Making the Impossible Possible

“What’s the difference between the best athletes and everyone else?” I asked.

He mentioned the factors you might expect: genetics, luck, talent. But then he said something I wasn’t expecting: “At some point it comes down to who can handle the boredom of training every day, doing the same lifts over and over and over.”

-- Atomic Habits, James Clear

Consistency is considered as one of the most important factors in achieving one’s goals. However, we all falter in being consistent, even when doing something consistently actually makes it a lot easier.

Take exercise for example. When we work out occasionally, every time we start again, our body is not used to the movements, working out is laborious, and we feel the muscle pain for quite long after that.

But, when we are exercising regularly, our body is used to it, so it heals faster, and also we are able to do the movements with much more ease.

Being consistent is not difficult because the task that we need to be consistent with requires more effort with each passing day. That is something we naturally cope up with since our skills also improve simultaneously.

No, the problem is that being consistent is boring. It is mundane. It requires a great deal of solitude. The thing that was once exciting, and new, and thrilling, has lost all its charm now. It is repetitive, and reaching new levels of expertise takes longer with each passing level. Also, there is no one to clap and cheer for the minute efforts that we are making everyday.

The only thing that actually stops us form being consistent are these mental roadblocks; we don’t want to do it because we have been doing it for so long, it is the same old song on loop. 

We see movies and hear our idols talk about living a life of adventure, so when life is mundane and boring, there is a looming feeling that something is going wrong. We feel the need to make some changes, and we end up falling off the bandwagon. Moreover, not seeing results instantaneously can make us feel like our efforts are not worth it. Self-doubt often takes precedence over patience.

Anything we do, it is likely to get boring at some stage. It may become interesting sometime later, but the ups and downs will always be there. 

We need to be comfortable with being bored. We need to be our biggest cheerleader on days no one is there to see and applaud our efforts. 

I have had quite a few moments in life, as I am sure you have had as well, where something that seemed impossible ended up happening, and when it did happen, it just felt like magic. But looking back, I can clearly see that small efforts made consistently snowballed and made things that once seemed impossible, possible.

“Just showing up is half the battle.”

— Woody Allen