Perfection Is A Limitless Peak

I realized recently that much of my life has been spent in timidity towards learning new things. Whether it’s a new instrument, software or language, I always want to jump to proficiency in the task. Otherwise, I abandon it. If I’m not going to be good at it, why do it, right? Oh, what I could’ve learned by now if I didn’t think that way.

Perhaps you have this sentiment. Maybe you’ve tried to start going to the gym, but find yourself falling out of habit in a couple months. Anxiety builds every time you think of going. You coerce yourself into skipping days. Somehow, it’s actually better to just rest that day…and maybe the next…and maybe the weekend, too. Soon, your trips to the gym become further apart. They eventually halt. You get angry at yourself for it and you cycle back to the despondence that you originally felt.

What’s the reason we hit this cliff? We do so well in the beginning. Now? Back to the rut.

Often, it’s the expectation that you will be perfect in your practice towards your goal. You say you will wake up at 5:30am, go to bootcamp, drink a green smoothie for breakfast, pack a salad for lunch and skip beers after work to opt for an earlier bed time. That’s a great goal, but it can be difficult to maintain based on your discipline and your schedule.

What if, instead of creating this giant, glorious reality in your head, you create a million little ones? It’s like taking an impossibly tall mountain and converting it down into a series of hills. You take the grand zenith away. Your focus is applied hump by hump.

It’s 5:30am. You wake up. You reach for your phone to silence the alarm. Its light is blinding in the cozy blackness of your bedroom. The warmth of your sheets begs you to stay. You could get another hour of seductive sleep. With one eye open, you look at your phone. You’re presented with two options. You turn off the alarm or you snooze.

This is your first hill to conquer. It’s not the peak, no, but it’s the first flag you can plant. It’s this little win that sets up a thousand other little wins.

You turn your alarm off. You get up. You stumble to put on your gym clothes. God damn, is it early. You get in your car, go to the gym and get through class. Every bead of sweat is a reminder you accomplished your goal this morning. You’ve won your first hill. Plant your flag proudly. The day won’t be filled with an anxious regret of letting yourself down. It’s filled with the knowledge that you did what you promised yourself you’d do.

However, this wasn’t your first hill. You waking up was. You getting out of bed was. You tying your shoes was. Every instance is an atom that you add to fulfill your goal. Yet, there’s no cap. There’s no container to fill. No meter to satisfy. There are only a billion more little wins to add to your W column. Stop seeking to fill the whole thing in one go. Be prepared to climb for a while. One foot after the other. And what happens? Each coming hill is easier to summit. When you gaze back, you think of how small the first ones really were. In fact, you don’t even realize you’re passing over them anymore. If you trip, you don’t fall back to basecamp, you go back a couple hills. You forgive yourself and press on with a renewed determination. You start to understand that the only way to do something is to do something.

Perfection is a limitless peak.