Stephanie wants to start working out. She knows the perfect workout schedule is 5 days a week for 30 minutes at the gym with all the right equipment. But, with a full time job, two kids, a dog and an ailing mother, she can barely find time to shower let alone five hours a week to get to the gym, workout, come home, and clean up. Even the idea makes her anxious. Working out feels impossible.
Greg wants to paint, but his skills are not as strong as they should be to sell his work. He looks at other artists and knows that he is “behind” in his skill development. At 45, he should have been painting since he was a kid or in college. Now he has to take classes, and his house doesn’t have a place for a studio, and the framing and materials are so expensive, he’d have to get a part-time job just to pay for them. Painting feels impossible.
How many parts of your life feel impossible because you have a vision of the perfect way to do it.? You’ve read the blogs about the perfect set-up or schedule, the best equipment, the right way to be or do that thing that is calling to you. We all want so much to be perfect. Perfect feels like the goal. But what if perfect was actually the obstacle to get over?
The perfect is the enemy of the good.
Voltaire
What does it look like to have a “good enough” starting place? What does it look like to start small? What would change if you jumped right over “perfect” and landed on “good”? Dancing with your kids for 5 minutes in the morning. Painting with water colors on recycled paper. The chance to be imperfect is such a beautiful invitation. Imperfection is about growth and possibility. It is about here and now. It is authentic and gentle and necessary.
For today what if you didn’t “go big or go home?” What if you just took one amazing, imperfect, good step toward your goals? What if you knew that it wasn’t instagram worthy and did it anyway? What if you just showed up in your life in some really small ways? What would it mean today to just be “good,” to just be “enough”?
May your day be wonderfully imperfect! May the good be enough to fill your soul with joy!