Progress, Not Perfection

by Sarah (March 26, 2008)

I am, in many ways, a classic overachiever. I have very high expectations of myself and I do a fairly good job of most things if I put my mind to it. This means that I can also get very hard on myself when I don’t succeed, and I can fall prey to some classic mental traps of the perfectionist. The main one is the tendency to think of a project as a complete failure if I don’t quite manage to meet my own expectations, sometimes throwing up my hands and giving up because I couldn’t make it perfect.

The same idea applies to making changes in my day-to-day life. The idea of reducing my ecological footprint seems so daunting when I start to think of all of the ways I overconsume or damage the environment. Making sure that all of my meals are healthy and that I get all of the nutrients I’m going to need–while also considering my time and budget limitations, not to mention the environmental impact of what I’m eating–seems impossible. As I result, I’m sometimes inclined not to try, because trying is only going to make me more aware of where I’m not living up to the highest of standards.

Not only is this unhealthy because I tend not to make changes that would make me feel better and make a difference in my community, it’s also a very stressful and negative way to live. As with most things in my life, making real changes to the way I get things done has had far more to do with changing my mental attitude than with any specific practical changes, and the relevant one here has been to learn to look for progress, not perfection. Take stock every so often of something that I’ve managed to change, even a little, and how much better I feel as a result of it. Give myself a pat on the back for what I have done, and use that pat on the back to fuel further improvements later.

Not only am I far less stressed out and less inclined to become overwhelmed, in actual fact I wind up accomplishing a lot more.

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