inconsistency, not staying the same throughout or acting at variance with one's own principles or former behavior. how it is significant for us and when ?
Inconsistency as a word usually brings negative impact on our mind and we tend to avoid it totally from our life. Every third person you encounter will say you should never be inconsistent in order to achieve success in your life but by doing this they only present wrong side of the inconsistency and in the wrong place. What they exactly are trying to teach or explain you is you should be PERSISTENT in order to achieve something, not CONSISTENT.
That doesn't mean consistency is totally avoidable or you can't be consistent but the point is being consistent means to be regular and avoid any slight variation. In life we need both, consistency and persistence through and through but sooner or later we all will fall in the category of inconsistency because we humans can't we consistent for the long time and thus we need persistence to define our inconsistent life.
What is consistency ? It is being same throughout the time or doing something at same rate with least or no deviation at all. Likely, a hypothetical condition for a human at least whereas What is persistence ? Continuing to do something despite the challenges and difficulties. A realistic condition where you are making the deviations, trying new aspects, failing again & again and applying the results of your failure for your next task, this is being persistent and it contains the essence of inconsistency.
Let's take an example to make it more clear how persistence and consistence are different.
Imagine you have a consistent schedule of doing workout daily at 6 in the evening and one day due to some critical circumstances you are not able to do your workout at 6 and you deviated here from your consistent schedule but you completed your workout at 9 PM and remain persistent to your goal.
I know, question here will arise, isn't it being consistent also ?
So, the answer is it can be if you had defined the parameters of consistency for your workout, a day not 6 PM but parameter of consistency here is 6 PM, not a day.
HOW INCONSISTENCY DEFINES US ?
Now, we have enough information to understand clearly about persistence and consistency but what is the relation of persistence with inconsistency ? How inconsistency is significant ?
How it define who we are ?
Our universe is uncertain, our life is inconsistent and every other thing we see around us is random. It might easily not existed at all just like us. If chances of consistency and certainty are this much less throughout the universe then why and how anybody can say consistency only is the key ? We are humans and it's our own ability that we remain inconsistent since our birth but when we learn from tradition belief of people around us without even questioning them then we defy who we actually are and when we fail, we become out of any cause to pursue the goal we had defined.
Lord Chesterfield said,
"Mankind is made up of inconsistencies, and no man acts invariably up to his predominant character. The wisest man sometimes acts weakly, and the weakest sometimes wisely."
Significance of inconsistency in our life very much depends on the occurrence of it in our daily life and life around us. From the randomness of the universe, the existence of us and the tragedies we face in our daily life all are uncertain and inconsistent. We as a human go through inconsistency throughout our life.
Being inconsistent and still persist with greater endurance than before is the thing which defines who we are.
We can afford inconsistency but what makes it significant is the persistence and endurance with time.
Inconsistency is unpredictable. In inconsistent condition the chances of fallibility are more but with each chances of fallibility, there's a chance of growth in the learning curve when you apply correctly what went wrong.
INCONSISTENCY APPLICABILITY
The occurrence of inconsistency every time provides the chances of shaping the learning curve. Every deviation brings the possibility to bring yourself right back to the track and it's you every time who defines how variability shapes us in a better form.
The applicability of the inconsistency is everywhere, in every deviation we face in term of failure. When we calculate the deviations precisely and we know how much it is going to give an impact on our life, on that point we create resistance against the negative impact which helps to reduce their intensity to the some extent and manage to move the flow of deviations in our own beneficial direction by applying the the results of failed outcomes and the calculations we made.
How you will be able to shape the learning curve without being inconsistent through and through ? It's the inconsistency always which helps us to understand the deviations and what went wrong, by being inconsistent we experiment more, we take more risks, we calculate more and we achieve more because by being inconsistent, we live in unpredictability with number of possible variations where the chances of growth are more when we calculate correctly what is exactly we need to do at the correct time.
Closure statement
We humans are the risk calculators and the risk takers since the beginning, our ancestors took risk while escaping the tip of African continent and travelled throughout the world and settled in various parts of the world. Inconsistency was always there but we were always persistent about our goals and that's why we came up with solution every time.
This approach in the times of inconsistency tends to bring positive impact on our life and helps to shape the learning curve. We can't remove the deviations from our life but what is possible for us is to calculate risk, take risk, create resistance to reduce negative impact of variations, learn from the deviations, be persistent and come up with greater endurance every time.