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Perfection. We all strive for it in some way, yet it’s also something that can hold us back. When you’re striving for perfection, it can make you feel overwhelmed, stuck in a vicious cycle of self-sabotaging habits, and unable to ever reach satisfaction. Learning to put the focus on progress instead of perfection is an important step in achieving personal growth and reaching your goals.
In this blog post, we will explore how you can reduce the pressure and focus on progress not perfection so that you can fuel your success.
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1. Learn to Identify Inefficient Habits
The first tip to focus on progress, not perfection, is to identify which of your habits are inefficient.
It’s easy to get lost in trivial tasks that look pretty. For example, you could spend ages designing the website for your new blog or writing out aesthetically pleasing study inspo summaries.
And it makes you feel good; it makes you feel productive.
But guess what? It is not moving you closer to your end goal.
The sooner you realize that what you are doing is only wasting your time, the quicker you can redirect your focus to more important tasks.
2. Celebrate Your Wins
One of the best ways to focus on progress, not perfection, is to celebrate your wins, no matter how big or small they are.
Celebrating your wins helps you acknowledge your achievements, appreciate your efforts, and motivate yourself to keep going. It also enables you to cultivate a positive mindset and a growth mindset, which are essential for success.
To celebrate your wins, you can do things like write them down in a journal, share them with someone who supports you, reward yourself with something you enjoy, or simply say “well done” to yourself.
By doing this regularly, you will feel more confident, happy, and satisfied with your progress and less stressed about perfection.
3. Be Kind to Yourself
Another way to focus on progress, not perfection, is to be kind to yourself. Being kind to yourself means treating yourself with compassion, understanding, and respect. It also means avoiding harsh self-criticism, unrealistic expectations, and negative self-talk.
Instead of beating yourself up for your mistakes, failures, or flaws, you can learn from them, forgive yourself, and move on. Instead of comparing yourself to others, you can appreciate your strengths, talents, and uniqueness. Instead of putting yourself down, you can encourage yourself, praise yourself, and love yourself.
Being kind to yourself will boost your self-esteem, self-confidence, and self-acceptance. It will make you feel less anxious about reaching perfection.
4. Embrace Mistakes and Find Opportunities
A fourth way to focus on progress is to embrace your mistakes and find opportunities.
Embracing your mistakes means accepting them as part of the learning process, not as signs of failure or inadequacy. It also means seeing them as feedback, not setbacks, and using them to improve yourself and your skills.
Finding opportunities means looking for the positive aspects of every situation and challenge and seeing them as chances to grow, change, and innovate. It also means being open-minded, curious, flexible, trying new things, taking risks, and experimenting.
By embracing your mistakes and finding opportunities, you will develop a resilient, creative, and optimistic attitude and focus more on your potential and possibilities.
And once you are focused on that, you will have less time and energy to obsess over perfection.
5. Set Achievable Goals
Another way to focus on progress, not perfection, is to set achievable goals.
Setting achievable goals means defining what you want to accomplish and how you will measure your progress and success. It also means breaking down your goals into smaller and more manageable steps and tasks and prioritizing them according to their importance and urgency.
Setting achievable goals helps you stay focused, organized, and motivated and avoid feeling overwhelmed, frustrated, or discouraged. It also enables you to track progress, celebrate milestones, and adjust plans if needed.
By setting achievable goals, you will make consistent and realistic progress, and the more visible your progress, the easier it will be to focus on that instead of perfection.
6. Track your milestones and look at them whenever you’re frustrated
Tracking your milestones means recording and reviewing your achievements, improvements, and learnings along the way. It also means reflecting on what worked well, what didn’t work well, and what you can do better next time.
Tracking your milestones helps you recognize your value, appreciate your journey, and learn from your experience. It also helps you identify your strengths, weaknesses, opportunities, and threats and make informed decisions and actions.
By tracking your milestones, you will see how far you have come, how much you have grown, and how close you are to your goals. In other words, it is another great way to visualize your progress, pulling your attention from the urge for perfection.
7. Finding imperfections in successful people and their work
Finding imperfections in successful people and their work means realizing that no one and nothing is perfect and that everyone and everything has flaws, mistakes, and failures.
It also means learning from their imperfections and seeing how they overcame, improved, or used them to their advantage.
Finding imperfections in successful people and their work helps you avoid idolizing them or idealizing them and feeling inferior or inadequate in comparison. It helps you appreciate and inspire yourself to emulate their achievements and efforts.
By finding imperfections in successful people and their work, you will understand that perfection is not the goal, but progress is.
8. Seek feedback from others
Seeking feedback from others means asking for their opinions, suggestions, and advice on how you can do better and what you can improve on.
It means listening to their feedback with an open mind and a positive attitude and not taking it personally or defensively.
Using feedback from others means applying their feedback to your work, learning, and making changes based on their feedback. It helps you gain new perspectives, insights, and ideas that can help you grow and improve.
Furthermore, it helps you build trust, rapport, and relationships with others who can support and help you achieve your goals.
By seeking feedback from others, you will enhance your performance, quality, and results and not be afraid of criticism or rejection.
9. Surround yourself with positive and supportive people
Surrounding yourself with positive and supportive people means choosing to spend time with people who have a positive outlook on life, who share your values, goals, and interests, who inspire you to be better, who encourage you to pursue your dreams, who celebrate your successes, who help you overcome your challenges, who give you honest feedback, who respect you for who you are.
This kind of person won’t expect perfection from you at the cost of progress.
If anything, they’ll notice if you sabotage yourself and get you back on track.
10. Enjoy the process and have fun along the way
Lastly, you should calm down and enjoy the process. Being overly focused on perfection often stems from taking the entire task too seriously.
Allow yourself to relax and have fun along the way.
If you stay excited about every little progress, you make, you won’t feel as drawn to the call of perfection.
Conclusion: Although it’s easy to get caught up in the pressure and expectations of perfection, you can find success and happiness if you learn to focus on progress instead. By learning to identify inefficient habits, celebrating your wins, being kind to yourself, embracing mistakes, and setting achievable goals, you can unlock your potential and work towards a growth mindset.
You can use these strategies today to reduce the pressure of perfection and focus on progress. Share your experiences and successes in the comments below!
Until next time, Felicity Seeker!
