Giving Up Perfection

I feel like most people struggle with wanting to achieve a goal and the fear or inability to complete that goal prevents them from starting.

I have struggled with that my entire life. If I am not good at it right away, it doesn’t take long for me to move on to the next thing. I will get in my head that I am unable to even achieve it and stop. If the progress is slow or unnoticeable then a sense of discouragement comes over.

When I was officially training to be a police officer a few years back I had to get myself to a place where I met the physical requirements. Somewhere I wasn’t. Even when I was in decent shape, it wasn’t in the way that I needed to pass a fitness test. I have always enjoyed running but couldn’t do it for long. Running a mile was not a thing. I walked them in high school. In my head, I was not a runner so my body would never get to the point where I could be a long-distance runner. I could do fast sprints but that was it.

I had to find a way to reach that goal. A goal that for the most part is no longer one for my path. Along the way, it taught me to not give up if I am not seeing progress. The last few years I have run for a bit and then something came up and I wouldn’t run for months. As time went on those breaks shortened.

The thing I grew to appreciate about running is that it is as mental as it is physical. For the longest time, that detail was what was causing me to fail. My brain is good at telling me something is impossible and that I should give up. With running you have to consistently do it. In my opinion, it is one of the fastest forms of activity that your body “forgets.” What helped with that was the longer those running periods lasted the easier it was to get back to where I was.

The biggest change in my mindset was telling myself to start. Even on the days when I didn’t want to or felt like my body couldn’t handle it. Some of those days would be me going on a walk instead. Maybe how long I walked/ran was shorter than the day or days before. Before I would have seen those days as me failing. You are going to have days that don’t look as good, but those days are still helping you compared to if you didn’t do anything at all. Walking for ten minutes and no running is better than nothing.

Today, was the first time I got on my treadmill for about a month (which is the longest I’ve gone all year). I got a tattoo and then a few other things happened after that prevented me from doing heavy workouts. I could tell with my productivity or lack of it that I needed to get back to my running routine. Running is one of the best things I can do to regulate my brain.

I didn’t want to run though I told myself I was going to yesterday and didn’t. I didn’t want that to keep happening. Partially, I have just been so tired lately. Even when I am tired, my performance on the treadmill is good and sometimes better than the days I am more energized. I told myself that it was okay if I only walked (though that is almost impossible for me to do). Maybe, I’d just do a mile or a half hour. Not the entire hour that I try to do. Me doing just that was better than nothing. There is always tomorrow that I could do better. I ended up doing the whole hour. I ended up running fifteen minutes total running at an incline. It was all because I let myself accept the idea that I might not reach the goal I wanted. In the past, I wouldn’t have done it at all because in my head if it wasn’t perfect it wasn’t worth doing.

I remember when I ran my first mile that was not at an incline. Being at an incline is the majority of what I do so my distance isn’t as far as it is on a flat surface. I had a feeling I could run a mile but had never really done it. When I did, I remember smiling. I remember when I had reached the one mile on a flat surface and I wasn’t at all exhausted. I then ran another mile and a half on top of that. If I hadn’t had plans I would have been able to run for at least an hour. The entire time I was doing this, I was thinking about all of the times I told myself I wasn’t a long-distance runner. Here I was at the physical ability where I could run at least an hour straight if not longer. I was seeing the hours of work I had put in. It was one of the first times in my life that I was able to see in the present time the progress I was making.

The world is good at highlighting the good, especially with social media. People don’t like showing their weaknesses.

Perfection doesn’t exist. Those you see accomplishing things you want probably have spent hours getting to where they are.

Giving up the idea of perfection can get you a long way. Before you know it the progress you weren’t seeing is being seen.