Progress Over Perfection (Atomic Essay Day 19)

Iโ€™m learning how to do a freestanding handstand. In order to build towards that I first needed to learn how to do a handstand - something that took me 6 months to do. The next step - where Iโ€™m currently at is to be able to walk on my hands while taking the support of the wall. Today in trying to do that, my coach went -

โ€œIt's like learning how to walk. First you take the support of the walls, then once youโ€™ve built the strength you can learn how to walk on your own.โ€

I had a mini flashback in my head of all the โ€˜failedโ€™ handstand attempts - all those thousands of kicks over many months. Had it not been for my coach, I would have probably given up a long time ago - for one, I didnโ€™t have the knowledge but more importantly, I didnโ€™t know how to measure my own progress. I would not have been able to distinguish between my attempt on Day 1 vs Day 16 without my coach. Because we were carefully monitoring that progress, I could stay motivated to keep trying and the outcome is way sweeter.

We tend to give up on a lot of difficult things because weโ€™re unable to see progress. Like in my case with the handstand - sometimes we donโ€™t know how to measure progress. And sometimes weโ€™re so caught up chasing the perfect end goal that we donโ€™t think about what progress even looks like. Rome wasnโ€™t built in a day - a mental tattoo for all of us.

 
 
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My Design Principles (Atomic Essay Day 18)