A common problem people have when they have identified an issue in their lives is striving for an unattainable or difficult to attain solution. For instance, you might identify that you need to lose weight. Your health is not the greatest, you aren’t fitting into your clothes, and you don’t feel confident in your appearance. The solution you might identify is that you need to lose 80 pounds. Why 80? Because losing 80 pounds would put you back at what you identify as your “ideal weight,” never mind that the last time you were that weight, you were in seventh grade! 

You then set your goal to lose 80 pounds. However, if you set your goal so high, anything less than meeting that goal might cause you to feel like you have “failed.” You could work really hard, change your whole life, become much healthier but have only lost 70 pounds and still feel like you did not meet your goal. 

When we set our own bar so high, we don’t allow for anything less than perfection. And I’m going to tell it to you straight: You can’t achieve perfection. If you can achieve it, you will need to take steps towards that goal. You’ll need to take bites out of that apple, not just swallow the entire apple whole! 

The answer to this issue is to strive for progress, not perfection. Going back to our original example. You identify the problem of wanting to lose weight. Then you identify a goal that is working towards progress. Maybe you set your goal at losing 10 pounds. What things can you do in the next week or month towards your goal? In this example, you might identify choosing healthier foods, starting an exercise routine, and talking to a friend who has a similar goal so you can support each other. 

Notice what happens when you achieve your goal. You succeeded! You praise yourself for your effort. Perhaps you add another goal with new objectives. You feel good about yourself, and you recognize that progress has been made. You are no longer holding yourself to a standard that you will feel negatively about for not achieving. 

Let’s work on another example. Let’s say you are working on being more patient with your kids. The solution through a perfection lens would be that you never, ever yell at them and you always respond calmly and patiently. First of all, notice the “all or nothing” thinking there! Nobody “always or nevers” anything. By having a perfection mindset, you set up for yourself that any moments of irritability, any time you raise your voice, anytime you respond with something that is less than calm, you have failed your goal. 

Instead, what if the goal was set to reduce the number of times you yell. Let’s say right now you find yourself yelling every day. What if you set a goal to not yell for one day? The progress towards that goal might include using skills that you learn in counseling. You might try noticing you are feeling angry before you take action, taking three deep breaths, giving yourself a timeout in your bedroom to calm down, and focusing on your own self-care when you are not in a moment of upset. Then, when you make it one day without yelling, you have accomplished your goal and you set another goal. 

This also brings us to the black and white thinking you might have noticed me using in these examples. You are either a success or a failure. Is that true? What defines a success? What defines a failure? Is it possible to be successful at everything all of the time? Is it possible to always be a failure? 

In focusing on progress, not perfection, we can also redefine how we feel successful. Even if you made a goal not to yell for one day but you did yell that day, could you still see your success? What if during that day, you took four breaks. You identified that you were getting angry, and you wanted to yell FOUR TIMES, but you didn’t do it. Does yelling one time negate the success you have already achieved? No, it does not! 

Part of the idea of progress not perfection is giving ourselves praise for the progress we’ve made, rather than focusing on the perceived failures. Perfection mindset tells us that anything less than perfect is failure. Progress mindset tells us that any movement towards achievable goals is just that, PROGRESS. Keep striving for progress!