Solo - The Contrarian Mindset Skill 8: Focus on Progress Not Perfection

"Progress celebrates movement, even messy, because it values the process of becoming over the illusion of already being."

In this episode of BiteSize Fridays, I continue the Contrarian Mindset series by exploring the fourth skill under "Mastering Perspective"—Focusing on Progress, Not Perfection. This essential mindset shift replaces the rigidity of perfectionism with the dynamic, adaptable power of progress. I share actionable strategies to overcome perfectionism, celebrate incremental improvements, and build a life of resilience, adaptability, and fulfilment.

Key Takeaways:

1. Perfectionism vs. Progress:
   • Perfectionism fosters anxiety, paralysis, and dissatisfaction by chasing unattainable ideals.
   • Progress celebrates action, learning, and adaptability, prioritizing growth over flawlessness.
2. Why Progress Matters:
   • Perfection demands you arrive fully formed; progress allows you to grow into your potential.
   • Studies show that progress-oriented thinking promotes creativity, resilience, and emotional well-being.
3. Overcoming Barriers to Progress:
   • Reframe failure as feedback: Analyze setbacks for lessons instead of personal flaws.
   • Normalize feedback and mistakes as part of the learning process.
   • Replace impatience with a focus on incremental, achievable steps.
4. Progress-Oriented Thinking for Teams:
   • Leaders who prioritize progress create environments of trust, innovation, and engagement.
   • Case studies and retrospective analyses transform failures into stepping stones for future success.

Additional Resources:
Interested in building a contrarian mindset for resilience, fortitude, and psychological strength? Check out the other episodes in this series linked in the show notes, and subscribe to It’s an Inside Job for more insights on resilience, well-being, and personal growth.

Part 1 – Discover the Power of The Contrarian Mindset: A New Approach to Rewiring Your Brain for Resilience and Growth

Part 2 – Discover the Power of The Contrarian Mindset: A New Approach to Rewiring Your Brain for Resilience and Growth

Chapters

• 0:16 Introduction to Resilience
• 0:24 Embracing the Contrarian Mindset
• 1:42 Focusing on Progress, Not Perfection
• 7:11 Practical Strategies for Prioritizing Progress
• 14:22 Transforming Insights into Action

Transcript

[0:00] Music.

[0:08] Well, welcome to It's an Inside Job Bite Size Fridays, your weekly dose of resilience,

[0:13] optimism, and well-being to get you ready for the weekend. Now, each week, I'll bring you insightful tips and uplifting stories to help

[0:21] you navigate life's challenges and embrace a more positive mindset. And so with that said, let's slip into the stream.

[0:27] Music.

[0:34] Welcome back to the series on building the contrarian mindset now the contrarian mindset is about strengthening our resilience our tenacity our fortitude our psychological strength our ability to confront and meet uncertainty and the unknown especially when it shows up on our doorstep uninvited. And for those new to this series, what is a contrarian mindset? Well, contrarian thinking is not about being disagreeable or purposely going against the grain for the sake of it. It's about challenging the status quo of our minds. It's about questioning the usual ways you respond to life's challenges and exploring new, often unconventional paths to resilience and success. So these series of episodes invites you to think like a contrarian, not to complicate your life, but to simplify it by cutting through the noise of common fears, dysfunctional thinking, and unhelpful mindsets. So in total, there are 12 skills to the contrarian mindsets, and I have clustered them under three headings. So the first cluster of four skills is mastering self.

[1:40] The next one is mastering perspective. And finally, it's mastering resilience. This week, we are going to uncover and discover the fourth skill under mastering perspective, And that is focusing on progress, not perfection.

[1:54] Music.

[2:01] In earlier episodes, we explored the roots of perfectionism, unrealistic standards, the fear of imperfection, and the potential for growth hidden within life's obstacles. Now, these ideas invite us to reframe how we see ourselves and our goals. However, identifying and reframing are only one part of the equation. This episode asks, what happens next? How do we take these insights and turn them into meaningful action? To answer this, well, we need to focus on progress over perfection. It's the essential mindset that transforms aspirations into reality by celebrating steady improvement rather than chasing unattainable ideals.

[2:46] Perfectionism often promises a sense of control and mastery, but instead delivers anxiety, paralysis, and dissatisfaction. It thrives on the fear of judgment and the misconception that flawless execution is the only path to success. Progress, on the other hand, well, it offers freedom. It reframs success as a dynamic process where learning, effort, and adaptability take precedence. By prioritizing progress, well, we replace the rigid demands of perfection with an empowering sense of momentum where each step forward, even small, tiny ones, well, they build resilience and satisfaction. Now, this shift is rooted in well-documented psychological principles. Carol Dweck, which we've spoken on many times on this show, well, her research on growth and fixed mindsets, well, it illustrates how valuing effort and persistence fosters a love of learning and resilience. In contrast to a fixed mindset, which equates failing with inadequacy, A growth mindset views challenges and setbacks as opportunities to develop new skills and insights.

[3:56] Progress-oriented individuals, well, they experience great fulfillment because they recognize that every attempt, every experiment, every try, and every lesson, well, that contributes to their growth.

[4:11] Progress is also kinder. Studies in positive psychology reveal that perfectionism is strongly associated with stress, anxiety, and burnout. The relentless pursuing flawless outcomes undermines creativity. It stifles risk-taking. And it fosters, unfortunately, self-doubt and self-criticism. In contrast, focusing on progress promotes self-compassion and emotional well-being. When we celebrate incremental wins and we embrace failure as a teacher, that reduces the emotional toll of high-stakes perfectionism. And it creates a solid foundation for sustained growth and development. So the question is, why does progress deserve priority? Well, unlike perfection, which is static and unyielding, progress is fluid and adaptable. It encourages action, experimentation, and learning through experience. Perfectionism demands that you arrive fully formed. Progress, on the other hand, well, it allows you to grow into your potential. And this distinction is vital and it's critical for navigating today's ever-changing personal and professional landscapes.

[5:28] I mean, imagine yourself preparing for a marathon, running 42 clicks. Well, perfectionism might convince you that you shouldn't start training until you've mapped out the perfect regimen. Progress, on the other hand, well, it nudges you to take a single step. That first imperfect jog, well, it builds momentum, making tomorrow's run easier and more enjoyable. Progress celebrates movement even messy because it values the process of becoming over the illusion of already being now while there are huge benefits of progress focused thinking and they are clear shifting from a perfectionist mindset can be challenging many of us carry deeply ingrained beliefs that equate worth our self-worth with performance or fear of our mistakes. These obstacles, these barriers can take the form of, for example, internalized perfectionism, the belief that anything less than perfect is unacceptable. Or there's the fear of failure, a mindset that mistakes our personal flaws rather than stepping stones to growth. Then there's impatience with the process, a reluctance to embrace incremental steps in favor of immediate results.

[6:46] Overcoming these barriers, well, they require deliberate action and consistent practice. One of the most effective strategies is reframing failure as feedback. For instance, instead of labeling a presentation that didn't go as planned as a failure, ask yourself, what actually worked and what didn't?

[7:08] What will I do differently next time? Now, by shifting your perspective well what you do is you neutralize this thing of imperfect.

[7:17] Music.

[7:27] Now I'd like to talk about some practical strategies for prioritizing progress. The first one is to define progress for yourself. What is progress for you personally? What it looks like for you depends on your goals and your circumstances. Start by asking this one question. What does growth mean in this area of my life? Progress might mean practicing 10 minutes daily if you're learning a new language. If you're improving work-life balance, it could mean scheduling one uninterrupted evening with loved ones each week. Clear, personalized definitions, well, they keep your focus on what truly matters. Another one that you've heard many times, well, it's about setting incremental goals. It's about breaking larger ambitions into smaller, manageable steps. For example, rather than aiming to write an entire novel, maybe just commit to writing 200 words a day. Each completed task becomes a building block. It's reinforcing your sense of accomplishment and paving the way for a long-term success. Another one, which is quite simple, it's celebrating those micro-wins.

[8:39] Progress thrives on positive reinforcement. We all need this feedback from our colleagues, from our environment, from the successes that we gain. You know, it's about taking time to acknowledge the small victories, such as completing a challenging task or slightly improving in some way or another. Even a quick note in a journal or a moment of self-reflection can remind you that every step forward counts. And that's why sometimes when I'm helping someone going through some sort of complexity or some challenge or change, I ask them to take note of what has happened that day. What was the little thing that they moved forward? What was the one brick they put in place? What was the one step that allowed them to progress down the path that they wanted to? And just journal it. Then and there, yes, it is gratitude. It is an acknowledgement. But if you look back over 30 days of each of these, all of a sudden becomes a track record. These are facts. No one can take this away from you. Anything in the future is just an unpainted canvas. But by taking note, regular note of your progress, even if it's a step backwards, it's still learning something. That is progress in itself.

[9:59] Another skill is to reflect and adjust regularly. What we want to do is build a habit of reviewing our efforts. Ask yourself at the end of each week, what did I accomplish? What did I learn? What could I improve? How did I score? Reflection, it keeps you aligned with your goals and prevents stagnation by encouraging continuous improvement. The first is being self-aware, stepping in the moment and asking yourself at the end of the week those questions. If you move forward, great, brilliant, celebrate. If you took a step back, that's okay. That's self-compassion because self-compassion is about learning and experimenting. Because without either those, then we can't move forward. We can't adapt and learn and find new ways of pivoting. And when we do that, then we can launch into self-efficacy. That is finding the efforts and actions to employ and execute on our insights, on the learnings that we learned from that week or that month. A cousin to that previous skill is normalizing feedback and failure. What we want to do is seek feedback, not as a validation, but as an opportunity to refine our approach. When you encounter setbacks, remember that every misstep provides valuable data for your next attempt.

[11:27] Turning progress into practice, well, it's about focusing on progress. It's not just a mindset shift. It's a practical strategy for navigating life's challenges, its complexities, and its changes. Perhaps you run a team. Perhaps you're a leader of a group. And maybe that shift, part of that culture of your team, of your group, is about being progress-oriented. because progress-oriented leaders and teams, what happens is that they foster innovation and resilience.

[12:02] It's about celebrating effort and learning. For instance, a manager, he or she might encourage team members to share lessons from a failed project, turning setbacks into opportunities to improve the next time we do something. Because this kind of approach, it builds trust. It builds creativity and engagement. You know, sometimes when I'm working with corporate clients, they're moving so fast from project to project to project that sometimes I say, whoa, let's take a case study. And as I operation define a case study, it's something that's already bagged and tagged and it's sitting on a shelf and it has no more relevance in today's environment. But if we take it down from the shelf, we put it on the table and we deconstruct it, reverse engineer it, that's where a lot of lessons can be learned. We can look at past attempts to retool for future progress. Now, on a more personal level, well, progress transforms how we approach hobbies, our relationships, our self-care. You know, if we take relationships, for example, so instead of striving for a perfect dynamic, maybe what we want to do is focus on small, consistent improvements. And that means expressing appreciation more often or resolving minor conflicts with greater patience. Maybe it's about sitting and listening a little more instead of constantly shooting out solutions.

[13:27] These incremental changes, what they do is they create a foundation for deeper trust and connection over time. Progress itself, it's not just about achieving goals or crossing the finishing line. It's about how the path feels, how the sojourn feels to us. Imagine finishing your first 5K race. Even if your time is slower than you hoped, that sense of accomplishment, what it does, it fuels your confidence for the next challenge. Or if you picture a student, for example, you know, he or she's nervously delivering their first speech. It may be far from perfect, but completing it builds the courage to speak again. These moments of growth, they remind us that the value does not lie in the perfection, but in the perseverance, in the pursuit.

[14:18] You know, this episode is the fourth skill in mastering perspective. It's part of that contrarian mindset. In this episode, it builds upon the foundation of the first three skills within Mastering Perspective by challenging unrealistic standards, embracing imperfection, and transforming obstacles into opportunities. This has laid the groundwork for a new way of thinking, a contrarian way of thinking.

[14:46] Now, what we want to do is turn these insights into action. Progress is the bridge the connection between reflection and practice you know this dynamic force it transforms ideals into reality you know what it truly does it honors the contrarian mindset by rejecting irrational fears and dysfunctional mindsets by rejecting static societal norms and what it does do it celebrates the messy beautiful growth process.

[15:21] You know, I think we've all seen the illustration where success, you know, what we think success is going from A and it disrupts this incline to B. But then beside it, there's another drawing where it's a scribbling, right, from A to B. It's like this chaotic path that makes no sense to lead to success. Well, that's what progress is all about. It's that squiggly, messy line. And so we may not like it, but welcome to the human condition. This is how we move forward as individuals, as teams, as organizations, as nation states, as the human race. Because progress doesn't demand perfection. It asks for effort. It invites us to take the next step, however small, however minuscule, and trust that each step is going to bring us closer to the person we want to become. You know, by embracing the contrarian mindset, we free ourselves from the paralyzing grip of perfectionism. And we step with courage and boldness into a life more of resilience and adaptability and fulfillment. After all, growth isn't about being flawless, about being perfect. It's about becoming better one step at a time. One brick at a time.

[16:42] Music.

[16:48] If you're curious to know how to build a contrarian mindset for greater resilience, fortitude, tenacity, psychological strength, and a sense of well-being, well, you'll find links to the other episodes in this series in the show notes. So make sure you hit that subscribe button. And I'll be back next week with my long-form conversational episodes on Monday and the latest Bite Sites episode on Friday. and have yourself a relaxing and rejuvenating weekend.

[17:15] Music.