A man has a drink, a drink has a drink, a drink has a man. – Japanese proverb.

There is something to be said about remaining consistent, about maintaining an unwavering core. Maybe it’s your personality, maybe it’s your career, maybe it’s the way you tie your shoelaces every morning. Consistency is there, who you are is always coming through – no matter who you’re with or what you’re doing at this very moment. People are habitual creatures and habits are difficult to change so many will go through life repeating the same day over and over. Often decades at a time. SSDD.

The self-help industry will entice its audience with promises of the riches, the perfect partner, kids who are popular, athletic and smart. Just like in a fairy-tale only no dwarfs and a princes with a sun tan.

But just maybe there is something missed in that strive to always out-do, out-smart, out-grow. Growth for the sake of growth isn’t any better than decline for the sake of laziness. Karoshi it turns out is more deadly than sloth. Who knew? Sabbath. 1/7 the productivity down the drain but maybe the more productive cultures went the way of the modern Japan?

It’s always fascinating to hear justifications: mandatory vacation time that can’t be carried over but we need to get this out on Monday, skip lunch, skip Saturday… Sunday if you must. Are you beginning to notice a pattern?

Consistency. The quiet hush of the static that is there if one just stops for a second and pays attention to it.

Organizations, people, whole societies. Some people will tell you it’s complicated, there are a lot of variables, anything can change at any time. It’s the mood, the phase of the moon, her ex is in town, a neurotic boss, an alcoholic mother, the president and the used car salesman. But is it really that different from the guy or gal next door?

Not that different, after all. Consistency. Predictable, testable, 50% genetic.

As much as we might not want to admit it, our lives are amazingly predictable. Not quite boring but… consistent. Habitual. And yet we refuse to accept what is, what is all around us. What is us. A walking, talking habit with an aberration or two to spice things up.

So why not accept what is? Why try to jump out of your skin? Sure a work out sounds nice but out-jumping our ears ears isn’t the best way to do it.

There is a small branch in psychology that has, despite some major findings in the last decade, mostly been relegated to tabloid-type news. The findings are phenomenal but it’s difficult to translate them them from dry academic journals with standard deviation charts in to salable soundbites so the news is littered with conclusions that it takes 10,000 hours to get good at something (or was it that people who suck don’t stick around that long?) or that people who earn US$75K are at the peak of the diminishing-returns curve; above that income level selling time is counter-productive because free time becomes more important for happiness than money.

Never-mind that US$75K is the top 10th percentile for personal income. Even the more affluent states in the US are averaging $55K-60K for a household income, so individual income would be about half of that? That’s a scientific breakthrough being eaten up by the masses. In other news: the bottom 10% value money over time?

The other, more important findings are hush-hush. Remember? Consistency. The odds are you’re exactly where you’re supposed to be, not to far from where your parents landed – be that a Ivy League classroom or a county lock-up. It’s an unpopular notion, sure. Change sounds like a lot more fun.

I’m not trying to rain on your parade, I’m just trying to be realistic. That’s another one of those inconvenient findings that the news doesn’t harp on-and-on: turns out pessimist are a lot more accurate with their predictions than optimists. They’re right on if one looks at the results, actually. That’s right, read the previous sentence again: life is consistently the same; but only the depressed see reality as it is. Most everyone else is delusional then? Yes, they are, but that idea doesn’t ring all warm and fluffy. Just like buying plastic pink ribbons causes more cancer through manufacturing, pollution from transportation and distribution than it cures with the funds raised… Consistency, it just feels good.

So maybe the way to make a real, lasting change is not to attempt back-flips – sure it’s fun to think about, but still. Maybe the best way to make a change is to to be consistent. Little bit by little bit. Consistent change. Consistently doing what we are naturally good at. Consistently accepting our limitations instead of ignoring them. Consistently accepting the single, most unpopular fact: humans are really bad at change. We are what you call… Consistent.

Loosing weight one cookie at a time over 5 years. Finding a husband one date a week for a year. Getting in shape by refusing to take elevators. Consistently.

Making new friends by making one phone call a week. Learning something new by reading a new book every month. Consistently.

Sure, it’s not as glamorous as winning the lottery but it’s a lot more… consistent.

So many people will tell you that you can have anything you want, be anyone you want to be – but the truth is you can’t. You will always be who you always were. So you work your ass off for a few years and then what? You life goes from C+ to a B. You might work up to an A at karaoke after a few voice lessons, but a valedictorian? Meh.

So here’s to the realists, the pessimists, those who see the world as it truly is – a consistent collection of habits most of which aren’t easily changed. And it’s not because humans can’t learn new tricks – of course we can, just look at modern universities!

It’s because the consistency I’m speaking of is just under the surface. It’s the core.

Neat people are neat, rude people are rude, smart people are smart, productive people are productive. It’s not because they read a book or cleared up their misunderstanding with their parents. People are what their habits make them. We do something once or twice, and then the habit does it for the rest of our life all by itself.

Consistency. It’s always there, and while there’s some wiggle room at the end of the day it’s better to put some lipstick on the pig than to wait for the day when pigs fly.