What makes a consistent person

To get a consistent person isn’t an easy thing to do, even though most people are driven by their passion for different things it's still a very hard thing to maintain consistency. Here is my experience with different people and how they maintain consistency in what they do.

The Shopkeeper

The first will have to be the shopkeeper just close to my house, this guy has been working in that shop for the past 25 years, showing up every single day at 7 am and closing at 10 pm, in terms of consistency it's hard to do better. His motivations are, a very poor background where he struggled a lot coming from a demanding family which didn’t have a lot of resources to go around, so he had to become very hardworking and focused, fortunately he quickly found something which pays off decently and he has stuck to it ever since. It goes further than this, first, he didn’t go very far in school so he is scared of exploring new options and prefers to stick to what he knows better, secondly he is also ambitious, wanting to build his personal wealth and obtain the things his parents couldn’t get. So for this first person, its a combination of history, lack of education and ambition which have fueled his consistency.

The employee

The second person is still a worker but in this case they didn’t own the business but they rather work for someone else, who pays them just enough for them not to quit. This is actually the average worker you’ll find, with a combination of financial responsibilities weighing him down, a catalog of failed projects which nearly landed him in debt and no better option in sight, this person has stuck to the same job for over decades now. At some point in his life, he did try new things to break free but the abysmal failure left him a trauma, added to that the increasing amount of responsibilities makes it in such a way that he feels trapped and forced to stay consistent with the fear that letting up even for just a moment might result in some serious problems. What made this person consistent wasn’t ambition or a horrible background but rather the trauma from failed projects and the increasing weight of responsibilities.

Promise of freedom

The next person is a little subtle than the others, in this case it really didn’t matter what this person was doing, all that motivated him was the potential this activity had to give him his freedom, whatever that meant. For some freedom is just an excess of cash, for others freedom is power and authority, yet again for others, freedom is leading and expressing their ego. So this person was able to maintain a high level of consistency over a long period of time because there was a promise of freedom at the end of it. They showed up early, they stayed out late, they wore the most fancy suits and they followed all the instructions any relevant person gave them, all with the promise of freedom at the end. When there is a promise of freedom, most people are ready to maintain a high level of consistency when that’s what they actually want for themselves.

Duress

Finally, duress is another option which gives people a high level of consistency, when they no longer have a choice and are conscious that any lapses in their consistency will lead to some undesirable consequences. There might definitely be some other options, but these are the ones I was able to observe where people showed a high level of consistency above 95% in what they were doing. Whether it rained or it was sunny, whether they wanted or not, with these motivations people always showed up and on time.

Thanks for reading ☺️