Progress Over Perfection. Every Time.

With the perfect filters, perfect angles, perfect backgrounds - it’s a wonder why people are surprised by the rising anxiety in our world. We live in a season of curation. Everything must be meticulously ironed out from clothes, the words we use down to our winged eyeliner. 

I fell into this trap. I wouldn’t post things unless it was what I deemed “flawless”. Good enough wasn’t good enough.  I would spend hours trying to create the perfect routine, hours stressing over the perfect song. This continued until I stopped and thought, where does this need to be perfect come from? What will I do if and when I reach this idea of “perfection”? It boiled down to one thing: fear. 

Fear of being judged, fear of not being good enough, fear of what others will think. This fear can lead to being stagnant and not doing or showcasing things we know we're supposed to.

What if we reframed this instead? What if the goal was not perfection, but progress? What if we focused on doing a little better each time? Let’s bring this back to a dance example. I teach a teen bollywood dance class every week. When I first introduce a routine, I don’t care that they’re not going to get it right away. I already know that going into class. I know they’re going to look like a hot mess. The following week, I still don’t expect them to be great. Yes, they watched the video and hopefully practiced, but they didn’t have me giving them feedback or fixing errors. So they’ll probably remember the steps but will need me to step in with reminders and adjustments. It takes weeks to get a routine down pact and if I were to expect perfection every week, we would all be highly disappointed. I would get disappointed thinking I wasn’t a good enough dance instructor and my students would become hard critics, thinking that they’re bad dancers or slow learners. Instead, I focus on them improving, not attaining perfection. I focus on them not repeating the same mistakes versus condemning every wrong move. I focus on giving feedback not criticism. 

So what’s the end result of this? They become confident because they see themselves getting better. The attention is on the positive instead of the negative, which would be “not being perfect”. They see their efforts being recognized and praised. They feel good about themselves. And when you feel good about yourself, that transpires into the external. You feel better, you look better, you do better. 

This is honestly a long rant to say, progress is the goal, not perfection. Every time.