Life is busy. It can be hard to balance everything we have and need to do with the things we want to do and the things that will help us achieve our dreams and our long-term goals. Looking at everything it can be frustrating or overwhelming or both trying to figure out how to get it all done. Or we can set ourselves up for failure by falling into the perfectionist mode. If we can’t get it all done quickly, if we can’t be perfect at it the first time we try, if we can’t achieve what we see in our head or can’t make it be the quality we want, then all is lost, we should give up, and walking away seems the only option because we are obviously a failure and these things were never meant to be achieved. It’s a message from the Universe!
Perfectionism is very good as an excuse for failure and a means to not try and to not be responsible for the results of not trying. Which is great if you want to fail at something, but if you want to succeed, it’s helpful to throw perfectionism out on it’s ear, slam the door, and get down to work. One of the best ways to prevent perfectionism from derailing things is to do things in manageable chunks. Take a goal that you want to achieve, break it up into manageable chunks, meaning something you can do in a couple of hours or less, and then schedule those chunks throughout the week. Chunks such as weeding 2 ft of the front flower bed or writing 1000 words or researching how other’s do and market the skill that you want to make into a business, or looking up groups in your local area that meet to enjoy something you enjoy. The examples are endless.
Chunks of this nature are pretty hard to mess up unless you simply don’t do them. They are guaranteed successes and it’s hard to feel like a failure when you are constantly succeeding. Chunk by chunk you make progress towards your goal, you see and feel that progress, you feel successful in your life even though you haven’t completed your goal yet, and progress is being made. In fact, you can chunk a whole lot of goals this way and make steady progress on all kinds of things in your life. And while not effortless, they seem doable instead of overwhelming. When it comes to achieving the life we want to live, every little bit counts and making steady progress towards a goal also gives us the ability to survey the landscape along the way, keep ourselves balanced, adjust to the new us that is emerging, and therefore truly and thoroughly enjoy it when the goal becomes a reality.
