Progress not Perfection
Progress not perfection. We live in a world in which everything is so photo shopped, filtered, staged, or curated in some way. We live in a world in which every person is showing what their life is like, but it looks as though their life is perfect, like they have no problems, no issues. That can’t possibly be true, right?
There’s this idea of “progress, not perfection” (Dave Perlmutter), and several years ago that became a mantra I really held onto after years of struggling myself. Struggling with accepting who I am and coming to terms with that as well as who I want to be. I want to the best version of myself, but I cannot be the best version of myself 100% of the time. I cannot be the best therapist 100% of the time. I cannot be the best partner 100% of the time. I cannot be the best mom 100% of the time. I cannot be the best daughter 100% of the time. I cannot be the best me 100% of the time. Yet, social media and society tell us to do it all. They tell us to mother like we don’t work full-time. They tell us to work full-time like we’re not a mother. There are so many competing priorities, and we are forced constantly to pick and choose. What do we let go and what to try to be perfect at.
What if perfect isn’t the answer? What if we look at progress not perfection? After all, there is the quote “to err is human” (Alexander Pope). Why didn’t we listen to that sooner? Why don’t we listen to that more often?
Often times people look to therapy as if it means they failed. That they cannot handle stressors on their own and that they need external help. There’s an underlying belief that people whose lives are perfect, well, they don’t go to therapy, right? The truth is no one‘s life is perfect. What you see in social media, that’s what people want you to see - it’s curated. As much as we consciously know that, there’s a little underlying negative voice in our head that tells us we aren’t good enough. That is so far from the truth. Whether it’s anxiety that we deal with, depression, or life stressors like wanting to lose weight, wanting to be a better parent, wanting to be a better partner or sister or brother or neighbor, those issues are hard. We need to acknowledge the difficulties by being honest with one another about what we’re going through and not continuing to show perfection to others. Not continuing to have others think ‘why can’t I be like them’.
I came to a point my life where I really truly believed that I had to be perfect. If I wasn’t perfect, if I didn’t get that A, if I didn’t get the promotion, that meant, I was a failure. That right there is an example of a cognitive distortion. The belief that my value was based on my percentage of perfection.
I was visiting Seattle several years ago with my now husband, and I saw a bracelet. This bracelet said ‘progress not perfection’. Now previously, if you were to have told me to live by a mantra, I would’ve told you you’re silly and to step away quickly because I don’t believe you and your Hocus-pocus. However something spoke to me about the saying. I was struggling finding who I was so I began to wear that bracelet daily. When I struggled, I looked down and reminded myself progress, not perfection until it became so ingrained in me.
This is now the way I live. I am not the best mother. I am not the best partner. I can’t be. What I can be is the best version of myself as much of the time as possible. If I’m perfect how do my children learn that mistakes are okay? If I never apologized to my children, because I have nothing to apologize for, how do they learn to apologize? If I’m a perfect partner, what kind of pressure does that put on my partner? If I’m a perfect daughter, what pressure does that put on my siblings? If I expect perfection for myself then others feel that I expect perfection from them and that is far from the truth.
Again, we go back to “to err is human”. I think we need to, as a society, pay a little more attention to that. We can learn from mistakes. When we are starting something new we are not great at it right away. It takes practice and even then, you may be the best bowler that anyone’s ever seen but you can’t bowl 300 every time. Why? Because no one is perfect. The pressure to strive for perfection drains us from day to day.
If we can take off some pressure by talking to somebody who isn’t there to judge us, but is simply there to listen, why wouldn’t we? If anybody understands progress not perfection, it’s me. I’m not here to judge you. I’m not here to solve your problems for you because therapy is not a magic solution. I don’t have a magic wand. I’m here to help you identify things that you may want to change and also to let go of the idea of perfection. I’m here to help you start thinking about the idea of being good enough because when we as individuals are good enough, our relationships still flourish. When we are good enough, our children still love us. They love us for our flaws. When we are good enough, the pressure of being “on” 24/7 is gone. In the future, I’ll talk about more being on 24/7 which leads restraint collapse. I’ll talk about what that looks like for adults and children.
