Practice Makes Perfect? 🤔 Practice Makes Progress. 😁

Most of us are familiar with the idiom “practice makes perfect” and probably had it preached to us at some point in our lives. As someone who has taken great care to remove “perfect” from my vocabulary for the most part, I have to tell you I take issue with this little idiom. Perfect is defined by Merriam Webster as “being entirely without fault or defect; flawless”. I don’t know about you, but that’s a little intimidating to me. Ok, so yes, maybe moments of perfection do exist; however, sustaining perfection? Interestingly enough when I looked up the definition of this phrase, Merriam Webster defined it as “used to say that people become better at something if they do it often”. Now this I can get on board with; practice makes progress. 

In my last blog I talked about “practice” oriented goals, the type of goals where we are asking ourselves to create a habit, something we do repeatedly. We don’t just want to go to the gym one time, eat one healthy meal or sleep better for one night, we want to build a practice around these actions. The start of a new year can bring a renewed sense of hope for this type of change and serve as a landmark when many of us resolve to embark on these changes. This is often referred to as the “fresh start effect”.  Whether it be a New Year’s resolution or simply a commitment to make change any time of the year, consider success (and failure) is not always a black and white affair and a tremendous amount of progress can be made without being perfect. As we embark on the new year I thought now might be a helpful time to share some thoughts around how we approach those both anticipated, and sometimes dreaded, New Year’s resolutions.

Many of us go into the whole New Year’s resolution thing with a huge gust of motivation and determination which contributes to us setting some pretty lofty goals. Or maybe it’s the excess we’ve consumed during the previous weeks and guilt is a driving factor. If we’ve been over indulging, it’s understandable that we now believe going to the other extreme is the thing to do. Whether it be motivation or guilt, keeping New Year’s resolutions realistic can play a major role in how well we do with them. As mentioned earlier, my last blog offers some ideas that might be helpful as you structure this year’s resolution.

While most of us would agree the overall success rate with New Year’s resolutions is relatively low, there isn’t a lot of scientific data out there. This study offers some data which concludes that those that receive some support, be it an accountability partner and/or helpful tips via email, reported a greater success rate than those with no additional support or those with extended support. It also notes that more information is needed as there was some overlap between the two groups receiving support. Nonetheless, those receiving some type of support reported greater success with their New Year’s resolutions than those receiving none.

In addition to support, I think it is really important to consider how we define success. For many of us, goals are a black and white situation. You either succeed or you fail, end of story. This mindset can leave us missing this beautiful and incredible piece known as PROGRESS. When we look to make positive changes in our lives, we often have to unlearn a habit in order to implement the new one. For instance, if we are looking to start exercising, it means something in our daily routine most likely needs to shift. We need to get up earlier, cut out some TV time or time spent scrolling on our phones to allow time and space for this new habit. Let’s keep it real—this is a hard task for most of us. Let’s say we aim to start exercising 3 days a week for 30 minutes as our New Year’s resolution. The first week we crush it; we actually do 3 days a week for 45 minute sessions. The next week we hit 3 days a week for 30 minutes and continue this pattern into the following week. Week 4 hits and we miss a day or maybe even 2. What do we do?

This can be a pivotal point where the idea of perfection can be our worst enemy. We said 3 days a week for 30 minutes. We failed. Do we acknowledge our effort and concede to failure and return to our status quo? OR, do we acknowledge our effort and reflect and appreciate the progress we’ve made from not exercising at all and continue to work on our exercise practice? By only focusing on whether we hit the 3 times a week for 30 minutes and remaining perfect with that regimen in order to feel successful, we may be our own biggest barrier. This is my invitation to let go of the “all or nothing” mindset and embrace the beautiful gray area of progress between failure and success. Cheers to progress & Happy New Year!

“The perfect is the enemy of the good.”  ~ Voltaire