What looks like consistency and commitment can sometimes be fear in disguise. Are you sticking with it because it still serves you or because it’s what you already know?
My first thought is about loyalty. That’s a pretty good indication I have conflated loyalty with these two qualities.
To me consistency looks like action aligned with principles, values and standards. Even when no one is looking. Even when under pressure to do something else. In many ways it’s about being predictable. Maintaining ways of being regardless of situation and circumstance. At home, at work, with friends or strangers. On the positive side it can be living courageously with moral agency.
Commitment involves ongoing investment of some kind in what we choose to do or subscribe to. Time, energy, emotions, materials. Goals, relationships, principles, causes. Applying tenacity and persistence through difficulties and challenges. Doing the thing, being the thing regardless.
Loyalty can in some ways be the antithesis of the two. An ethical compromise.
I have in some instances circumvented my principles and judgement to enable relationships to remain in play. Personal and professional.
There’s no doubt I’ve acted on occasion against my better judgement, against my own best interest and those of others. Rationalising this as loyalty. To maintain a feeling of security, approval, belonging, solidarity or fellowship.
I’m not saying that loyalty is bad. Fidelity to others can be a laudable quality. It’s very often a vehicle for love and care. Not though when it’s concealing fear, avoidance or entrenched in sunk costs.
If I am sticking with something because it’s what I already know it’s not necessarily because of consistency and commitment.
It may be a strategy to manage fear and anxiety about what might be. It could be about being risk averse. It might serve to mitigate uncertainty.
Perhaps justified by a misplaced logic that to change course indicates a lack of integrity. Reinforced by unwarranted feelings of guilt. Emboldened by making stubbornness a virtue.
Sometimes it may be more consistent and committed to change approach. When I learn something new, have some insight, become aware of what is being counter to what I thought was. To recognise psychological discomfort as an indicator I may be selling out, abandoning my principles.
Adapting to change and evolving over time does not necessarily equate to being disloyal. Exploring my core principles working through those which are inherited, outdated, or misguided, and adopting effective strategies to hold true to those which remain is time well spent.
Consistency is anchored to principles. Commitment with outcomes. Loyalty with relationships. These three attributes may become blurred. The same behaviour may serve all of at once. The same language can be used to justify each. A split happens when they point to different actions. Noticing which one has set the heading, pausing when necessary to make sure principles are in the driving seat and outcomes and relationships are in the back, safely restrained by the ethical harness of core values, this seems like the way to go.