Are you waiting for the stars to align and for everything to go as planned in your life to seriously start pursuing your fitness goal? Unfortunately, unexpected things pop up all the time and the planets align in a straight line about every 5,200 years… It’s time to get started today!
How To Overcome Perfection Paralysis
Are you waiting for the stars to align and for everything to go as planned in your life to seriously start pursuing your fitness goal? Unfortunately, unexpected things pop up all the time, and the planets align in a straight line about every 5,200 years… It’s time to get started today!
If perfection paralysis is holding you back from achieving your goals, consider implementing these eight tips to move out of perfection and into progress to accomplish your fitness goals.
1. Look Towards What You Want To Accomplish
Can you picture yourself achieving your goal? Whether you write it out on a piece of paper or jot it down in your phone, have a clear understanding of what you want to achieve.
2. Look Back at What You’ve Already Accomplished
Looking forward to the next task, project, or goal is extremely easy for me to do, and I rarely take the time to admire how far I’ve come. I encourage you to take a moment and evaluate what you’ve achieved in the past week, month, or even year. Allow those successes to motivate you!
3. Be Gentle With Yourself
If you’ve taken even the tiniest step closer to your end goal, you’re doing great! I applaud you for simply taking action and doing something you’ve never done before.
It took me longer than most to finally roll a whitewater kayak. I kept trying and trying and couldn’t seem to get the hang of it. Although my first complete roll was a bit messy, I DID IT! This put me one step closer to mastering this skill, which made me excited to keep going.
4. Check In on Your Energy
Does your goal exhaust you? Do you feel tired and uninspired at the thought of trying to achieve it? If so, it’s time to reevaluate and adjust what it is that you truly want to accomplish!
I’ve found that when I’m trying to accomplish something perfectly or something that I could care less about, it exhausts me. Rather than saying, “I want to lose 10 pounds,” say, “I want to feel strong enough to do the things I love to do” if weight loss is something that stresses you out.
5. Stay Consistent
You might wake up late one morning, forget to eat a healthy breakfast, have unexpected meetings pop up, and spend a late night working at the office. That’s okay! Rather than beating yourself up about getting off track, remain consistent and hop right back on track the next day.
6. Have Fun
When’s the last time you did something that you love to do? Instead of allowing the completion of your goal to consume you, get out, laugh, meet up with a friend, travel, or simply people-watch. Don’t forget to have FUN while pursuing your goal.
7. Fail Spectacularly
This might sound like the worst thing to you, but “failing” is merely trying to do something that you don’t know how to do and not being afraid to complete it imperfectly the first time you do it. How have you failed spectacularly this week?
8. Celebrate Your Wins
Get excited about the littlest bit of progress. Order a celebratory smoothie, grab lunch with a friend, or enjoy a comfy night on the couch. It’s important for the mind and body to celebrate its hard work!
After putting in so much time and effort, I launched my website and never celebrated my accomplishment. I felt like I had to move onto the next task as soon as possible. I found myself in a major creative funk the following week because I didn’t take the time to celebrate my win.
Are you ready to ditch perfection paralysis and experience motivating progress? I believe in you! For more tips and examples related to progress over perfection, tune into Episode 8 of the Fit Is Freedom podcast.