It's a Practice!

Practice. The official definition is to "carry out or perform habitually or regularly." This means that all of your habits, all of the things you do on a daily basis are considered practice. This also means that we practice our attitudes and feelings. We practice gratitude to feel more grateful. We practice optimism and hope to feel better about challenges. The best part about this theory is that you can look at everything like it's a practice and if one practice doesn't result in your desired outcome, you can practice again. Each day is a new opportunity to practice. Every time you make a decision, you're practicing again and with every practice comes more progress.

It's a little sigh of relief to think of everything as a practice, right? This is a mindset shift, I understand. It's going to require something else too. It will require you to give yourself and others more grace. It requires you to acknowledge that perfection doesn't exist and can't exist. That perfection is an unrealistic expectation. I'm not saying we need to lower our standards, but is it so terrible to give grace for growth? Growth is always possible when one practices. If we judge against perfection, practice slows, stops, or at the very least becomes less passionate. This is the kind of practice that does not lead to progress.

So we can look for growth and give grace to encourage more practice and therefore progress or we can compare outcomes to an unrealistic picture of perfection and discourage growth altogether. Which one feels better to you?