Create your own Consistency - Unwarranted Advice
These past two weeks have been grueling for me. I’ve had some pretty intense work and some personal issues that really have bogged me down, and I’ll admit it, I had trouble encouraging myself to write this today. I get a bit lost in my head sometimes, and I have trouble writing when I’m like that, because then I don’t get to present myself the way I actually am. Instead you get the depressed side of me that just seems to kick itself when its down.
But! Lucky for you, lovely reader, I’ve never been someone who gives up and in fact, I think I’ll segue from that, to our main topic today. Being there.
You’ll find a lot of different definitions for “being there” for someone in your dictionary (that inexplicably contains phrases), but for me it means being emotionally or mentally present for someone else entirely. It means you’ll be willing to put yourself in their shoes and understand the problems their facing and do your best to listen, reconcile, or talk through the issue, at the talker’s choice of course. I think the listener needs to be able to ignore culpability sometimes, and other times make it clear who is at fault (depending on the relationship).
But at the same time, I think being there just means being consistent. I think being there means you don’t trickle a conversation, it means you don’t leave someone hanging. It means you discuss your thoughts and your feelings openly and let them do the same. It means you don’t harangue someone, or act like you know best. It means you do your best and let someone else do theirs.
Right now, I don’t have a lot of consistency in my life. You’ll find that to be true for any freelancer, and most people recently out of college. Things are in flux for me! And I quickly learned that “consistency” isn’t something everyone agrees on. In fact, for a while I couldn’t call a single aspect of my life consistent. And that was killing me! So, how’d I fix this? I added consistency to my regiment. I have a specific workout and run that I do every day. I write three blogs a week, MWF share them with your friends. And I spend Tuesday and Thursday afternoons working on my own stories. It’s not perfect! But it’s more than the volatile nature of my work and social life.
This is probably the closest to “self-help” I’ve ever gotten, but honestly, it’s probably the only self-help thing I do that I really think could benefit most of the world! Create your own consistency! Hold up, gotta make that the title of this blog now.
Create your own consistency and you’ll see your life get easier. Don’t give yourself an excuse that you’re too busy, or that you don’t have enough free time. It takes 30 minutes to go for a walk, do it! It pays dividends.
The meat of this all comes back to being there for someone else. For a really long time, I prided myself on being that “go-to” guy for people. The one someone turned to for advice. But as I got out of the groove of college and into the pock-marked canyon of “freedom,” I got jaded. I would talk with people, but their problems would just stress me out even more. Which defeats the entire purpose of a “venting session.” But developing a routine saved me. And if that sounds like hyperbole, that’s because in some ways, it is.
