Our lives are filled with any number of journeys that we embark to try and make ourselves better. Maybe it’s going to college. Maybe it’s trying to lose weight and get in shape. It could be learning a new skill or talent. As with any journey worth taking, along the way there are going to be times when we mess up. When we make mistakes or backslide into bad habits.

Maybe we don’t do as well on a test as we were hoping or we have a bad week where we eat a lot and don’t get to do our normal workout. It’s all a part of the process. There was never a best-selling book where the story goes “They headed out, and then they got there, the end!”. We should expect that there are going to be challenges along the way.

For me, the fault comes when things don’t meet my expectations and I begin to lose motivation. I expect perfection and I have incredibly high standards for myself. It’s too easy to spiral when things don’t go the way you want them to and to give up on everything you have worked on. It’s a fool’s approach, because nothing will ever be perfect. We’re humans, not robots. It’s practically a part of the deal that we are going to eventually make a mess of things.

When things go wrong and start to get away from you, instead of thinking about where it fell short or where you made a mistake, think about how far you have come from where you were when you started out. If the journey was important enough for you to start on it, it’s important enough for you to pick yourself up, dust yourself off, and keep going when it goes awry. Don’t throw it away and have to start over again. Hold on to the reality of your progress over the dream of perfection.