Consistency matters. We have hobbies, we have jobs, we have chores, and we have daily tasks. The question is: are we being consistent with the things that matter the most?

Time for some tough questions.

Are we consistent with things that affect us physically? Are we working out and exercising as we should be — on a schedule and week to week? Are we eating a healthy and balanced diet almost daily? Are we taking enough time to reset and rest?

How about the things affecting us emotionally? Are we deepening connections with our loved ones — our spouses, our family, and our closest friends? Are we paying close attention to our stress levels and making sure that our jobs or our home lives aren’t causing us to suffer anxiety or other negative emotions? Are we doing these things on a consistent basis?

Are we being consistent with our spiritual lives? Are we attending church every Sunday? Are we keeping a calendar to meet with others of the same faith to collectively build and broaden our spiritual walk? Do we give of our financial resources and/or our time in order to consistently volunteer?

These can be tough questions to answer sometimes, and it’s because it forces us to look within to see if what we are striving to do actually has the fuel that’s needed to keep going and to finish strong. That fuel is consistency.

You’ll know when you’re not being consistent.

You can’t start a goal and expect to finish it without consistent action. You can’t go to work whenever you feel like it. For most of us, our schedule is at least 5 days a week and at the same time each day. Consistency may be forced in this situation (with the consequence of being fired if you aren’t consistent), but nevertheless, it’s still consistency.

Take your personal goals, for example. When you set out to make an improvement in your life, along with that goal will be certain steps that will need to be taken in order to achieve said goal. Those steps might be one-time actions, or they may be the same action repeated every so often in order to see the goal met or exceeded.

In almost every case where this is true, it will require consistency on your end. You’ll actually feel the pull when you’re not doing what you’re supposed to do. You’ll know deep down inside that you’re failing when you aren’t consistent in your actions. It’s because nobody has to really tell us that when you stop working on something, that thing will eventually fade. It’s like muscle atrophy. If you don’t use it, it will shrink and not be as strong as before.

Consistency pays in generous dividends.

We instinctively know what we’re supposed to do in order to see a goal through to completion, and when it comes to paying down and paying off debt, consistency couldn’t be more important of a factor.

Sure, we will hit some road bumps along the way. All of us do. It’s natural, because not many things stay on an exact trajectory forever. Even with that being the case, you should have consistent plans and steps in place already to keep moving closer towards the goal line. A rough month, financially speaking, may make it difficult to be as aggressive as you’d like to be, but that’s when you take a second or third look at the budget for the month ahead and plan accordingly.

When you’re deciding if you want to save a little extra cash or pay down a credit card balance faster (or both), what you plan to do will require you to take consistent action steps along the way — no matter which direction you have decided to go.

The best part of consistency is that it pays in generous dividends. The work that you put in now, on a schedule, is going to change your life for the better. It’s going to provide you with opportunities that you may not have had otherwise.

Maybe you don’t feel like doing something. Maybe you don’t feel like working out. Maybe you want to eat a tray of brownies or a bag of potato chips and forget about your diet for one night. Maybe you would rather blow off work and binge-watch something.

This happening every once in a great while probably isn’t a big deal. When it does happen, you need to immediately get yourself back on track so that you can refocus and renew that consistency all over again.

I want you to make a promise with yourself. Promise yourself that the items that you have on your task list, calendar, or whatever other scheduling mechanism that you use will be completed on time. If you need to adjust your current schedule to make it more realistic (which I have had to do in the past myself), go ahead and do so.

The purpose of this exercise is to help you to appreciate the fruits of consistency and to help you to experience what happens when you make sure that what you set out to do actually gets done.

It's only after experiencing this that you can appreciate why this is so incredibly critical.