By Dawn Onley

Consistency changes everything.

Before long, you have enough money saved in the bank to buy a home. Suddenly, you have whittled your waist line down a few inches and you’re back in those jeans that you wore in your early 20s. The moments at the kitchen table teaching your toddler how to count start to pay off when you least expect.

All because of your consistent actions. It’s never the things you do once in a blue moon, or when the mood strikes. It’s the grunt work that you do by routine that may not seem like a lot from day to day, but after awhile, those little moves add up to huge results.

It’s forcing myself to write each day, even when I don’t have much to say. It’s unpacking one box at a time until my bedroom is finally finished. It’s doing away with soda and potato chips to reach a fitness goal. It’s practicing an instrument a little bit each day, until you can play the song flawlessly.

There is probably not a single attribute one person can possess that is as important to achieving success or getting results as consistency. As the saying goes, if you are persistent, you will get it. If you are consistent, you will keep it.

“In essence, if we want to direct our lives, we must take control of our consistent actions. It’s not what we do once in a while that shapes our lives, but what we do consistently,” said bestselling author, motivational speaker and life coach, Tony Robbins.

It takes discipline to be consistent. It also takes vision, courage, perseverance and delayed gratification. This last point is important because we are living in a time where everyone wants to see the end result pronto without putting in the effort. We want to lose weight fast, without changing how we eat and exercise. We want financial security, but can’t discipline ourselves enough to forego the $5.00 Starbucks run, 5 days a week. Students graduate college and immediately expect to get a job earning money that it took many people their whole adult life to attain.

In other words, we want to eat the elephant in one setting and when that proves impossible, we get frustrated and decide to dine on something different altogether.

Consistency is eating the elephant one bite at a time. It’s the way to hike mountains. It’s the way to conquer fears. And it’s the way to realize our dreams.