Strive for progress, not perfection

I am continually learning new things. There was one day the gym was swamped; like overrun with people. OK, so I am exaggerating. But I usually come at really quiet times of day. So from my perspective it seemed really busy. I am also someone who tends to perform better when I can focus with some intensity or I have a tendency to get quite easily distracted. What do they call it…shiny ball syndrome? Yes. That’s me. I was getting pretty flustered with all that was going on around me, unable to focus, and not accomplishing much of anything. Nate picked up on this immediately and saw an opportunity to re-group and go outside!

Let me set the scene for you. It was a gorgeous spring day, 85 degrees. Perfect weather for shorts and really could have been a great beach day. Naturally, I wore black pants to the gym that day. Not the best life choice that I have made thus far.

This workout that started out arguably quite rough actually turned out to be amazing. It was all about learning new things. What are these new things you may ask? It was taking this large, 150lb tire, lifting it and flipping it. WHAT? I couldn’t do that a month ago. It was a BIG tire. It was taking a 20lb sledgehammer and slamming the even larger tire with impressive force. It was attempting to not look like a complete dope on the monkey bars [please note: it was way easier when we were children, must be a body weight thing.] It was throwing the bag of weighted medicine balls with power and stability. I will also note, I am not really sure they are called medicine balls but for the point of this blog post, they are.

Everything I did here was NEW. I had to learn the proper way to do it. I had to listen to instruction. I had to have the patience with myself to gain the strength, as I progressively got more tired. Each week, I have worked towards progress. Not towards perfection in any fashion. The amount of progress I have seen has been exponential.

So strive for progress, not for perfection. Take that as whatever it means to you and run with it.