About this episode

I've never previously been the type of person who picks a word of the year... It never felt right, nothing ever landed - but this year I picked 'Consistency'.

Or should I say 'Imperfect Consistency'?

In this episode I dive into how and why I chose a word of the year and why this word actually means so much to me. It's not about showing up daily, it's not about posting to social media a certain number of times per week or frequently - it's bigger, deeper and so much more important to me.

In 2023 I'm embracing Imperfect Consistency in almost every aspect of my life and I want to encourage you to do the same. Because it's not the things we do perfectly over a short amount of time that make the big difference, it's the things we do imperfectly over the longer period of time that change the game the most.

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Episode Transcript:

Hello, and welcome back to unpack this. This is episode one of season two, and I am so excited to be bringing you back the podcast again for another year.

This year, I am shaking things up ever so slightly. We are gonna go in a slightly different direction. However, I think that you are really going to love it. I am going to be sharing more stories from incredible people, business owners, just amazing people that I think are really going to inspire you and open your eyes even further as you know, to what is possible for you. And I'm really really excited to bring you these stories.

And of course, we will still be focusing on expert advice, opinions, inspiration, and of course sharing all of those really juicy amazing marketing and business tips along the way as well to help you grow your business. 

So I wanted to kick off the first episode of this season a little differently. I'm doing something I haven't never done before and I am coming into this recording with absolutely no notes, no scripts, nothing like that. Normally, I am very prepared and I know basically what I'm going to say. However, I really wanted to come into this episode really raw, really open, vulnerable, honest and I guess very authentic and share something really important to me, with you.

Something that I really hope will also help you. So as this episode, the name of this suggests, I really wanted to come in today and share with you my word of the year. So it's obviously the end of March, I know you're thinking this is probably really late. However, I have been sitting on this for such a long time and this actually really means something to me.

I've previously never been a word of the year kind of person. I have been involved in masterminds and group programs and, you know, I've worked with coaches and things like that before where, you know, the whole word of the year exercise has come up around the end of one year as we go into another. And I have never done it. I have just never been able to find anything that felt good, that felt right, that stuck, it just felt like I was there going abundance. I don't know, maybe confidence.

You know, kind of looking at the words that everyone else was picking, you know, what I maybe thought I should be picking. And it kind of just didn't feel very good at all. So I've never done it. 

This year, however, again, I came into 2023 not expecting or wanting to pick a word of the year. However, it came to me while I was out running. So just to jump straight in and let you know what my word is. The word of the year for me, the word I have chosen is Consistency. 

I know. I know. We talk about consistency all the time. However, I am talking about consistency in a very very different way in this episode. This is not about frequency, This is not about showing up daily consistently or anything like that. This is about long term consistency and trusting the process. So as I mentioned, this really landed for me when I was out running one day. And I'm gonna say running, but really It was more of a I don't know. I'm gonna call it a bit of a shuffle or a wobble because I am I wouldn't say that I'm a runner. But I was out there and I was giving it a shot. So in late November, early December twenty twenty two, I started running. So I have, as I mentioned, I'm not previously a runner.

My husband, however, is a runner. He is competing this weekend coming in a one hundred km trail event. So he is a serious runner. Been trying to get me into running for years. This year, I finally decided to jump in and give it a shot. The first run I went on was a three kilometer run. And I can tell you I did far more walking than I did it running. It was really hard. I'm gonna say I sucked at it. You know, I've done F45 and HIIT before, but this, like, that consistent running.
The kilometer after kilometer is really hard. It takes another level of cardio that at the time I just did not have. 

So obviously, I start running and I'm thinking, this is hard. This sucks. I hate this. I'm never gonna get there. I'm just not going to get there. But for whatever reason, I decided that I was going to keep going. So three to four times a week, I would get out. I would go for this run.
And at the time, I was running for one minute and then I would walk for three. And I would do that over the three or four kilometers that I was out running. Weeks went by, Christmas came, New Year came, and all through that, I continued this running. However, while I started out at sort of three to four times a week, through that Christmas period, there were times when I only went out once a week and then maybe on another occasion, I would go out walking, then I wouldn't even do anything for a week, and then, you know, the next week, I would do two or three weeks, just or two or three runs. That was just what I could manage during that busy time. 

You know, it's Christmas, the kids are at home. There are things happening, events planned, lots going on and it was what I could fit in. Anyway, it was mid January and I went out for a run.
And this was the first six kilometer run that I had done. I got out there after an inconsistent few weeks, inconsistent or infrequent, I should say, an infrequent few weeks of running. And I was able to run far more of that six kilometer than I walked, which was huge. Instantly, I was honestly surprised because I could see the progress. I stuck with it.

I trusted the process. And all of a sudden, I was running far more than I was walking. When I started this only sort of seven, eight weeks prior, I did not know how I would get to a point, what I would be running more than one kilometer at a time. At the time, I was running for one minute at a time and I was only covering a few hundred meters at a time. So then to fast forward seven eight weeks later, all of a sudden, I'm running, you know, two to three kilometers at a time and then just breaking to have a bit of a breath and to sort of catch myself in the middle there.

And it was that moment as well that I was thinking about business and this year and I hadn't come back into work for the year and I was figuring out what I wanted. And everything kind of came together for me. And I was like, after a very rocky end to 2022 and I'll admit a very hard 2022 for me for a lot of reasons. My business was sort of changing. Things were looking different. I was really busy. Obviously, the transition to having a school child and just things going on in my personal life, which meant that I became very inconsistent with what I was doing, but rather than allowing myself to have those times where I was inconsistent and then just sort of getting back up and starting again. I was then kind of in that perfectionist mindset where I'm going, well, there's no point because I haven't done this for two weeks now. So why would I bought that now? You know, I haven't released a podcast episode in two or three weeks.

There's no like, what's the point in continuing? I haven't posted on Instagram this week. It's Friday now. Why would I start now? 

And it was with the running, I guess, as well, but I sort of brought it all together, and I thought if I can just be consistent for the year, If I can just pick up and keep going, no matter where I'm at, no matter what it looks like, It's only going to help me.

It's only going to help me grow. I'm only going to move further along and closer to my dream, than what I would if I either gave up or I guess was striving for perfect consistency. One of the things that, I guess, it really highlighted for me as well. Even though we already know these things sometimes, you know, we have to sort of go through them again to have that refresher and that reminder and to make sure that we know that we're on the right path. We're on the right track. 

I can see now, it became very clear to me that imperfect consistency, as long as the imperfect consist where, you know, we show up more often than not and that missed days and missed weeks and even missed months, don't matter if we just pick up and we keep going. We are going to move so much further ahead so much quicker if we embrace and allow ourselves to be imperfectly consistent. Versus striving for perfect consistency.

So often, we, I find as well with my clients. I do it with myself as well, you know, we commit to something perfectly. You know, it has to look this way. We're going to post three times a week. We're going to release a podcast episode every week. Each week, I'm going to stay on top of my Xero account, you know, all these things. And we do it perfectly for a sprint so often. It's a short period of time. You know, we put all this pressure on ourselves to make sure that it gets done. And then if we do fall over, we then kind of lose that momentum and because we lose that momentum and we told ourselves that we were going to do this way and it had to look this way.

And we allow ourselves to believe that if it doesn't look this way, then it's wrong or we're somehow messing up. It's going to be slower. It's going to be harder and you are not going to move. As far at the end if you just embrace imperfect consistency. So that was really for me that was it was such a game changer and I've already found myself really embracing it.

So even though it sort of came to me through running, which unfortunately I am injured from at the moment. So the running is more walking at the moment, but I'm still getting out there. I'm not allowing the fact that I can't really run right now in stopping me from getting back out there and just like getting the walking done and getting those and then just getting out there and having that time to myself as well. But it really reminded me that, you know, it's okay to do this. And so where I've embraced it in business is really through so many things, but a big one for me is definitely with social media.

So I came back into the year really quite strong. I was posting, you know, several times a week, I was in my stories and I was making it all happen. And then the following week, I found that I ended up really sick and I didn't have anything patched. I didn't have anything recorded. I didn't have anything prepared.

And rather than beating myself up about it, I knew that I had created some really great content last week. I popped a few things up on stories that didn't require me to speak or to show my face or anything like that. And I just allowed it to be what it was. The following week, I came back on and I started creating a little bit again. And rather than really focusing on what I did or didn't do, I'm really just allowing myself to move through that and to create what I can as, you know, as consistently and as frequently as I can in a way that feels good and right for me that's going to help me achieve the goals that I want to achieve and build the business that I want to build.

So I guess the point of this episode was really, like, really, really to share that with you. This was a big thing for me. I was just like I said, I just need to show up. Consistently. That doesn't mean consistently this week. That means, you know, throughout 2023, consistently just get back up, just keep going. It doesn't matter if I have a bad week, a bad day, or a bad month. So long as I get back up, and keep going. I will be so much closer to achieving my goals and reaching my dreams than what I would be. If I threw in the towel because I wasn't doing it the way that my brain had told me that I need to do it for it to be perfect, for it to work.

The best way possible for it to look a certain way. And so I really wanted to share that with you today as well in hopes that this would really help you as well, that it would give you permission to be imperfect, that it would give you permission to know that it doesn't matter if you, you know, you miss a week or you stuff up or you things don't look the way that you had initially planned. And now things need to look a little bit different. You need to adjust. You need to pivot. You need to pick back up. It's okay. 

And so long as we keep getting back up, and we keep going, we will get to where we wanna be. So not that you need a permission slip, but this is, I guess, kind of, it's a permission slip for me. Maybe it can be a permission slip for you too, 2023, the year, we embrace imperfect consistency, and we do all that we can when we can and we allow ourselves the time and the grace and the compassion that we need when things don't quite go to plan and when life gets in the way and it means that we can't show up in exactly the same way that we want that we had intended. 

So I'm gonna leave this episode right here. I could waffle on, I'm sure. But I really, really hope that this helps you. And I really hope that, yeah, you can embrace imperfect consistency with me here as well, first and foremost as well, giving yourself understanding and compassion and forgiveness and all of those things when, you know, things aren't perfect and they don't go.
To plan. So I am going to sign off here. Thank you so much for joining me for today's episode. 

Next week's episode is an interview with the incredible content queen, Mariah. I cannot wait to bring you that episode. As always, if you have any questions, please reach out to me on Instagram. You can find me @kristypask. And you can also find me on my website. It's kristypask.com. Thank you so much, and I'll chat with you again soon.