on.
2022 started with a series of medical emergencies for my family. It is almost 7 weeks into the year and nothing has settled yet. This was the status as of last week.
Things are slowly looking up. Hope this week gets better than the past week.
When life compounds positively or negatively, all you can do is shut up and wait. Exponential function is hard to understand for our human brains. It is crazy!
In all this, I wrote 5/7 days, worked 3/5 days, answered inboxes 7/7 days, walked 2/5 days last week. Not bad eh!
How to handle life when life happens is a post for another day. For now, relax, breathe, watch the sunset today, take a nap if possible, have some lovely coffee and accept as life happens to you.
The first step is to step back . Allow life to unfold and accept as it happens.
Once we get a hang, we shall carpe diem, my friends. Take care. Stay Safe and Stay sane.
🥂 to life!