Strive for Progress Not Perfection

Strive for progress not perfection. 

It’s a hard one to follow when we feel like the world is pushing us to be perfect. We are surrounded by society telling us how we should model our bodies, our homes, what we should or shouldn’t buy. That we won’t be happy till we are perfect. 

Here’s the thing, I have wasted so much of my life trying to become this unattainable perfect person. It’s cause me my health trying to achieve society’s expectations of the perfect body. So I tried to control my food intake relying on what I saw in magazines and the internet. Magazines would scream on the headlines “get the perfect body.” So I mixed in with other trauma during my teens and the society that surrounded me it was a perfect cocktail for me to develop an eating disorder.

Becoming perfect has also affected me by that feeling of “keeping up with the Jones’s.” That the next new trend of clothing, technology, etc is somehow going to make me happy. That if I keep up with these trends then I be perfect. But to keep up with these trends is costly and has caused me to go into debt in search for this so called perfection in these ads.

So this is what I’ve learned, being perfect isn’t the answer. It doesn’t make you happy and it’s not possible. Seriously, it’s not possible to be perfect. Those ads, the things that you see on instagram it’s either fake or it’s just 20% of someone’s life. Just what someone decides to show you. They aren’t perfect. No one is. So stop trying to achieve it. 

Instead, strive for progress. How is that different you ask? You aren’t comparing your life to someone else’s. You are bettering yourself on your terms in healthy ways. 

How would you strive for progress?