Progress, not perfection

What did you get right this week that nobody clapped for?

Think about it for a second. Not the big thing. The small one. You made the call you’d been putting off. You went to bed instead of scrolling. You didn’t say the thing you wanted to say in the meeting.

That’s progress. And I believe in progress, not perfection.

Here’s where my belief system sits. I believe everybody can recover from something. I believe recovery is real. One hundred percent real. No matter what it is you struggle with, no matter what has been the barrier between you and a better outcome, recovering from it is completely possible.

But two things. It can’t be done on somebody else’s timeline. And it can’t be done because somebody else wants you to do it. You have to decide it’s time. Nobody can decide that for you. I watched my own family be ripped apart and I still had to come to my own decisions on my own clock.

And it won’t be perfect. If you’re waiting for perfect, you’re going to be waiting a long time, and you’re going to quit somewhere in the middle because perfect never showed up.

What I’ve seen work, in my life and in the lives of the people I’ve coached, is habits. Healthy habits, built one at a time. Mental fitness. Emotional fitness. Financial fitness. All of it is sustainable if you build the habits that hold it up. That takes discipline, and discipline is what I help people with.

So when you make progress, celebrate it. Out loud. Even if nobody else noticed. Especially if nobody else noticed.

What did you get right this week? Say it. Then go get the next one.