Hi, my name is Tim, but you could call me Mr. Fickle… well, until recently.
My entire life, I struggled to stick to anything. I'd start a new skill or activity, and get really into it, but instead just when I was getting good, I'd lose focus, get distracted, and stop. This is the story of how I finally broke that cycle and became a master of consistency through meditation, transforming my entire life in the process.
My Fickle Past
When I was 10, I thought I was going to be a chess master. I played constantly, beat everyone
in competition, and everyone thought I was destined for greatness. Until… one day, I got
over it and quit. The thrill was gone, and I walked away.
In high school, I was excellent at Australian Rules Football, dominating the midfield and
getting so much of the football every single game. I was a formidable and scary opponent.
Many people said that I would make it in the big league one day. Until… one day, I just
stopped. The passion faded, and I moved on.
After school, I got into outdoor education. I was a great skier and kayaker. My teachers
thought I could be great at it and could potentially make a living from it. Until… one day, I
just decided to quit. The excitement dwindled, and I left it behind.
I have always been jealous of people who could stick to something for years and become great
at it, while I could not become good at anything. I knew I had potential but couldn't realize it.
Many people I know became so good at things while I would just watch in awe.
The Turning Point
A year and a half ago, something changed.
I started meditating on a whim, with little
expectation. But I stuck with it, through the hard times and the good times.
I finally found a way to escape the fickle curse.
Now that I am starting to really notice the benefits of Mediation I am starting to look back and reflect on how I did it, what was it exactly that allowed me to finally break the fickle curse and start to really improve my life.
Here's how I did it:
1. Atomic Habits: Making Meditation Automatic
The first step to consistency is turning an activity into a habit. James Clear's Atomic Habits
taught me that to stick to something, it needs to become automatic. When something becomes
a habit, it's ingrained so deeply that you do it without thinking.
A habit follows three logical steps: Cue, Routine (Behavior), and Reward.
Cue: An initial trigger
Behaviour: The action you take
Reward: Positive reinforcement
Understanding this I developed a system, an automatic process that allowed me to become
consistent without even thinking about it.
I meditated around the same time every day—after work. This became my cue. Cue- Finish
Work, Behaviour, Message my meditation help to go meditate, Reward, finishing another
meditation session.
The second way I used my knowledge of habit formation was by rewarding myself with chocolate!
After each meditation session, I always give myself a reward a small piece of
chocolate whilst this may seem small it activated the habit circuit. Cue – Meditation,
Behavior- Completing a session. Reward – Chocolate! If I didn’t meditate, I was not
allowed any chocolate!
Giving yourself a reward for doing something even if only small wires your brain to perform
the right behavior. Give yourself a pat on the back every time you meditate. Whilst your
putting in the effort to improve your mind, lots of people are too lazy to even try.
“I told myself over and over again– if you miss one day because something comes up, that’s fine, but don’t you dare miss two days in a row,”
I said this sentence in my mind over and over again and it became so deeply engrained that on the second day of not doing any mediation I would feel so bad if I had not meditated yet.
Of course, there are times this doesn’t work for example when away for work which didn’t give me any free time, but that was just an exception.
Since making meditation a habit, even my worst thoughts about quitting didn't stop me.
I recognized that learning a new skill is not linear. Instead, it works more like an upward
trending wave with ups and downs, it also works in breakthrough moments, James Clear in
Atomic Habits describes it by talking about an ice cube in a room. The ice does not start to
melt until it reaches 33 degrees but to get to 33 degrees from 25 degrees it has to
incrementally go up a degree at a time until finally there is a noticeable effect.
The trouble with this is that it can seem like at times nothing is happening despite all the effort you are putting in this can really test your ability to stay consistent. but my ability to recognize that I am simply in the “valley of disappointment” area of progress (see below) I don’t take my
negative thoughts seriously and I was able to continue meditation with the consistency mind
set.
Going to the centre worked better for me than meditating at home, at home, I have a way too many distractions, and it is so easy to not bother and do something else.
Having a set time and place where I am expected to be and where I can’t pull out without telling someone really helped me stay consistent, but this is just me, others find the ease of online sessions just as effective if not more effective and easier.
Using the techniques introduced in James Clear’s Automic Habits I created a system that made becoming consistent easy, and now I’m going to explain why you should make meditation the first skill you should become consistent in it.
2. The Snowball Effect
- Start with meditation and then anything else you want to do in life will start becoming much easier!
Having become consistent in meditation improved everything else in my life.
My family invested in the best education money could buy and made enormous sacrifices to give me all they could, but the school only taught me IQ-related skills and since I had bad cognitive capacity, learning those IQ-related skills was a real challenge and despite having very good ideas in my head, I was never able to express those ideas and I was not able to learn very well.
This meant my marks were never that great and I didn’t have very good communication skills.
So I struggled to get ahead in life. Meditation has taught me that real success starts with the foundation of the mind, which meditation builds.
Level one of the mind is foundational. When you improve it, you become happier and let go
of negativity. This improvement creates a snowball effect:
Level 1: Happiness and inner peace
Level 2: Cognitive benefits—better concentration, confidence, and working memory
Level 3: Easier learning, IQ related skills and improved emotional intelligence
Understanding this logic, meditation stopped being a chore and became something I couldn't wait to do.
Through mediation I cleared away my mind, then this started a snowball effect because I started to become a lot happier, and I had a much clearer mind. As a direct result of this I started improving dramatically cognitively and because my cognitive skills were so much better suddenly, I can learn things so much easier no matter what it is.
By being poor at level one and level two as described away despite all the effort I would put into anything it would take an enormous effort to achieve anything.
By becoming MR consistent with meditation first instead of another skill I can now learn any other skill and it has made my ability to learn those skills much easier.
Start with the mind then like a snowball ball everything else will start falling in place.
I envisage a world where all humans start their learning in life by working on the mind instead of starting with just IQ related It would be an incredible world to live in.
3. Connecting with the Vision of the Founder
Now that I have mastered the system of consistency in Meditation, one of the most
significant motivators for me to keep going has been connecting with the profound vision that
meditation offers for the world.
This vision goes beyond personal improvement; it aims to transform the entire world by making it a much happier and more peaceful world. By becoming consistent in my meditation practice, I now feel part of something much bigger than just personal improvements, which has fuelled my commitment, I feel like the things in life that use to seem so important is now so insignificant.
Reflection: In my first blog post I talked about how consistency is one of the most important
things in meditation or any skill, this is now an elaboration on that theme. Breaking the fickle
curse has transformed my life. By making meditation a habit, recognizing its profound impact, and connecting with a larger vision, I've become a consistency king.
Now, I’m excited to continue this journey and help others experience what I have already discovered and what I am going to discover as I continue to progress in my mediation practice.
Now you can too… and the way to start is by developing the consistency mindset.
Such a good read 🙏 you've really changed Tim