After last week’s post about January’s experiments, my plan was to just explore the questions I was asking myself and then carry on with the same activities throughout February.
But then, on Sunday morning, I woke up with the idea that I wanted to add two things to my plans for February.*
Sure, this 2 is a little wonky but it’s grand that way. Same could be said for many of us, hey? 😉 image description: the number two drawn in red with gold trim against a background of red dots. The card the drawing is on is also trimmed in gold and it is resting on my black computer keyboard. I borrowed this drawing from my Dec 2 post.
My first instinct was to talk myself out of it – I’m already working on several things and I don’t want to overload myself – but then I realized that these two small things fit in quite nicely with the ways I am trying to establish practices and processes overall for myself in 2026.
So, that’s why I am going ahead with adding at least a 1 minute wall-sit and adding 1 more serving of veggies to my lunch this month.
These practices both feel like a good way to work on trying something imperfectly (which was the topic of one of my questions in last week’s post!) and they will be beneficial to me even if I don’t get to them every single day.
Both of these things can be helpful for my bloodpressure (I’m on BP meds already and just keeping an eye on my numbers.)
I really want to eat more veggies anyway so the structure of ‘1 more at lunch’ is a straightforward way to start.
The wall-sits will take very little time, they feel doable and they are good for my glutes and my knees – both of which need some attention.
So, even though these things are ‘extra’ they will help me with my big picture goals., they have lots of potential benefits with minimal effort, and if they don’t work out?
No big deal!
These are experiments – if they don’t work, I can try something else.
But if they do work I will have practiced more practices, strengthened my legs, eaten more veggies, had more satisfying lunches, taken good care of myself, and maybe even done something good for my blood pressure.
Let’s see how it goes!
*Convenient, hey? 2 things for the second month? Sometimes my brain is so TIDY!)
I am so grateful for the opportunity to write to you every day throughout this month.
I love the way that this daily writing practice helps to shape the beginning of my year and I appreciate the time and energy you put into reading my posts.
It’s always hard to figure out what to say in these final posts each January because I want to be profound and encouraging and really sum things up…
And then I realize that in focusing so much on the results that I’m at risk of letting perfection get in the way of actually doing my practice.
So, after reminding myself that done beats perfect I usually just forge ahead and trust (once again) that I can let my routine carry me towards something useful to share. *
Today, my routine brought me to the reminder to keep going.
That doesn’t mean to just keep barreling down the path the initially set – unless that feels right to us.
It means to keep returning to the project of moving towards the life we want, no matter how much the details of our practices or our projects have changed since we first set them.
We don’t have to be in a hurry.
In fact, as long as we manage our expectations, we can go at any pace that works for us.
Note: Yes, I have included A LOT of links rights but I didn’t link all 31 posts from this month so if you want to see them all you can find them under the tag Go Team 2026 (or look under Go Team for all of the Go Team posts from previous years.)
So, Team, today I invite you to celebrate your efforts so far and to consider how you want to keep making things better/easier/kinder for future you.
Your efforts matter.
You matter.
Keep being kind to yourself, pretty please.
May you have ease, may you have fun, and may you find satisfaction in your practices.
Go Team Us!
PS – I will be writing more Go Team 2026 posts this year, usually around once per month.
*Yes, my posts are just as much notes-to-self as they are messages for you. 🙂
For my last Go Team 2025 post, I reminded you that I was (am!) incredibly proud of you for everything you did for yourself throughout the year and I thought now would be a good time for me to remind that I am incredibly proud of you and of your efforts so far this year.
The short version of this would be the title of this post:
GO YOU!
But the longer version goes like this:
I am so very proud of you and of all your hard work.
You have made decisions to try something new, to add things to your life, to step away from things that no longer serve you, to try to make your life easier, to try and challenge yourself, to make things calmer in your life, to make yourself stronger in body/mind/spirit.
Isn’t that incredible?
You made a conscious choice to seek out a different version of your life AND you committed to the effort that will require.
You have recognized that there will be challenges and setbacks but you have decided to acknowledge them as part of the process.
You know that there is work involved but that the work will be worth it.
What a wonderful gift you have given yourself.
What a great commitment to self-care and to future you.
I am so PROUD of you!
You have realized that taking care of yourself is not selfish and that you deserve care just as much as the next person does.
AND that taking care of yourself in this way not only benefits you, but it benefits people who look up to you, people who depend on you, and it ensures that you have the capacity to work with others to create the changes we need in the world.
After all, the version of you that is worn out or burnt out wouldn’t be able to help anyone until you recover.
The version of you that takes care of themselves can decide when and how to respond to the needs of those around them.
Are you starting to get why I am so proud of you for undertaking this work, for putting in this effort?
Can you declare your own pride in your efforts or at least consider the possibility that your pride may develop over time?
You don’t need to be finished or to have results to be proud of yourself, you can choose to take pride in your efforts.
Today, I invite you to enjoy the fact that I am so very proud of you and to explore the idea of being proud of your own efforts.
And I invite you to collect your gold stars in recognition of your work.
Your efforts matter.
You matter.
Go Team Us
And
GO YOU!
I had a lot of fun making this one. I started with some wavy lines for the background and they didn’t feel right so I got a few watercolour pencils and played around with them until the background made me happy. Image description: A small painting of a bunch of gold stars ranging in size from quite small to about the size of a thumbprint. The background has a series of wavy lines running horizontally. I drew the lines with marker, and then I went over them with blue, black, and purple, watercolour pencils until I got the right kind of look – a bit like the night sky reflected in water. Then I drew a bunch of stars and small dots and outlined them with black.
Warning: I am in full pep talk mode today. You may want to sit down.
In every post, I remind you that your efforts matter.
All of your efforts count toward the practice you are trying to develop.
Today, I want to underline that point, highlight it, put it in bold, and draw your attention to it.
Your Efforts count!
ALL of the work you do – the thinking, the planning, the deciding, the actions, the resting, that is all adding up and moving you toward the life you want.
Even if it takes you a long time.
Even if you’re only moving a millimetre at a time.
You’re still moving in the direction that you want to go.
Even your mistakes, the things you changed your mind about, and your backtracking all count because they are part of the process.
You can’t get where you want to go without figuring out at least some of the places that you DON’T want to go.
You will grow and change between making the decision to do something, figuring out how to do it, doing that thing, and then seeing how it turns out.
The person you are becoming throughout that process may have different ideas, goals, and priorities than the person you were when you started – even if the process is short.
And that’s ok.
It’s GOOD even.
Learning as you go and making changes in your plan based on new information makes far more sense than sticking to a plan for the sake of the plan.
I mean, who does that help?
The plan doesn’t care if you do it.
This is all about YOU not about some plan.
Do what makes sense for you right now and feel free to change in the future.
Take time to notice how far you have come, not just how much is left to go.
And celebrate every single thing you have done to support yourself in the practice you are developing.
So Team, as always, here are your tiny, shiny stars for today.
Each one represents a small effort you made to move toward the life you want.
They represent momentum, choices, actions, rest, decisions, repetition, self-kindness, finding support, choosing done over perfect, focusing energy, and all of the other things you have done – some so small you didn’t even notice them – to incorporate your new practices into your life.
Those efforts all add up.
They all count.
They all matter.
And so do you.
Be kind to yourself out there, pretty please.
Go Team Us!
OK, I’ll admit this looks a little bit like a bowl of breakfast cereal but it’s totally a bowl of stars I swear. Image description: a green bowl of tiny stars sitting on a blue surface. The blue surface has light gold lines in it and the background behind the bowl for the top 2/3 of the paper consists of thin, horizontal black lines.
First things first – If you’re wondering if I chose the word station in the title because it rhymed with inspiration, I totally did.
Second things second:
It can take a long time for new practices to feel comfortable, for you to build the skills that will let you enjoy them, for you to get used to including them in your life, and for you to feel the positive changes you are seeking.
That’s why I keep asking you to focus on your efforts.
By paying attention to your efforts and by collecting gold stars, you can feel momentum and find motivation all throughout the process of change instead of trying to wait until this particular practice is well-established.*
But I also think it is good to develop other motivational practices, to find things that inspire you to keep going, to regularly revisit your reasons for adding these practices to your life.
This is where the inspiration station comes in!
It doesn’t have to be a literal station (but it can be!) and it doesn’t have to be elaborate (but it can be!) and it doesn’t have to be obvious to anyone else (but it can be!), but it can be fun and helpful to create a place, a ritual, or a routine that reminds you why you are trying to accomplish these new things.
And, of course, you can create your literal or metaphorical inspiration station any way that you like as long as it brings you joy, determination, and a bit of oomph.
You can create a collage (paper or digital) of images, quotes, and ideas that help you charge up.
You can keep a list of quotes (digital or handwritten or printed) that bring you a sense of power and energy.
You can save memes or photos on your phone or desktop and revisit them whenever you want a boost.
You can keep a reflective well-being journal that lets you see how far you have come and reminds you of how good your practices make you feel.
You can create a sign with ideas, images, quotes, and reminders of past successes and post it wherever you do your practices.
You can set a motivational reminder on your phone so it pops up regularly. (On an iPhone you can label your alarms so you could change the text to read, “Focus and Determination! You can do this!” or something else that feels good to you and set it to go off at a useful time each day.)
You can make a ‘Becoming Board’ that draws you toward your future self. It’s like a vision board but with some key practices that can make a big difference.
You can create a ritual of saying or doing certain encouraging and motivational things before each practice or before you start a new week or a new stage in your practices.
If you are neurodivergent and you find that affirmations or inspirational quotes send you into a loop of questions and fact-checking, try using questions instead of a statement, “*What if* I am strong enough to do this?” “What would it look like if I returned to my journal daily?” and see if that approach helps. I can’t find where I found this suggestion but, judging by my google search, it’s a pretty common one. I just wanted you to know that I didn’t invent it.
You can come up with something fun and helpful and encouraging that I have no idea about because you are the boss of you and I don’t live in your head. (That’s probably for the best for both of us. It would just be too weird!)
Of course, all of these things will only work if you look at them so you may want to make a daily or weekly or monthly reminder to look at your inspiration station and get…you guessed it…inspired!
So, Team, whether you are making an inspiration station, running in the opposite direction from an inspiration station, or doing any sort of practice, plan, or procedure that helps you move in the direction of the life you want to be living, I wish you self-kindness, determination, and the perfect kind of inspiration.
And, of course, I offer you these gold stars in celebration of your efforts.
Go Team Us!
Lots of stars for all kinds of inspiration! Image description: A painting of around 20 shiny gold stars that are trimmed in a thick black line and a very thin white line. The stars are all overlapping and layered. The background is painted blue and is decorated with very thin horizontal white lines looking a little like a sheet of loose leaf paper with the colours reversed. The painting is trimmed in black with a thin white line on the inner edge.
*I know, I know. There is no end to change in our lives but let’s just carry on, hey?
For me, this idea came from reading one of Julie Morgenstern‘s organizing books. I read this a long time ago so I don’t remember which book it was and the details may be fuzzy but the spirit is there, so let’s roll with it.
From what I recall, one of her clients was struggling to keep her shoes organized. She was always kicking them off next to her bed and then she would get annoyed with the pile of shoes that would accumulate there.
The complicated solution would be to train herself to put her shoes elsewhere or maybe to create a habit of returning her shoes to the front closet each morning. Both of those solutions are valid but they will take time and effort and probably a lot of experimenting.
Julie Morgenstern, however, had a much more direct solution.
She suggested putting a shoe rack next to the bed so her client’s shoes could be easily tidied and organized.
Now, there could be lots of reasons why either of the first two solutions might be better overall but you can’t beat the shoe rack when it comes to an easy and efficient solution to the shoe pile, can you?
It may not be a perfect solution, it may not be a forever solution, but it does address the immediate problem (messy shoe pile) without requiring a lot of effort and it lets the client choose where she wants to put her energy right now – creating a tidy corner or making changes to her behaviour.
Ultimately, she may want to change her behaviour but the shoe rack won’t prevent that. In fact, if she’s not being mean to herself about the messy shoe pile, she will probably have more energy to apply to behaviour change.*
When it comes to adding new practices to our lives or adjusting current practices, we tend to default to a behaviour change type of solution when often a shoe rack type of solution would do.
I think it’s worth trying some simple, direct solutions to our challenges first, even if it’s just to free up some energy for other changes and solutions we know we’ll want to try later.
So, if you are always forgetting to bring your water bottle to the basement when you do your workout – put a safe container of water and some clean glasses in your workout space.
If you have trouble making yourself do your stretches each evening, arrange a call with a friend and stretch while you chat. Your stretches might not be as deep but they’ll be done.
If, like me, you find that having your equipment in the basement prevents you from using it, consider moving it to a space in your house that feels easier for you.
If you keep your journal on your desk but you find it hard to sit there and write at the end of the day can you move your journal to your bedside table? Or keep a separate notebook there? Or use the voice notes on your phone? Or make jot notes whenever you can and do more detailed journaling at a time that feels easier? Can you change the time that you journal?
There is nothing wrong with choosing a direct solution if one is available.
Our practices are about our well-being, our fitness, our peace of mind, they aren’t about checking off boxes on an imaginary list of perfact behaviours.
There are lots of ways for us to move towards the lives we want, and it’s ok for at least some of those ways to be really straightforward.
So, Team, I’d like to invite you to consider what sorts of simple solutions might be available to help you address your challenges.
Or to put it another way, if you are faint a challenge, consider asking yourself if a shoe rack will help.
As always, here’s your gold star for your efforts today. As you can tell, today’s star is absolutely delighted with you and with your hard work.
And whether you are working on small solutions, big solutions, or anything in between, please remember that your efforts matter and so do you.
Please be kind to yourself out there.
Go Team Us!
I thought it was time for another happy star. 🙂 image description: a drawing of a cartoonish gold star with bright eyes and a big smile. The star is standing on a purple swing with two points of the star folding around the ropes of the swing like hands. The background of the image is coloured bright blue.
* If you pick a small solution for now with the idea that you will take on the behaviour change over time, please consider picking a time (or several times!) in the next few months to check in with yourself. It’s not exactly the same thing but I often choose a stopgap solution or workaround when I am pressed for time and then realize months later that I never stopped to develop an actual solution. Choosing a check-in time will reduce the chances of you being stuck with a temporary solution for longer than you mean to be.
I have been experimenting with when and how to write different things, I have experimented with different ways to approach my volunteer work, I have given a lot of thought to how ELSE my Go Team ideas might apply in my life, and I have experimented with my well-being practices.
Here are some of the things that have come up for me so far and some questions I am pondering at the moment.
As soon as I mention pondering, I gotta break out a Pinky and the Brain GIF. Image description: a GIF from the cartoon Pinky and the Brain in which The Brain (a short white mouse with an oversized head) is asking Pinky (a tall skinny mouse who looks kind of goofy) ‘Are you pondering what I’m pondering?’ The mice are in a homey setting within a green cage in a laboratory. This question always came up in episodes of this show when The Brain, who was supposed to be a genius, had hatched a plan to take over the world and Pinky, who was rather silly, would respond with nonsense.
My medal from the Salem Witch Trials walking challenge. The medal is a black rectangle is kind of like a wrought iron gate along the top and sides with four points along the bottom line. The medal is decorated with a crescent moon, a sun, a crow on a branch and a bat hanging from a different branch. Then there is text that reads ‘The Salem Witch Trial Virtual Challenge’ The words ‘Salem Witch’ are in green and the lettering is ornate and kind of spooky. It is attached to a green ribbon with decorated with stereotypical ‘witchy’ items like beetles, moths, crystals, a dousing rod, and a fly agaric mushroom and a purple banner that reads ‘Make Every Mile Count.’
It’s really fun to have a tangible, obvious, and related reward for my efforts.
While I am very used to activities in which the effort is its own reward or ones in which I decide on my own ‘prize’ that often has nothing to do with the activities itself but this is different.
While I set my timeframe, the distance and the reward were both set by someone else and I enjoy the feeling of meeting some sort of standard (even a loose one) and getting a medal as a result.
Now, let me be clear – I am in no way treating this like a medal that I won. I know I wasn’t actually racing. I didn’t have any competitors except myself and my time was snail-paced but the medal does remind me that I made a choice to do a program and I completed it.
The fact that I really like how the medal looks is also a bonus.
My feelings about this medal – and the related challenge – are really interesting to me and I am definitely going to explore more tangible and related rewards for my other fitness experiments this year.
And this is where the January experimenting comes in:
I decided to experiment with a longer challenge so I signed up for a 2026 challenge with the same company and, like with the shorter challenge, the fact that I can see each day adding up is giving me a little extra push to move more daily.
BUT it will take all year to earn my medal so I’m going to need to invent some more immediate (and related) awards for myself to earn on a regular basis.
Question: What kinds of rewards will feel more directly related to my fitness practices?
Imperfect Practices
Several of my Go Team 2026 posts have been a bit of a thought experiment for me as I figure out whether I am regularly applying these ideas to my life/practices and how ELSE I might want to apply them.
My Sunday post this week is an excellent example of that experimentation.
That post Done Beats Perfect is about getting so caught up in doing things right that I end up not doing them at all has really helped me tune into something about myself.
I have ‘discovered’ this fact many times in many different contexts but each time I rediscover it, I find a new layer.
I spend too much time trying to figure things out before doing them.
For example:
My ADHD brain is convinced that there is value in waiting to start work on my core because I wouldn’t want to waste time on some practice or program that doesn’t work.
So, it kind of shelves the project of improving my core while awaiting more information BUT it keeps the thought in rotation so it FEELS like I am working on it all the time even though I am not actually doing any work.
But since it has been on my mind for ages, I do get the bonus (annoying) feeling that I am not getting any results for my hard work.
So, a lot of time passes, I don’t end up finding the right system for strengthening my core AND I don’t actually work on a less than perfect system AND nothing changes AND I feel frustrated with myself.
This is all kind of subconscious and I see the illogical nature of this process when I consciously consider it.
But until it occurs to me to bring the thought forward I just have this annoying contradictory situation in which something is sort of on my mind, time is passing, there’s a feeling of effort but no results, but I also know that I am not actually working on that yet.
It’s a bit like when I sit down to write but I can’t make the words string together at the moment so I sit at my desk and putter around at all kinds of distractions. I feel like I am working on it and getting nowhere but there is actually no work taking place.
In that situation, I need to become aware that I am doing that (again!) and remind myself that the only thing that gets my writing done is putting words on the page and then moving them around. I have to coax myself to stick with it past the initial pain of dealing with an ambiguous situation and trust that if I go through the tried-and-true procedure, the work will get done.
Since I know that completing an imperfect workout or an imperfect practice will be automatically superior to a perfect one that never actually gets done, I need to identify a tried-and-true procedure that I can trust to get my workouts/practices done.
I am going to work on the following questions and develop an experiment based on my answers:
Questions: What procedures can I use to make it easier to do an imperfect workout instead of waiting for a perfect one to arrive?How can I make myself conscious of being stuck in the ‘waiting for more info’ loop?
My plan to connect my drawing to my evening yoga has resulted in me avoiding my yoga because I couldn’t wrap my mind around drawing at that point.
I know that the main reason I didn’t draw was because I didn’t have a clear idea of what I wanted to draw each evening. Frustratingly, in my post about this experiment I actually said that I needed to pick something to draw or I probably wouldn’t do it.
Alas, I forgot all about that aspect of things then just tried to wing it and ended up (temporarily) sinking my yoga practice along with my plan to draw.
So, for now, I am going back to committing to evening yoga and, if I have the energy, I will do a drawing on an index card but the drawing is a bonus not a dealbreaker.
And I am going to consider the following questions and have an answer to experiment with by Wednesday evening:
Questions: What kinds of drawing would be fun and relaxing for me to do each evening? How can I make the process of drawing easier to start?
Row Row Row… my living room?
This experiment is less than two days old but after hearing me wonder aloud if moving my rowing machine from the basement to the living room would make it more likely that I would use it, my husband volunteered to move it for me.
As soon as it was in the living room, rowing felt more like a thing I *could* do instead of a thing ‘I need to get back to’ and now that the living room experiment was underway, I decided to try for 5 minutes of rowing each day for the next week.
I know that’s a small amount but I wanted it to feel easy and I can definitely fit in 5 minutes a day for a week and then review.
So, on Monday morning, I planned to row for 5 minutes but ended up rowing for 15 minutes while watching a video about setting up an artist’s notebook. and it really felt great.
That doesn’t mean that I am changing my experiment though. I am going to stick to the 5 minute plan with the option of doing more but with zero pressure to do so.
Now I am just playing around with the when:
Question: Is it easier to have a set time to row or to just do it when it makes sense on a given day?
Overall, I’m enjoying the experiment approach and I am planning to continue into February.
Have you been doing any experiments with your practices and habits in January? How are things going?
I decided to draw my own calendars this year. This one is above my desk and will have a different robot for each month. Image description: a happy square-headed, rectangular-bodied robot drawn in blue ink. She is holding a sign that says ‘Real Snow Please!’ in one hand and she is holding a star in the other. She is standing on a curved line that is supposed to represent snow on the ground and there are dots in the background to represent snow falling. Text beneath her reads ‘January’ and there are two snowflakes and two horizontal arrows pointing to the word.
Because of the combination of extreme cold and ice build-up at a major power plant over the weekend, people in NL were asked to minimize our power usage to avoid blackouts.
And that led to me asking myself things like, ‘Is it better to type this on my phone or use my desktop computer?’* and ‘Does it take more power to run the slow cooker or to heat the oven?’, you know, questions about how to allocate our household energy in a responsible way. It really made me pay attention to all of the electrical power-related decisions I unconsciously make in a given day.
And THAT led me to think about how I allocate my personal energy at any given time and wonder about the unconscious choices I am making about how to spend my energy on a regular basis.
Because even though Taekwondo has taught me to ‘Look where you’re striking’ because your power (energy) is directed towards what you are focusing on, I often forget that the lesson extends beyond TKD class.*
Yes, I have these kinds of strings of somewhat-related thoughts on the regular. Is it ADHD? Is it Being Christine? Who knows? It keeps things interesting though.
I get that we don’t always get to choose where to put our energy and/or that we have competing priorities but it’s worthwhile to think about any energy choices we happen to have at the moment.
So, Team, I invite you to consider the following questions:
What kinds of energy do you have available for your current practices?
When is that energy available?
Are there things you can do in advance so when practice time comes you can spend energy on your practices instead of on preparing for your practices?
Are you wasting energy (or sapping your energy) by being mean to yourself when you could spend that energy on self-kindness (which builds energy!) or on being relatively neutral while you putter through your practices?
I know these are relative easy questions to ask but even the most complicated process has to start somewhere.
Having a look at where your energy goes and how you can make small shifts to save/generate good energy is a great way to help yourself move toward the life you want.
And, as always, here is your gold star for your efforts today.
Whether you are asking yourself energy questions, figuring out where you energy goes/has gone, or doing helpful things utterly unrelated to examining your energy, I wish you ease.
Be kind to yourselves out there, please.
PS – If you are spending a lot of time worrying about the situation in Minnesota but can’t figure out how to put that particular energy to positive use then visiting Stand With Minnesota is a good place to start.
A small painting of a shiny gold star that takes up about two thirds of the page. I started the drawing a bit too close to the bottom of the page so the left bottom point is just off the page. After drawing the star, I drew several star outlines outside the original star, each one larger than the next. Each outline extends beyond the page so the result is angled stripes between the star and the edge of the paper. The stripes are mostly in a pattern – black, white, gold, black, white, gold, etc. the painting is outlined with black lines at the edges.
*An hour or so after posting I realized that I hadn’t finished this thought. My quandary was whether it took more energy to use my computer for a short time or to recharge my phone sooner than normal because I was using it more. I do actually realize that using my unplugged iPhone is not using household power in the moment – ha!
I spent a lot of time trying to draw today’s star.
I started drawing a background last night, creating something with circles of different colours but I couldn’t seem to bring it together – it just looked like random circles. So, I partially covered it with black and was trying to cover the remaining parts with white to make a striped pattern but it just came out looking weird. I actually liked the effect but it didn’t work as the background for a star.
So I did a new one this morning and even after adding the star I couldn’t get this one to look the way I wanted either. It looked fine but it wasn’t quite right so I started tinkering with it, adding bits of gold here and there and trying to figure out what I needed in order to make the drawing work.
And, in the course of tinkering, I realized a few things:
I was running out of time to write today
The star is only part of my project and I can’t spend all my time on just that part
Done beats perfect every time and I can just declare myself done.
So, I promptly decided that my drawing was done and it was time to write.
My writing will also be imperfect but I’m just going to live with that, too.
Why am I telling you all of this?
Because Done Beats Perfect works just as well for your practices as it does for my drawing (and writing.)
You can do what you can and declare your imperfect practice done for the day.
I have spent an awful a lot of time in my life not doing things at all because I didn’t have time/energy/information to do them right – whatever “right” meant for me in that moment.
When it came to a workout or a well-being practice, “right” usually meant exactly as I had planned or exactly as I had been instructed. If I didn’t have enough time or if I couldn’t do one of the exercises, I wouldn’t do any of them because that would be doing them wrong or taking the easy way out.
And somehow my brain convinced me that if I couldn’t do it “right” then it was better not to exercise/journal/meditate at all
Which is, of course, complete crap
I’m not a surgeon or a pilot, my practices were never precision tasks.
In fact, I have always had a very, very, very, very wide range of good enough. I didn’t even to get within shouting distance of perfect.
And that’s why, now that I am more aware of that thinking trap, I spend a lot of my time reminding myself that Done Beats Perfect.
(In fact, for the sake of catchiness, I usually say Done Beats Perfect Every Time but I do know that there are exceptions!)
Yes, there are definitely procedures and safety protocols and proper form for various exercises and practices and you may need to take those into account.
But even including those things you will still have a wide range of ‘good enough’ for any practice you are undertaking.
And a work out that is done imperfectly is much more useful that a workout you didn’t do at all.*
If today’s workout only includes 20 squats instead of 30 or if you only journal for 5 mins instead of 15 or if you can’t face meditation and you colour instead, you are still better off than if you skipped your practice entirely.
To summarize: Do it imperfectly. Declare yourself done. Get on with your day.
So, Team, today I would like to invite you to join me in imperfection in our practices (and our drawing, our writing, and our lives in general.)
Very few things need to be done perfectly and we can really benefit from the things we do imperfectly.
Or to be short and snappy – Done Beats Perfect. Every Time.
It’s really worth giving imperfection a try.
And in celebration of our imperfect efforts, I offer you this imperfect gold star.
Go Team Us!
A small imperfect painting of a gold star. I’m not putting myself down but, for reasons explained in the text, I haven’t tidied up this painting and I haven’t added some finishing touches. I don’t dislike it but it doesn’t feel quite ready to share. Image description: a small painting of a gold star with obvious, slightly swirly brush strokes against a black background that is divided into horizontal stripes by gold lines. Every second stripe is filled with irregularly-sized gold dots/shapes and the drawing is trimmed in gold lines that are somewhat uneven in colour and shape.
* If you find yourself avoiding or adapting your practices again and again, it may signal that you need to change your plans over all. Or if you are mostly ok with your plan but you have to change it fairly regularly, you may want to adjust your expectations a little so you don’t get stressed out about your results.
In the process of considering, developing, planning, and working on your new practices, you have probably (DEFINITELY!) noticed that some parts of the process are easy, some are hard, and some fall somewhere in between.
And when I mention it like that, you probably thought something like, “Of course, Christine. That’s kind of obvious.” *
Ok, so that brings to me to a question:
If we all know that, in the abstract, some parts of any given practice will feel easy, some parts will feel hard, and some will feel somewhere in between, why do so many of us default to dismissing our efforts when it comes to the easy tasks, blaming ourselves when we struggle with the hard tasks, and barely noticing how much work we put into most of the tasks?
You see, the easy tasks still take work even if that work is familiar, enjoyable, straightforward, or quick. We often find tasks easy because they fall within our existing skillset, because we have had a lot of practice at that sort of thing, or because they are the kind of task we enjoy. That doesn’t mean we should dismiss the effort involved.
In fact, we should make sure to take the time to celebrate that effort, to notice how we built, shaped, or chose to apply the skills that made it feel easy. We should notice how much we rock for being able to do those tasks with ease.
When it comes to the hard tasks, we can often default to assuming something is wrong with us, that we aren’t trying hard enough, while not even noticing that we are in the process of figuring out how to do this thing. We may even start dredging up past examples of things we were unable to do just because…wait, why on earth do we do that to ourselves? Does our brain think that is helping us somehow? Brains can be such jerks!
Sometimes tasks are hard because we don’t have the skills yet, sometimes they are hard because we don’t understand them or because we need a different system, sometimes they feel hard because they involve stuff we don’t enjoy doing, and sometimes tasks are just inherently hard.
It’s ok to have to put a lot of effort into something, it’s ok to need help, it’s ok to have to make adjustments or to have to work up to being able to complete a task or learn a practice. It’s ok to struggle more than someone else who is trying this same task (they probably struggle with something else that you find easy.)
Even amidst all of those struggles, even though the task feels SO hard, we still rock. Even if it takes us many, many tries, all of our efforts matter. They all count. They are part of the process of completing that task.
Our struggles don’t say anything negative about us, they speak to our persistence, our tenacity, our willingness to do the work. Those qualities are a great demonstration of how much we rock.
And, when it comes to the routine tasks that aren’t easy but aren’t hard?
We rock for doing those, too. I mean, think about it – trudging our way through tasks that don’t have an immediate payoff like an easy one does and that don’t provide the interesting challenge of an hard task? We should give ourselves extra credit for those things.
Besides, even though a given task FEELS easy, hard, or routine, it still requires effort. Our feelings about it may change our perception of the work but it doesn’t change the fact that there is work involved.
Reminding ourselves to notice the work, to commend ourselves for doing it, to accept our gold star for our efforts, can help us to see how far we have come, to stick with our practices, and to pay attention to how awesome we are for finding ways to move toward the lives we want.
So, Team, whether today’s tasks are easy, hard, or routine, I hope you will take the time to celebrate your efforts and remember how much you rock.
Here are today’s gold stars in honour of your efforts to move toward the life you want AND in honour of your efforts to notice how much you rock.
Be kind to yourself out there!
Go Team Us!
Image description: a drawing of 12 gold stars of various sizes against a background of thin intersecting lines. I have placed a star at each point where lines intersect.
*Your tone and degree of snarkiness probably varied but that’s your business. Luckily, I am not cursed with the ability to read people’s thoughts. Can you even imagine what a burden that would be? How would you ever rest?
