Consistently Encouraging
Building a community takes time. But if you keep turning up as yourself, time after time, the right folk will find you
Oscar Wilde was pretty savage about ‘consistency’:
“Consistency is the last refuge of the unimaginative”
he would point out.
Perhaps he was thinking about it in the context of habits, though there would be plenty of wise souls who point to the number of successful people who kept turning up until their moment arrived. In any event, the sharpness of his legendary wit should not necessarily deflect us from adding it to our armoury.
When we wrote our Encouragement Manifesto, ‘consistency’ made it into our values. In with a bullet at No 6. No messing … bold as brass … ‘Be Consistent’.
What did we mean by it?
We certainly could have been talking about habits. Those actions repeated time after time to establish a trusted pattern. We could have been referring - slightly obliquely - to our weekly newsletter. It is the very definition of consistency. Every Sunday, 6 pm sharp. It started way back in April 2017 and it has not missed a week since.
Consistent, you see.
But that wasn’t the point at all.
The consistency we were talking about was a behavioural one in the purest sense of the word. Turning up, time and time again as YOU. The true, real you (as the marketeers might say, the authentic you). Every day, be yourself … that sort of consistency. Once folk know you - nothing hidden - trust builds and folk can make a decision about joining your community and hanging out some more.
We understand that some folk might not be ready for the enthusiastic, positive encouraging beard’y fella. Not everyone wants to hear our every-day-without-fail optimism. But that’s who we are … hang around in our space for any amount of time and that’s the story … the only show in town.
But loads of folk are totally ready for exactly that kind of consistency.
It is just as well really when that’s all you’re offering.
Consistently Encouraging
Interesting piece and I note you quote Wilde (who was writing about the art of of Whistler) rather than Emerson whose essay on individuality written some 40 years earlier includes "A foolish consistency is the hobgoblin of little minds, adored by little statesmen and philosophers and divines". In my humble opinion he meant conformity rather than consistency given the essay is about trusting yourself to be who you are and not follow societies' herd instinct. To be an individual as that is the only true way to happiness. It's essentially what you too encourage people to be. You might want to look out the essay as I think you'll find it of interest. It's called 'Self-Reliance'