A streak is doing the same thing consistently until it becomes a habit. Adam Piggot has this correct: consistency matters.

I am sure that my learned readers are familiar with Aesop’s fable of The Tortoise and the Hare. The hare is spectacularly advantaged over his opponent but it is the tortoise’s consistency which gets him over the line. To put it bluntly, the hare goofs off. To put it even more bluntly, the tortoise knew that the hare would good off which was why he challenged him to the race to begin with. Always know your opponent better than he does.

There are lots of lessons in that little fable but the one that I want to elaborate on today is the art of consistency. Consistency is to success in life what confidence is to success with women.

Right now I’m having the best results in the gym that I have ever had over the course of 30 years of lifting the weights. The program that I’m following is undoubtedly a big part of that, as is the fact that I am being so careful with my technique. But what has really nailed it for me is my consistency. The program states that I have to go three days a week on Monday, Wednesday, and Friday, and by God I’m going three days a week. Consistently.

The biggest gains that I’ve had, (moar gainz!), have been in the past four months, and it is no coincidence that this has coincided with my rigorous consistency. I followed this same program for almost a year in Australia but I was less consistent. Three days one week, then two days the next, then maybe back to three or it might have been just a single day. You get the idea. I didn’t see any of the gains that I’m getting now. Same program, same technique – less gains.

It’s the consistency, baby.

Back when I was teaching English in Italy, my greatest success story was a barber from a little mountain town with no real education to speak of. He decided to come along to a course and he didn’t have the imagination to second guess what I was teaching. He followed my directions to the literal letter. After six months I told him that he didn’t need my services any more. He wasn’t particularly intelligent but he was entirely consistent.

If I look back over my life, my greatest achievements have one common element to them – consistency. Whether it was learning the guitar, becoming a rafting guide, opening my own bar, learning Italian, publishing my first book, or any other goal or pursuit in which I excelled, being consistent was the difference between success and failure. Equally, if I consider where I failed then it was my lack of consistency that let me down.

What is not said is that consistency is hard. You will make excuses. You will be tired. You will be ill. In a streak, it does not matter. What matters is that you do that music practice, you do that gym time.

And you do that prayer time: you sit down for dinned with the kids, you clean those dishes.

It is not the big things that make a life. It is the consistent habits over a long time.

The bleak ort of self improvement is selecting your habits wisely. The joyous gift of sanctification is that the Holy Spirit may enable you to do this.