Hi Musers. I’ve been thinking about today’s post for a long time. I even touched on it in posts on giving yourself a break and how to look after yourself when you’re feeling down. The fact is we’re all guilty of being far too hard on ourselves. We hold ourselves to a standard we’d never dream of holding others to. If someone we know achieved 80% of their goal, we congratulate them and tell them how incredibly well they’ve done. If we make it to 90% of our own goal, we see a disgusting failure who didn’t do the thing properly. So why are we so hard on ourselves? It leads us back to our title; we need to change our mindset to aim for progress, not perfection.

Enter The Internet

In many ways, the internet is a wonderful thing. It lets us connect with old school friends, keep in touch with family around the world, lets us shop around and also share our lives with the world. That last part can be a double-edged sword, though. There are very few of us on the internet who posts anything like our real lives on social media. We post our highlights reel with carefully curated posts showing the best of our lives. It looks great but often portrays our lives in a completely unrealistic manner. We may spend all day preparing a beautiful dinner as a one-off for a special birthday. Of course we post gorgeous pictures that everyone exclaims over, but it’s one night in the whole year.

We don’t post the nights when we come in too exhausted to stand and shove fish fingers and chips in the oven for tea. It’s not glamorous, so it never sees the light of day. Even though we know we do this ourselves though we’re still convinced that the lives of others are exactly the way they show them. That they’ve got beautifully decorated houses that are always tidy. Believe they cook delicious, nutritious food from scratch every night. They work out like a demon burning 1000 calories per session and never skip a workout. In essence, we believe they get it right all the time, and we can’t keep up. This. Is. Crap. Most of my photos look pretty and smiley but it doesn’t show the days I’m so horribly depressed I don’t even get dressed or brush my hair.

No One Is Perfect

The fact is, no one is perfect. No matter how incredible their lives seem from the outside, everyone has problems. We all have days when we’re tired, depressed, or our self-esteem has taken a hit. I had one just today. I’ve been exhausted from the COVID vaccine since last Saturday and had to take a day off work because I couldn’t cope. It feels bad because I haven’t been in this job that long but I had no choice. I should be proud of myself because I felt the same for the first three days of the week and battled through. I still feel guilty.

Progress Not Perfection

My absence leads us nearly to the point of this post. We have got to get out of our perfect or nothing mindset. We think everyone else is perfect, so if we can’t guarantee perfection ourselves, we may as well not even bother. No. NO! We have got to do the best we can with the reserves we have and learn to be proud of ourselves for any step forward we take, however small.

Examples

You set yourself a target of not buying chocolate at work and only eating healthy meals. You’re having a crappy day, so you weaken and have some chocolate. It’s the only thing you do that day that’s not on the plan, but you’re demoralised and stop trying. No. A bar of chocolate is not the end of the world, and you made nutritious choices for the rest of the day. You’re awesome! Plans can and should evolve over time, and cutting out all sweet treats is unrealistic. Reassess your goals and build strategies for treats or even have something small on hand for bad days. Freddos are a favourite of mine.

All dentists say it’s essential to brush your teeth for at least 2 minutes. You’re extremely depressed for a while and only brush your teeth for 30 seconds. It’s not the recommended amount, but you’re still doing it when you could have let it slide altogether. You are fighting your illness and taking positive steps. This is amazing, and so are you.

You have a blog and post twice a week (sound like anyone you know? 😉). You’re due to publish that day and had planned a 1000 word, well-researched post. You’ve been too busy, too tired, or too depressed to do any research. It’s ok. Even if you cut it down to 400 words and made it about how you’re feeling, at least you did it. You didn’t let your readers down, and they could very easily be comforted by it. They have depression and feel better knowing they’re not alone. Perhaps they were overwhelmed and hadn’t completed a project they planned to, and they see you not doing it either. Or they feel too tired to work out for the hour they planned. They see you cut your post down to something you could manage, and they feel it’s ok to do that with their work out.

Progress Is Progress

Life is hard at the best of times and is even more so during COVID. We need to see that taking small steps is still worthwhile. It will get us to our goal, even if it’s not as quickly as we would like. It is still infinitely better than thinking, “I’m not going to manage 100% with this today, so I won’t even bother”. What will get you further in a month? Achieving 100% perfection in your goal 4 times or 30% of your goal 25 times? See what I mean? I’m not suggesting you miss goals because you’re feeling lazy one day, but if you’re struggling, it’s ok to scale back your goals. It’s better in some ways because it helps you avoid burning out.

Final Thought

Be kind to yourself. That’s what this whole post boils down to. It’s great to have goals and to push yourself to achieve them. It’s not good to hold yourself to an impossible standard and mentally beat yourself up for every failure. None of us is perfect. None of us achieves every goal we set ourselves the first time we try. We all have bad days, bad weeks, bad months, and even bad years! Do your best, think progress not perfection, and just know you’re doing great!