Consistency is a positive feedback loop

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Happy Sunday and thank you for opening this week’s #TheLifeofJLOWE newsletter!

Guess what? This week, for the first time in months, I went to the gym every single day. Although I’ve been pretty consistently exercising in the past few months, it hasn’t necessarily been everyday, so I’m publicly giving myself kudos for this little achievement, as a way to motivate myself to do it all over again next week.

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My new challenge to myself

After starting my run club last year, I decided that the challenge that I would put to myself this year is consistency.

For me, success in this challenge doesn’t mean necessarily going “hard” at everything I do - whether a workout, a run or even my morning yoga - but it means physically showing up for myself in a consistent way.

It means getting out of bed and onto the yoga mat, even if its 5 minutes of stretches instead of 20. Or it means showing up to the gym, even if it’s to do just one workout instead of a full hour program. Building a habit requires me to show up, despite how I feel about showing up.

To some extent, my run club requires me to show up, and so it forces me to be consistent. We’ve already hosted over 12 weekly Saturday runs, and I’ve already begun to see the payoff from being consistent.

I already feel better when I run, and we’ve managed to secure some pretty great sponsorships/partnerships with local brands to provide for our runners week over week. It’s through those little wins that I’ve recognised that the way to win and the way to succeed is to keep showing up in whatever way I can.

It’s tiring as hell - don’t let social media fool you

One condition of consistency, however, means that you have to show up even when you might not want to. As I said, it doesn’t necessarily mean always giving 100% when you do show up, but it definitely means showing up at the bare minimum.

And let me be honest with you - there have been weeks where I really question why I write this newsletter. There have been weeks where I consider sending an email to you all to say that it will be the final #TheLifeofJLOWE newsletter for the foreseeable future. Yet for some reason, I keep sitting down to write to you.

If you didn’t know, I now work Monday to Saturday, and so my previous routine of spending a leisurely Saturday in a cafe to write my newsletter for Sunday has been absolutely thrown out the window.

Instead of waking up late on a Saturday and having a nice coffee and while I gather my thoughts to write my newsletter, almost every week for the past few weeks has been an absolute draining sh*t show and chaos on Saturday for me as I wake up at 4:00am, run with Sweat & Salty Run Club, work until 3:30/4pm, and then sit to find the time to write my newsletter, frantically before any social outing that I might partake in on Saturday night (my only real “non-work” night, which if I stay out late on, will inevitably result in me being awake for almost 24 hours straight).

My routine that existed when I started my newsletter back in 2023 when I was in college no longer exists. And when people ask me how I do it all, I laugh and smile and tell them there’s so much time in the day, but in reality I’m just as tired as you might feel too, and juggling so many things is very hard.

So why keep doing it?

This is exactly the question I keep asking myself.

Maybe It’s like being on Duolingo for 350 days straight. Or maybe it’s like keeping a streak on Snapchat with your best friend. Or maybe, it’s more like showing up to the gym even when you don’t want to because you’ll feel better after you leave even if the workout sucks.

The real reason I stress myself out to write ~1000 words a week to you is because I’ve learnt so much about myself and about the world through taking the time to reflect once a week. And even more so than learning about myself, I’ve learnt a ton about the power of consistency.

What #TheLifeofJLOWE means to me today

Because of my newsletter, I can go back to reflect on where my mind was when I was completing my first corporate internship in New York city. Then, I can follow my life’s journey to graduating from college, starting my first job, loving it, hating it, running a marathon, ultimately quitting that job, then moving back to Jamaica to live with my family.

I can follow where my mentality was when I failed an exam, what I thought about living in Honduras for a month or even something as simple as how I felt when I serviced my car for the first time.

Again, however, more than just following along my own life’s journey, I’ve learnt about the power of consistency.

Conclusion

The power of consistency is that you can actually become hardwired to do something that’s good for yourself. You can actually build a good habit that you feel bad about breaking.

The reason I haven’t stopped writing this newsletter is because I would feel terrible about myself for not doing it, and I would miss the feeling that I get from spending the time to sit and document my reflections.

For me, my brain reacts in a similar way when I miss out keeping up a good habit as it does when I indulge in a bad habit. Breaking consistency hurts. The power of being consistent - even showing up for yourself in a small way - is that you avoid that “hurt” feeling by doing something good for yourself.

It takes a while, of course to build a habit - to really get yourself into a routine that you would really kick yourself for missing.

But trust me when I say this: unlocking the power of consistency, and leveraging it to accomplish a big goal in tiny steps is really one of the most foolproof ways to find your way to success. Go start building that habit today. 👊 

Until next Sunday,

JLOWE