Progress Over Perfection

The start of a new year can bring with it a great deal of pressure… pressure to make this your best year yet, outperform your peers, or even just appear as if you’re doing these things.

I don’t know about you, but so often I create this image in my mind of how things are going to go down and then when it doesn’t go EXACTLY as I had planned, it feels like a catastrophic fail. A perfect example for me was the first week of 2019. My home was a mess, my office was in disarray from a small move, my car was in the shop a week past what had been anticipated, I hadn’t done any form of meal planning or prep, I had barely worked out and I wasn’t feeling rested at all. While social media was painting pictures of “clean slates” and “new beginnings”, my reality felt more like a disastrous do-over, in which I was losing control. 

It would have been easy to throw in the towel and say “well I already blew it for this year, maybe 2020 will be better!” But I was able to take a step back and reassess the situation. I came to the conclusion that this year I’m striving for progress over perfection. I’m prioritizing a handful of things that fuel me and enable me to do the things that I believe God is calling me to do and I’m simply going to do the best I can with each given day. 

Looking down from the ledge of the Mussenden Temple in Northern Ireland.

It’s really easy to get caught up in waiting for the perfect opportunity, perfect timing, or perfect situation in which we can do something perfectly, but in reality there will never be that perfect moment! Like famous hockey player, Wayne Gretzky, once said,  "You miss 100% of the shots you don't take.”

So in this second week of 2019, my encouragement to you (and myself) is to simply start! Be ok with the fact that it won’t be perfect and it might feel messy, but as my Peloton yoga instructors say “be comfortable with the idea of falling” because if you're never pushing yourself to the brink of falling, you’re never putting yourself in a position to progress and grow. If we can choose progress each day, rather than beating ourselves up over perfection, I feel very confident that when 2020 arrives, we will be looking in the mirror at a better version of our current selves!

Take a deep breath… the pressure is off!