Focus on Progress Over Perfection for Growth

We live in a world with social media filters to essentially make a person look like they don't have pores, which is kind of ridiculous, as our body can't breath without pores. We wouldn't be able to sweat without pores, etc., etc. We see a lot of highlight reels, we see the end result. Less often do we see the hard work that comes before it, the stumble, the failures, the learning experiences that we have along the way. I set out yesterday to run 5 miles. I ran about 4.75, and walked the other quarter mile. Is that a failure? I don't think so, and I'll tell you why. Despite my best intentions to be a "morning exerciser", I'm a night owl, and I went for my run at 11 am, so I got done a little after noon, you know, the start of the hottest part of the day. The first 3 miles were hard, but okay, but then I needed a break, so I would pick a landmark, like a bridge, and decide I could walk to it, then I would get going again. Now there are a lot of mental tricks I use to keep running when I'm tired. Here are some that I go back to: I pretend Rob Schneider from Saturday Night Live and Adam Sandler Movie fame is yelling "You can do it!" from the imaginary bleachers in my mind, I think "Hey, if it were easy, everyone would do it" I then look around and "everyone is not there". I remind myself it's okay if it's hard. I focus on trying to let my feet roll from the ball of my foot onto my heel, in a smooth fluid motion, and I pretend there are springs in my feet that help me bounce off the ground and give me more energy, like mini-trampolines. I think of every celebrity interview I've seen or read where the celebrity is asked how they stay in shape and they say (spoiler alert), exercise, and eating right. I remind myself I've done this before, I can do it again. I think about how I always thought people who ran for pleasure/a hobby literally had to be crazy... because to me, running a long distance meant huffing and puffing around our elementary school 4 times. As a kid I loved sprinting, but I had no idea how to pace myself so I was struggling after the first lap. So I thought I was "bad at running". I never ran more than one mile until I was 37, when I was inspired by my manager who was running the local Bellin Run, a 10K, so 6.2 miles. This made her just about a superhero in my eyes. I knew her, she wasn't crazy, she was my age. She said "The first mile is the hardest" and "If you can run 3/4 of the distance of the race, the energy of the race will carry you the rest of the way." She was right on both accounts. So I hemmed and hawed about it for about a month, and then decided to run the local Turkey Trot, which I thought was a 5K, 3.1 miles. After I signed up for it, I realized it was a 5 mile run. My husband signed up for this with me and we both ran it. Nothing I worried about "What if I'm the last one?" "What if I can't do it?" "What if I get hurt?" happened. A quote I heard a few years ago "Done is better than perfect." really resonated with me because it's true. You can tweak the thing forever, and then never be done with it because it's just not perfect yet, or you can do the best you can, and just be done with it, and then get on to the next thing. Focusing on perfection keeps us stuck, because we don't do the thing, don't put the thing out there, don't do something. It's like the Nike slogan, "Just do it." They get it. We just have to do the thing, put yourself out there. Most of the things we worry about never even happen. So let's stop wasting our valuable time and do the things we're scared of. We can do things when we're scared, just stop waiting for the fear to go away, because it probably won't, at least for awhile. Sincerely, - Sarah Haberland www.imaginethatcoaching.com imagine_that_coaching

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