“Practice makes perfect.” I’m pretty sure we have all been told this at one time or the other.
It’s a lie.
No matter how hard we practice, we can’t ever be perfect at it….because in short, we are human! Humans make mistakes!
Last week I was working with a bunch of 3rd and 4th graders..learning to read music. Yep let’s all have a good chuckle that Mary is helping in a music class and a recorder class at that. The last time I read Music? Let’s just say I was almost 20 years younger than I currently am..and yes I was an adult! We won’t even TALK about the last time I played recorder, and I digress.
I was playing “note Bingo” with about 5 students and one of them was getting frustrated with the fact that they couldn’t remeber the note names on the staff. ILooking at the poor kiddo and I said “practice makes…..?” In their dejected look mumbled “perfect”. I jumped in and said, “No, Practice makes progress.” They promptly looked at me as if I had two heads. I explained we are humans. We can’t ever be perfect only Jesus was perfect. These kiddos looked so confused.
No one’s to blame. However, as an adult who struggles every day with the battle of perfectionism, I have had to learn a new way of thinking.
Progress over Perfection.
I want to live a life of Excellence, doing my absolute best to serve Jesus with all that I am and with all that I have BUT I know that at the end of the day all I am and all that I have is far from perfect.
What I want is t to move forward, make progress. and grow.
I don’t know if what I shared with that frustrated student that day made any difference, but I hope it did.
Perfectionism is hard to overcome, but ti can be done. Choose excellence in your life, not perfectionism, because no matter how hard you strive for perfection, it will be just out of reach…always.
What can be done to cange your mindset of perfectionism to a mindset of progress?
Oe of the ways I have chosen to do this is to place reminders around my home Progress Over Perfection signs simply reminds me my end goal is to move forward…to grow wherever I am planted!
