HOW’S PERFECTION WORKING FOR YOU?
“Perfectionism rarely begets perfection, or satisfaction - only disappointment.”
- Ryan Holiday
Is your pursuit of perfection when it comes to your health and fitness journey working against you? I think it is. That’s not to say you will not have periods of time that feel like you are doing everything that you need to do perfectly. You hit your macros, you work out, your sleep is great, etc. as you want them to be, but then you hit a bump in the road and everything isn’t perfect.So what happens then? If your goal has been to be perfect, it may not go well.
Today I want to talk about how the pursuit of perfection itself may be misstep you need to avoid.
It’s a lot of pressure
The weight of perfection is a heavy burden to carry. It makes every choice you are making, every action you are taking, feel like defusing a bomb that will blow up your entire world. Yes, doing something perfectly can bring with it an emotional high but a hint of imperfection can bring an emotional low that you need to climb your way out of and that’s just plain exhausting. Negative self talk is a true enemy when you are trying to lose weight or get stronger, and the expectation of perfection makes that voice louder.
Keeps you from your goals
More so, perfection may actually be keeping you from clearly defining your goals in a way that is realistic. It is often said that 10,000 steps a day should be everyone’s baseline goal. If you look at your current step count and see it is under 1,000 (yes this is very possible in our work from home world!) an immediate jump to 10,000 may lead to repeated failure or even worse injury and stress. This can be discouraging and even lead to giving up.
Hinders your learning & growth
Perfection implies you know exactly what it looks like in action. It builds walls in your mind that prevent you from learning lessons from your challenges. If you are telling yourself you already have all the answers you set a rigid track surrounded by blinders that keeps you from seeing opportunity in your missteps and challenges. It is through accepting our imperfection that we can see areas for growth and development. This can also allow us to see that the tools we are using might not be the right ones for us.
Makes the hard days harder
One of the biggest problems with the pursuit of perfection is the rigidity. Perfection is a place of absolutes, and when challenged by things we cannot control, it is a place that all too often crumbles. For example, you have perfectly planned out your eating for the day. Your macros are perfectly balanced with the choices planned and all is well as you head out to dinner with your family. You arrive at the restaurant to find that there was a water pipe issue and the restaurant is closed. Your hungry family starts looking for another location and your head is filled with thoughts of how your perfect plan is ruined. Perfection can inhibit the flexibility that allows you to be at peace with making the best choice you can at times instead of the perfect choice. This flexibility, in all areas of your life, is a key skill you need for lasting success. Don’t make challenging days even harder than they need to be!
It’s just not possible
We don’t live in environmentally controlled laboratories. We are human beings who live in a chaotic world that often throws road blocks at us, some that we can control and some that we cannot. True perfection is an ideal expectation not a practical reality. Don’t be discouraged by this! Perfection is too often defined based upon the experiences and achievements of other people, not upon our own capabilities and resources. The expectation of perfection today keeps us from doing our best and growing.
The point here is that we chase perfection, we achieve progress. And achievement is the goal in the end, no? Here are three ways you can shift your focus from perfection to working on progress:
Make your goals achievable
Set big goals but be sure that you are defining them in a way that you can identify as achievable. This is not selling yourself short. It is creating a pathway to achieve success and then build new goals from that success.
Define your action plan and prioritize it
Perfection says I have ten things I must do every day or I am a failure. Progress says I have ten things on my daily action list and I understand which ones are my non-negotiable and which ones will be good to complete but not the end of the world if circumstances prohibit it.
Give yourself grace when you make a mistake
The root problem with perfection is that when it is not achieved we become a target for attack. And the attacker is ourselves! If you do make a mistake, evaluate it, learn from it, and move on. Beating yourself up over a choice you cannot change is not a fruitful endeavor!
I hope that this is a helpful perspective on something that we are indeed control of in the end. Celebrate the moments that feel perfect, but focus your energy on measurable progress. It will reap greater benefits in the end. Need help defining what your progress needs to look like and how to achieve it? Let’s get on a call and see if Jon or myself can help!
