Why You're Not Consistent: the Equation for Consistency, Confidence, Discipline, Self Respect | HackerNoon

The Truth About Respect

You don’t want fame, you want respect.

What you want isn’t respect from others. It’s self-respect.

You crave respect from others because you don’t truly respect yourself. It’s hard to respect yourself when you know the truth about your actions—you know you’ve lied to yourself.

You said you’d do things and didn’t. You promised yourself you’d get it done, but instead, you slept. You told yourself you’d change, but you didn’t. So, your own self doesn’t respect you for this.

The Illusion of External Respect

You don’t want respect from everyone. You want respect from the people you respect. Because if they respect you, it feels like proof that you can respect yourself.

But it’s an illusion. You can only gain genuine confidence and respect by being consistent with yourself. No one else can give that to you.

The Nature of Confidence

Confidence doesn’t come from shouting affirmations at the mirror. If you were truly confident, you wouldn’t need to tell yourself—you’d have evidence of your confidence stacked up like trophies.

You’re not confident because you don’t trust yourself. And you don’t trust yourself because you’re not consistent. Confidence is built on trust. The more certain you are that you’ll follow through, the more confidence you’ll have.

Truth is something that, once you see it, you can’t unsee. Confidence is the amount of certainty you have that something won’t change—and that starts with your own behavior.

The Power of Consistency

Consistency is repeating a behavior frequently enough to create trust—first with yourself, and then with others. The more consistent you are, the more trustworthy you become, both in your eyes and in the eyes of others.

Build enough undeniable proof that you follow through, and you’ll begin to trust yourself. Do what you say you’ll do. Don’t rely on external validation for your confidence and respect.

The Role of Others

Others can provide useful, unbiased feedback, but they can’t tell you the whole truth because they don’t know your internal state. External feedback is just a supplement to your internal knowledge. In the end, only you know whether you’ve truly done your best.

Self-respect and confidence come from knowing you’ve done everything you could, not from what others think.

The Paradox of Consistency

You’re not consistent because you assume life is stable and unchanging. But in reality, the only thing that’s consistent is change.

You procrastinate because you trust that you’ll be able to do it tomorrow. But that trust is misplaced—you won’t be the same person tomorrow. That’s why you sometimes hate yourself or wish you knew what you’ve learned now five years ago.

The Public Toilet Method

Your life is a relay race of consciousness. The version of you today is responsible only for today. Tomorrow, a different version takes over.

Think of a public toilet. If you slack off today and leave a mess, tomorrow’s version of you will likely do the same, because it’s harder to clean up someone else’s mess. The cycle continues, getting worse over time.

Are you going to have fun now and screw over your future self, or make things easier for the next version of you?

Love is how much you’re willing to sacrifice to maintain a relationship. To truly love yourself, you must be willing to sacrifice short-term pleasure today, so that tomorrow’s version of you has a cleaner start.

The more you slack off, the harder it gets for the future you.

If You Don’t Do It Now, You Never Will

Power is the distance between your thoughts and reality. If you want to be powerful, close the gap between thinking about something and actually doing it.

The current version of you is the only one that wants to do it. The next version of you might not—that’s why you’ve quit habits or abandoned goals in the past.

Fortunately, you can control the next version of yourself.

Just like your body turns pizza and spaghetti into teeth and eyeballs, what you do with what you eat determines what your body becomes. Likewise, what you read and do with the information you consume shapes your mind.

If you’re not obsessing over the actions that shape your future, you’re not truly committed to becoming who you want to be.

You can live your life how you want—I’m just here to tell you the consequences of the actions you take. If you don’t do the work today, you lose control of who you become tomorrow.

Discipline

Discipline comes from clarity, not force. You’re not disciplined because the “perceived” pain of not achieving your goals isn’t as strong as the “perceived” pleasure you get from distractions.

To be disciplined, fix your perception of pain and pleasure.

Write down your reasons to stay focused and revisit them frequently so they stay top of mind. You need reminders more than you need new information.

Each time you give in to distractions, the harder it becomes to stop. Write that down as one of your reasons to quit.

The intensity of your reasons to stay focused must outweigh the pleasure of distractions at any given moment.

You didn’t do the next push up because the reasons to continue have faded.

The Actual Purpose of a Goal

Everyone tells you to set goals, but no one tells you why. Let’s clear up some misconceptions:

1. A goal isn’t “where you want to be in 5 years.” That’s just fantasy.

2. A goal is what a better life looks like.

3. You don’t rise to your goals, you fall to your systems.

4. The more you tell people about your goals, the less likely you are to achieve them because talking about them releases dopamine in your brain, like you’ve already succeeded.

5. Goals are infinite, but your time and energy are finite. Be slow to set goals, quick to work on them.

6. You need only one big goal. A collection of small goals is not “one big goal”. If it fills 2 pages, it’s too small. A big goal fits a sentence.

7. You’ll never achieve most of your small goals that are long term, because on your way to achieving them, the future you will change them.

8. If you have more than one main goal, you haven’t found a big goal.

9. The ONLY purpose of a goal is to make your brain more attentive to things that help you survive or improve the quality of your life.

The way you notice a restaurant that’s always been there, just because you’re hungry.

That’s ALL it’s good for. Any other reasons are illusions.

Practical Conclusion

Ultimately, self-respect isn’t something you get from others. It’s something you build by living in alignment with your values and keeping promises to yourself.

The first step is to break your goals into simple, daily tasks. Think of each task as a “level” in a game. The more levels you complete, the closer you get to mastery.

For example, if your goal is to build an app, break it down into simple, achievable tasks. Each task brings you closer to the final product, and you make progress daily.

The Role of Pain and Pleasure in Discipline

When you procrastinate, it’s because the short-term pleasure of distraction outweighs the long-term pain of not achieving your goals. Reverse this dynamic by making distractions immediately painful.

For example, every time you snooze your alarm, pay a friend a significant amount of money. This brings the pain of procrastination into the present.

You can also make completing tasks easier by setting up your environment for success. Move your alarm across the room so you have to get up. Lay out your workout clothes the night before. Reduce the friction between you and your goals. Increase the friction between you and distractions.

And don’t forget rewards. After hitting milestones, give yourself small rewards to tie pleasure to progress. But make sure the reward enhances your journey, not derails it.

Turning Life Into an Irresistible Game

You can make consistency easier by treating your life like a game. Which means to create the best game mechanics (aka systems).

Everyone running alongside Usain bolt have the same goal (to finish first), but they don’t win because they don’t have the best systems.

I’ll help you with creating your own systems on Level Up. You’ll:

Access powerful tools.

Get exclusive content.

Receive one-on-one support.

Build lasting habits and achieve your goals.

Schedule a 1-on-1 with me here: https://forms.gle/GEWLSKeEQczKokru6