It's Progress Not Perfection

One of the guiding principles of the many 12 step programs is “Progress Not Perfection”. This is a vital concept to recovery for several reasons and when you employ it you will immediately benefit from the change of focus. Perfection is a false standard. I’m not “perfect”, You’re not “perfect”, life is rarely “perfect” and because perfection has little to do with objective reality it is useless, in fact it can be harmful to use as a measuring stick for human beings. Perfectionism goes hand in hand with procrastination. The result is that nothing gets done and nothing changes. Nothing changes unless something changes, right? Procrastination and perfectionism are the opposites sides of the same coin and they both get you the same thing, nothing. They both keep us stuck because action is the key. Recovery of any kind takes action and lots of it! Recovery, and a productive life in general takes action. For many who have suffered with Substance Use Disorder, taking action can feel overwhelming and many of us get paralyzed by fear and confusion. Sometimes we get stuck in close minded thinking. That’s when we believe we already know the outcome, so why try. It’s contempt prior to investigation. At other times we get stuck in the “I’ll do it when I’m better, or when the time is perfect, or when the situation is perfect. Perfect never comes. The ideas that “when it’s perfect, I will be ready” or “I will do it when the time feels perfect”, are fundamentally flawed. Here is a clue, if “perfect” hasn’t showed up by now, it probably won’t in the future. If you haven’t become “perfect” enough yet, waiting doesn’t usually get you there, but action does. Here’s the trick I use, it helped me get sober and it’s a tool I still use today in life. After I pray, meditate and journal on the big picture outcome, situation or problem that is in front of me, I take my focus off of the intended outcome and I just start asking myself “what’s the next right thing I could do now?” It is very easy to get bogged down but if I just focus o