Ep 12: Choose progress over perfection

It's time to stop chasing perfection and embrace progress. We so often give up on goals because we decide if we can't do something perfectly then we either shouldn't even attempt it or we should just give up at the first sign of imperfection. Then we never get anywhere! How many times have you wished you'd kept going? 

About me: 

I'm Emma Bradbury, a personal development coach specialising in NLP and mBIT coaching techniques and a Level 2 Fitness instructor and Level 3 Personal Trainer. 

I'm passionate about about transformation from the inside out, helping my clients to get fitter and stronger both in mind and body.

I work with clients in-person at my training and coaching centre in Poulton-le-Fylde on the Fylde Coast and online. 

You can find me here:

Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/profile.php?id=100095409783100

Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/emmabradburycoaching?igsh=MXRxNWVib3kwczV4dA%3D%3D&utm_source=qr

Website: www.emmabradburycoaching.co.uk

Email: emma@emmabradburycoaching.co.uk

Transcript

SPEAKER_00 0:57

Hello and welcome to week two of our 12-week mini series. So hopefully, if you're listening to this today, you have listened to last week and you have set your goal, you've been through all the pros and the cons, and you know what it was what it is you want to achieve in 11 weeks' time now because we're a week in. This is week two of 12. So you set your goals and you also hopefully wrote a little letter to yourself from the U of 12 weeks' time that gave you a real feel for how it will feel to achieve that goal, which can be really, really powerful. So I feel one of the most important things we need to do to achieve our goals is ditch the all or nothing mindset because this is what causes us to take so many steps back, which undoes all the forward steps we've taken. I think when you strive for perfection in every aspect, you might feel like one slip-up means failure, and then what's the point? And it's sabotage because the all or nothing mindset it leads to burnout, frustration, quitting when things don't just write. You need to understand that achieving your goal, whatever that might be, is going to be a bit of a journey of ups and downs. So it's about focusing on progress rather than perfection and learning to appreciate the small steps that are going to lead to long-term results. And to do this, you've got to stop swinging between the extremes of all and nothing, which is either obsessing over perfection or abandoning your goal altogether because you've had a day that didn't go right, or you did something that didn't impact your goal in a positive way, or something made you doubt yourself. So we can fall into thought traps. If you want to be a little bit more impressive, we could call them cognitive distortions. But thought traps make a lot more sense, and they sabotage our efforts before we even realize it. But the good news is when we bring awareness to these patterns, we can begin to reframe them, and then we start to create changes that are going to last. So in this podcast today, I want you to think about replacing perfectionism with consistency. I want you to identify those moments when you feel that you failed and rewire some new strategies that clearly tell you that you haven't. And ultimately, putting it bluntly, you don't need any perfect days, you just need fewer excuses. So the theme of today: ditch perfection, embrace progress. And sitting on my phone on the social media scroll hole, which is what I would do. Oh, I need an hour for my workout. We've only got 40 minutes. Oh well, I'll just kill that time by scrolling. Or actually, I could do 40 minutes of a workout and feel great for it. So that's just a little personal example for you. So now I'll take that 40 minutes and I'll use them, and it feels brilliant. So we've got to recognise this extreme thinking, we've got to reframe the slip-ups, and we've got to install a consistent mindset. So we want to recognise the difference between perfect and progress, okay? So inside all of us, we've got these two conflicting parts. We've got the part of us that wants to do something perfectly, and the part of us that wants to keep going, even if it's a bit messy. And when these two parts clash, it creates a bit of internal resistance. You have that internal dialogue where you've got one half of you saying something, the other half saying something else. And you're never going to fix this if you don't let both of those parts speak. And then you kind of become the mediator between the two parts of you, which I know sounds a little bit like what? But it'll make sense, I promise. So here's a quick example. The perfect side of you says, Well, if I can't do something perfectly, it's not worth doing. Whereas the progress side of you says, doing something is better than doing nothing. So don't worry about it being perfect, just keep showing up. So it helps to have a little conversation between these two parts. So you might let perfect me voice its concerns, and then you might let progress me respond with a bit of compassion, a bit of logic, a bit of encouragement, and then it let it go back and forth like a script. So for example, perfect me might say, going back to my example, if I skip one full workout, I've failed. And then progress me might say, Yeah, but one full missed workout doesn't undo all the work you've done. And then perfect me might say, but I want to do it right. And progress me might say, yeah, but doing it consistently is doing it right. Let the conversation run, and then evaluate and learn from it. What did each part really want? What would it look like for these parts to work together instead of against each other? When you've got it all out of your head, you can make a little bit excuse me, a little bit more sense of it. Sorry. Is there a dominant part of you that you'd like to take control and that you are more willing to work with? So let me give you some more examples. So progress self versus perfect self. So all or nothing thinking. This is a thought trap. Perfect self might say, Well, I didn't get everything done on my to-do list today, so the whole day was a complete write-off. Whereas progress me might say, Yeah, but I got some things done, and that counts, and I can roll the rest over to tomorrow. No biggie. We catastrophise. This is a thought trap. So perfect me might say, I made a mistake at work, this is going to ruin everything. And progress me might say, It's one mistake. You can fix it, you can learn from it. It's not you. You are not a mess up because you made one mistake. We over-generalize thought trap number three. So perfect me might say, I always mess things up, I'll never be able to do it right. Do you know sometimes I struggle, but not always, and I can learn from my struggles, and I can handle things better next time. We focus only on the negative, so we do that mental filtering where we only focus on the negative. So perfect me might say, Oh, that meeting didn't go perfectly, it was a disaster. Whereas progress me might say, Oh, do you know parts of that meeting were challenging, but there were definitely things that went well. We do a lot of should statements, another thought trap. Perfect me might say, I should have my life more together by now. But progress me might say, Do you know I'm doing the best I can with where I am, I've got time. We label, we label ourselves. Perfect me might say, I'm so disorganized, that's just who I am. Progress me might say, Well, do you know what? I've been disorganized at times, but I'm learning now to build systems that help me feel more in control. We take things personally. Thought trap number seven. Perfect me might say, Oh god, they seemed off with me. I must have done something wrong. What have I done to offend them? Whereas progress me might say, Do you know what? I don't know what's going on, don't know what's going on with them. Might not be about me at all, might just be having a bad day. And we discount the positive, we just let it go. So perfect me might say, Yeah, I handled that situation well, but anyone could have done that. Whereas Progress might me might say, I handled that situation well. I'm gonna give myself a pat on the back for that. Go me. So all these thought traps that are all going to stop us from achieving our goal in 11 weeks' time, and now that you're aware of them, you can do something about it. Because awareness is the first step, knowledge is power. So start peeing up on these thought traps and ask yourself what would I say to a friend who said this to me? Because I'm telling you now, we talk to our friends a lot nicer than we talk to ourselves. You'd help a friend, you'd make a friend feel better. Nothing wrong with doing that for you. Ask yourself, is this helping or hurting my motivation towards my goal? Because if it's helping, then crack on, keep going. But if it's hurting, if it's hindering, then stop it. It's not getting you closer to your goal, it's taking you further away. So stop doing it. And then you might ask yourself, is there a more balanced way to look at this? Am I thinking with my head or my heart? Very often you'll be thinking with your heart, and actually your head could just make it a little bit more realistic. So three really good questions to ask yourself when these thought traps are coming and getting in your way, stopping you. So maybe this week keep working on this, start identifying and start reframing all those all or nothing thoughts. Because the more you do it, the easier it'll be, and the more you'll pick up on it without even realizing it. And these thought traps will become a thing of the past because you'll change your thinking, you'll change your language, you'll change your whole mentality around it. And doing this is gonna help you to keep doing that inner work on that goal that you want to achieve in 11 weeks' time. You're not gonna give up, you're gonna keep going. So let me know your thoughts on thought traps. Let me know how I can help you. Let me know what light bulb moments come up for you. And we'll move on to week three next week. So I shall speak to you then. Bye bye.