Embracing working on what’s working now

Progress is exciting. You’re in motion, making strides, and whatever you’re seeking feels achievable.

I LOVE LOVE LOVE progress. *yes, triple caps, because that’s how you know my love is real*

It’s one of the best drug-free highs out there (although it usually entails copious amounts of caffeine, so draw your own conclusions).

Progress gives you hope. That hope propels you forward and keeps you going through the suck-fest of the downs, knowing that even if things are far from perfect right now, victory is possible.

Keeping that hope alive is everything.

Defining progress for yourself, and understanding what it looks like, however, is where it gets tricky.

Progress doesn’t look like a neat line on a graph, confidently marching upward; it’s a net effect of applying large and uncertain chunks of time and effort.

If you looked closely, like day to day or even monthly, “progress” often looks messy, tangled in its own web, pathetic, or downright useless. In short, it looks like absolutely nothing (productive or milestone-y) is happening.

Like the post-lunch work hour, things appear to be going nowhere.

Because of course we all want things to happen faster, much faster, than they’re actually happening.

Sometimes, we think we need to have everything in place to even start, whether it’s launching a project, starting a business, or picking up a new hobby. We want everything all polished and perfect before we are ready to begin.

But most of the time this doesn’t happen, Most of the time, in fact, waiting until everything is totally perfect can only hurt or delay your start.

Which is not progress. Nor is it exciting.

It doesn’t matter if we’re starting something new, something we’ve never done before. We wanted it to happen, like, yesterday, and look like a rock star doing it.

Starting where we are, taking a few steps at a time, focusing on what we can do now—no matter how logical, realistic, or usually, the only things we can do—fall flat in the face of our aching impatience.

But that’s often the best (only? sane?) way to navigate a new endeavor; to learn, to experiment, to see what’s working and what’s not.

When starting on a new path, embracing working on what’s working now usually means embracing less than your vision for your ideal future.

Not settling for less, but accepting where you are now and embracing it. This is what keeps hope alive. This is what opens the door to progress.

Hi Progress. I’m glad you’re here. Can I give you a hug?