Consistency Over Perfection

Health
Written By Lacey White

Issue No. 35

renewal inspiration via @pinterest

Consistency > Perfection

Hello from Los Angeles, where, as I write this, it’s gray (cue this song) and cold enough for tights. My husband is streaming Babygirl* and eating left over candy canes, as one does in the weird week between Christmas and New Year’s. I, on the other hand, have spent the past day and a half clearing my Gmail inboxes to zero, which feels oddly refreshing after letting them each linger around ~5,649 all year. Lisa von Weisse, Holistic Personal Stylist and all around fabulous human, said it best when she said: “Clutter is a distraction and can make you feel burdened and heavy.” And yes, clutter in your email inbox counts!

So, it is with a newfound lightness (thank you, Lisa!) that I’ve been spending some time honing in on my focus for 2025. In case you haven’t done this exercise already, maybe the below will inspire you do it with me.

Atomic Habits

I love a fresh start – a new week, a new age, or the start of a new calendar year. As I often do this time of year, I've found myself re-reading Atomic Habits by James Clear (the TL;DR of which can be found here). He writes so clearly (get it?) about behavior change that it's hard not to feel inspired. Success, he argues, is not the product of sweeping, monumental change but rather the sum of tiny habits repeated consistently, day in and day out. If we can get 1% better each day, over the course of a year, we’ll be in a way better place than we were when we started. (The same logic can be applied to getting 1% worse every day, so choose your habits wisely and with intention.) Elsie, who celebrated her first birthday on December 18th, is the perfect example for how much progress we as humans can make in a year.

Why Consistency Matters Most

You know the usual drill: January 1st arrives with its shiny promise of transformation. In years past, I’ve fallen victim to making tantalizing lists of all the ways I plan to improve myself in the months to come. Typically, this has focused on the outcome (i.e. lose weight, be well-read) rather than the action or habit I plan to repeat consistently. Per the pages of Atomic Habits, success isn't about massive changes – it's about tiny improvements, so small they’re almost undetectable, consistently applied over time. Clear urges us to de-emphasize the outcome we’re after, and instead fall in love with our process (or system) that helps get us there. Trying to be healthier? Fall in love with going to the farmers market and cooking whole, nutritious foods at home. Or, pick a sport and fall in love with mastering it little by little, one day at a time. If we choose the right habit, showing up consistently is easy to do (or so he says!).

The Identity Shift

To me, Clear’s most compelling lesson is that for change to happen, you need to create a new identity. This means you actually need to believe you are this person, consciously and subconsciously. It sounds daunting but, according to Clear, this process is as simple as these two steps:

Step 1: Decide the type of person you want to be.

Step 2: Prove it to yourself with small wins.

The second step of this is especially interesting to me. As someone who has struggled with confidence and self-doubt my entire life, the notion of proving something to myself with small wins is a powerful one. With this advice in mind, I've narrowed my 2025 focus down to a single word – consistency. In particular, I’d like to be consistent with this newsletter (among other things, but for example’s sake, let’s stick with just this). If I’m plugging into Clear’s template for building identity-based habits (which you can find here), I would say:

The following quote of Clear’s sticks out to me (especially the first line!) and is one I will have pinned to the top of my notes app all year long – 

“Every action you take is a vote for the type of person you wish to become. No single instance will transform your beliefs, but as the votes build up, so does the evidence of your new identity. This is one reason why meaningful change does not require radical change. Small habits can make a meaningful difference by providing evidence of a new identity. And if a change is meaningful, it is actually big. That’s the paradox of making small improvements.”

— Atomic Habits, page 38.

So, when you think about 2025, how would you finish this sentence? "I am becoming someone who..."

Making It Stick

Instead of overwhelming ourselves with unrealistic goals, as I’m all too familiar with, my plan this year is to break this down into simple, tiny, manageable shifts. Three reinforcements I’ll look to include are –

  1. Morning Identity Reinforcement: Start each day by proving you're the kind of person you want to become (an example for me could be waking up early to put in thirty minutes of work on this newsletter).

  2. Evening Micro-Reflection: What small win moved you closer to your desired identity today? (did I write for five minutes? did I think of a new topic? did I engage with a reader? did I research something worth sharing? etc. etc.).

  3. Weekly Process Check: Is your environment making consistency easier or harder?

Your Turn

What's your word for 2025? No matter your focus, here are two questions to try asking yourself daily, per James Clear:

☀️ Morning Question: "What's the smallest action I can take today to be consistent with who I'm becoming?"

🌙 Evening Check-in: "How did today's tiny actions align with my intended identity?"

And with that, thank you for reading! Wishing you all a Happy New Year! Cheers to small, consistent steps forward in 2025.

Currently Reading/Listening To

I love self-improvement reading this time of year (and always) so here’s my current lineup. What are you reading and loving?!

Links I Loved This Week

  • Unroll.me. Back to the cleared out inbox note we started with, Unroll.Me has been a game changer in helping me keep my email inbox(es) tidy-ish. It lets you easily unsubscribe from marketing or junk emails and allows you to “roll up” the non-essentials you still want to read but on your own time.

  • How to Manifest Everything You Ever Wanted by Crown Affair founder Dianna Cohen. ‘Tis the season for vision boards and manifesting!! I love Dianna’s step by step guide for her own vision board process.

  • The Artist’s Way workbook by Julia Cameron (another rec via Dianna Cohen)

  • To Be Magnetic. I downloaded this in September and have been pretty inconsistent with it. That said, I think it has powerful potential and will be (re)committing to doing the practice consistently!

    Your 2024 Favorites from The Lacey List

    Ranked below are the most read articles I published this year. If you’re new here, missed them, or feel like a re-read, here they are again for your reading pleasure. I’m especially proud to see that the most read was Blood Sugar for Beginners! That one took me weeks to put together and has a lot jam packed into it, so if you missed it, definitely worth revisiting.

    1. Blood Sugar for Beginners

    2. Don’t Sit in Your Hot Car

    3. Slow Your Roll

    4. The Sun Hat Edit

    5. Ocean Therapy

    6. The Dirt on Conventional Cleaning Products

    7. Introducing The Lacey List

    8. A Love Affair with the Sun

    9. How to Be Calm,

    10. The Candy Edit








 
Lacey White
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