Staying Sane While Raising Your Teens

Consistency: A Recipe for Success

May 1, 2017 at 10:09 am 7 comments

When I think of consistency, I think of smooth cake batter; the kind that my mother turned into delicious cakes when I was a child. Consistency means that each separate ingredient blends together to create a delicious end result.  

As an entrepreneur, we are constantly taking individual items, putting them together and turning them into finished products or services. That’s our goal. But what happens when things don’t come together? Or more importantly, what can we do to ensure consistent consistency?

Let’s go back to my cake analogy. Mom would always ensure that she had all of the ingredients to make her cake. Those ingredients were: eggs, butter, sugar, flour, milk, flavoring, etc. Once she had the ingredients, it was important that she mixed the ingredients together until they were completely blended. Since she was a seasoned baker, she could tell from the consistency of her batter, whether the cake was going to be successful or not. Sometimes she may have lacked every ingredient and had to substitute. Depending on what she had to substitute, would determine if the cake tasted good or not.

Consistency is following a series of behaviors and habits. Think about your last product or service. Did you have everything you needed to offer a consistently excellent product or service? Perhaps you needed to:

• Determine a need for your product or service
• Perform research
• Create and try out a test sample
• Measure it against your competition
• Price it competitively

Or maybe it had nothing to do with product or service ingredients, but personal ingredients for success. Maybe your personal recipe for success means that you need to carve out time to eat healthy foods and exercise. Or maybe you are burning the candle at both ends and not getting enough rest. For me that’s always an issue because as an author my inspiration occurs in the wee hours of the morning. However when I prepare for my work-life or family dynamics consultations, I find that I am working late into the evening. We are NOT machines! We are creative beings that make a living based on how consistent we are in our business. It is very difficult to be a boss entrepreneur or corporate woman when you are suffering from fatigue or exhaustion. 

Here are 3 suggestions for creating successful consistency in your business and personal life:

• Set a Goal – successful consistency is moving forward in a positive way. Setting business and personal goals is one of your ingredients toward consistency. One of my goals is getting in bed by 10:30 pm. Lately I have been going to bed at midnight and getting up at 6 am. But remember my creative writing thoughts occur by 4 – 6 am – so going to bed at midnight stifles my writing creativity. Setting a goal gives me something to work toward.
• Form a Habit – It’s easy to form a habit. Just do something consistently for 21 days (or 21 times) and the next thing you know, you have formed a habit. Think about forming some positive habits.
  • Join me and start getting more sleep.
  • Start eating healthier instead of grabbing that bag of chips or can of soda because you haven’t eaten all day.

While you are forming some new habits, consider replacing the ones that you no longer need or want. For me, it’s giving myself enough time. As a busy entrepreneur, mom and wife, I always have something to do. If I have a morning appointment, getting on the computer is disastrous, because I can lose track of time and have to rush to my meeting instead of arriving with time to look over my notes. Think about what habit you would like to eliminate.

• Practice Self-Care – As a woman, we carry the weight of everyone on our shoulders. We worry about our families, our friends, neighbors, our causes. But we seldom take time for ourselves unless we get sick. Being sick seems to be the only thing that gives us permission to slow down and take care of ourselves. Practice a little self-care and take time daily and do one or all of these things for you:
  • Pray or meditate
  • Think about 5 things you are grateful for
  • Eat a high protein breakfast (or drink a protein smoothie)
  • Pick an affirmation and say it to yourself (‘I approve of myself’ or ‘I love myself exactly as I am’)
  • Give someone a compliment just cause
  • Say a prayer of thanks before going to bed

While consistency is the recipe for success, you are the engine to move your success forward. If taking that first step seems challenging, give me a call and let’s talk about it. Click here to schedule

C. Lynn Williams’ Bio

C. Lynn Williams is an award-winning author, motivational speaker, educator and business owner. Her passion is helping parents create the kind of home life that welcomes communication and trust with their tweens, teens and adult children. Believing working moms can have better work-life balance, she created Finding Superwoman™ a mentoring program to help women kick the chaos out of their life. Her motto: Providing parenting solutions. Building solid foundations. Securing promising futures.

www.clynnwilliams.com

Entry filed under: mothers, work-life balance, working moms. Tags: businesswoman, caring, consistency, entrepreneur, habits, recipe for success, selfcare, worklife success.