The Mindset Mentor - Ep 63 - Progress, Not Perfection

Episode Date: January 13, 2016

Many people suffer from "perfectionism" nowadays. We aren't satisfied with what we do because we expect more from ourselves. The problem with that is our lack of perfection becomes an excuse for not finishing our goals. In this episode I talk about how the important thing is to focus on progress in order to combat our need to be perfectionists. Want to learn more about Mindset Mentor+? For nearly nine years, the Mindset Mentor Podcast has guided you through life's ups and downs. Now, you can dive even deeper with Mindset Mentor Plus. Turn every podcast lesson into real-world results with detailed worksheets, journaling prompts, and a supportive community of like-minded people. Enjoy monthly live Q&A sessions with me, and all this for less than a dollar a day. If you’re committed to real, lasting change, this is for you.Join here 👉 www.mindsetmentor.com My first book that I’ve ever written is now available. It’s called LEVEL UP and It’s a step-by-step guide to go from where you are now, to where you want to be as fast as possible.📚If you want to order yours today, you can just head over to robdial.com/bookHere are some useful links for you… If you want access to a multitude of life advice, self development tips, and exclusive content daily that will help you improve your life, then you can follow me around the web at these links here:Instagram TikTokFacebookYoutube

Before we dive into today's episode, if you would like a free copy of our motivational ebook called Hack Your Goals, the Step-by-Step Guide to Achieving Success, go to mwfmotivation.com and download it. It's already been downloaded over a thousand times, so go ahead and get your copy now. All right, I'll get you the podcast right now. Welcome to the MWF Motivation Podcast, which I am proud to say has been rated the number one podcast in iTunes new and noteworthy in six different categories, including self-help and business, and is a podcast designed to help you grow into the best version of yourself in 10 to 20 minutes. Every Monday, Wednesday, and Friday, we'll take a life topic, break it down, discuss it, and leave you with thoughts to impact your life and mind. My name is Rob Dial, and the podcast

starts now. Welcome to the MWF Motivation Podcast. My name is Rob Dial. And if you have not yet done so, please subscribe to us on iTunes, Stitcher, SoundCloud. And if you like this episode, if you know somebody that would be able to take something from it, please share it with them. We are trying to get to a million downloads in our first 12 months and can't get there without the natural growth of people

sharing it with other people. So today what I'm gonna talk about is progress, not perfection. And the concept, I'll be honest, was hard for me to understand when I first started. And this is honestly something that I still struggle with sometimes today because I will admit that I am a big perfectionist. Most people I feel, most people are perfectionists or will admit that they're perfectionists or at least think that they are. I personally demand great things from myself. And when they don't come about quickly, I tend to beat myself up for it because

I honestly believe in myself that much. Now, that being said, I have gotten much better with this thought of progress, not perfection. And I want to teach you what I have learned through the past 10 years of self-development, of personal growth, of this progress, not perfection idea. And the two things are this. The first thing that I've learned is that life in general is two steps forward, one step back most of the time. And the reason why is because we're humans. We're going to make mistakes all the time, anytime we do anything, because we're not actually perfect. It's crazy to try to be a perfectionist when we're completely imperfect beings. So we're going to make mistakes. Life is two steps forward, one step back.

If your goal is to eat healthy every single day, seven days a week, every once in a while you may have a moment of weakness and you might eat a Snickers or something. The key though here, if that happens, is to make sure that you forgive yourself for that and focus on all of the progress that you have made, all of the healthy eating that you have made, all of the healthy eating that you have done, all of the Snickers that you stopped eating compared to normal versus beating yourself up for that one moment of weakness. We've all been there before, that moment of weakness, especially me. If we're talking about sugar and candy, I have them. It happens. We're human, but we have to focus on the good, focus on the progress that we have made

and forgive ourselves for the moment of weakness that we do have and keep moving and keep going towards your goal after that. We can't give up right after we have a moment of weakness, thinking that we're too weak to hit our goals. And when you make these mistakes, when stuff happens like this, you don't give up our goals. And when you make these mistakes, when stuff happens like this, you don't give up. What you do is you make adjustments on how you can improve and make sure that it doesn't happen again. Or if it does happen again, you know, make sure that it happens less than normal. Here's a really big tip for you though. Don't use perfectionism as an excuse not to finish your goals. I'm going to say that again. Don't use your perfectionism as an excuse not to finish your goals. I'm going to say that again. Don't use

your perfectionism or what you think is perfectionism in your head as an excuse not to finish the goals that you're going for. You always have to look at your growth versus the small failures that might pop up and might happen because we're going to have failures. It's life. pop up, it might happen because we're going to have failures. It's life. Get over it, but don't have perfectionism as an excuse not to finish. And it's hard because we as humans like to focus naturally. If you think about it, we focus on the bad. It's like our caveman brain that does that. And the reason why is because if somebody had bad berries and died, well, we wanted to focus on the bad berries and make sure that we never had them. But for us, we have to kind of switch our brains from that caveman brain into 2016 like it is right now and to focus on all of the good stuff versus the bad stuff. And with growth,

with becoming a better person, it's hard to see your growth unless you're focusing on your growth every single day and realizing how much progress you have made. It's hard to see your growth unless you're focusing on your growth every single day and realizing how much progress you have made. It's hard to notice the growth unless you're focusing on your progress. It's like if you have kids or your friends have kids. If you have kids, it's hard for you to notice how much your kids are growing because you see your kids every single day versus you might see your friends' kids every once in a while, every couple months or every year, once every couple years, and you can notice you're like, oh crap, you're so much taller than the last time I saw you. And people probably say that about your kids as well. You don't notice

your kids' growth, but other people notice their growth because they don't see them as often. With you personally, with your own personal growth, if you're in it every single day, you're not going to notice how much you're progressing unless you make it a mission to focus every single day on how much you're progressing. So a perfect example is that, let's say that you're a certain body type that you want. You know, you have this certain body type, you have a vision board, and you have a printed out picture of this person who has the body that you want. You know, you have this certain body type, you have a vision board and you have a printed out picture of this person who has the body that you want. You know in your brain that there's no way you're going to get to that body in one week. We all know that. We all know it takes time. So we have to constantly track our progress, how much weight we've lost in the past

two weeks, the past month, to remind yourself of how far you have come. So focus on the progress that you have made versus thinking about being perfect. The second thing I've learned is this. Achievement of your goals is accomplished in little teeny tiny baby steps. Remember this one number, 1%. We need to work every single day to be 1% better than we were the day before. And if you think about it, you don't want to get 10 to 20% better today than you were yesterday, because it's probably not going to happen. But if you give yourself, hey, I can get 1% better today. It's my mission to get 1% better today. Then it's easy. It's easy to attain that, to constantly want to get better and

to improve. Because you've heard me say before, success is not a couple big things that are done correctly. Success is tiny things that are done day in, day out, every single day. And let me show you a math trick. And I'm about 99% sure that my math is correct on this. But let's say this, okay? If you're not a math person, I'm going to make it easy for you. I'm going to try to help you understand this. Let's say that you want to get 1% better every single day. And after one year, that's 365 days. So if you try to get better 1% every day for 365 days, how much better will you be? day for 365 days, how much better will you be? Most people are going to think you're going to be 365% better, which is 3.65 times better than the year before. Now, is that true? It's actually

not. And the reason why is because of compound interest. So if I'm incorrect in this math, send me an email, let me know how far off I was. But if you think of it this way, I did the math and realized that if you're trying to get 1% better than you were the day before, not the day that you started, you're trying to get better, 1% better every single day than the way that you were before. With compound interest, you have to realize you'll actually be 3,778% better. After one year, if you try to get 1% better every single day, you will be 37.78 times better than you were the year before when you started, 365 days. So that means after one year, you won't just be a little bit better. You will be so much

freaking better at whatever it is that you won't even believe it. So you just have to concentrate on being 1% better each day, every single day. And before you start, you must know what you want though. You have to have clarity. If you're going to have this mission to try to be 1% better every day for 365 days, you have to have clarity on exactly what you want. The reason why is because if your target is to get to whatever it is, you have to know your target. If you don't know your target, you can't hit a target that you can't see. You know, if you were to take, I used to always say this a long time ago with my sales reps when they were like, oh, I'll sell as much as I want this week, as much as I can. That's what they used to say. And I would say, let me give you an example of what you just said to me. You want to get as much sales, as many sales, sell as much you possibly can this week.

Well, you could have, I'm going to give you an example of a target. You could have the best archer in the entire world, someone with a bow and arrow. And if you were to sit there and say, okay, it's going to be you who may have never even picked up a bow and arrow before and the best archer in the world, who has a better chance? Obviously, it's going to be the best archer in the entire world because you can both see your targets. Now, let me ask you this. Let's say that you can see your target. You have the bow and arrow and the best archer in the world has blindfolded and spun around and has to pick where he's trying to hit. Who has the better chance of hitting the target now? You do because you can see the goal that you're shooting for. He can't see

the goal that he's shooting for. So you have to have clarity of what you are working for. You must wake up every day knowing what your goal is and setting your intentions to be better today than you were yesterday. Ask yourself every morning, what can I do today to be better, to get me closer to my goal? All of those types of questions. If you didn't become better a certain day, consider it a wasted day. Consider it a wash because you didn't become better a certain day, consider it a wasted day, consider it a wash because you didn't become better. And I understand some of you might be thinking, well, I don't have time. I have kids. I have a job. I have a family. I have all of this stuff. And I completely understand. I completely understand what you're saying, but you're telling

me that you don't have time to work on yourself to become a little bit better every single day, if you don't have time to become better every single day and you keep telling yourself this, the real thing that you really need to do is ask yourself, how important is it for you to really have the life that you want? How important is it for your life to be better? How important is it for your significant other's life to be better? For your children's life to be better? For your grandkids? For your family's life to be better? How important is it for your significant other's life to be better, for your children's life to be better, for your grandkids, for your family's life to be better? How important is it to you? If it's not that important, well, screw it. Stop listening to the podcast and turn it off and just live a mediocre life. But if you're not somebody who wants to have a mediocre life,

if you want to have greatness out of your life, you need to make sure that you find time. My mentor used to always say this to me. If it's important to you, no matter what, you'll find a way. So here's what you do if you don't have enough time. And you can't see me, but I'm using air quotes for don't have enough time. Wake up earlier. Wake up earlier and have the me time to read, to meditate, to write, to have the time to work on yourself before the kids wake up,

before everybody else wakes up. So have that time and focus on being 1% better. So with that, I'm going to leave you two action steps for today. Number one, the first one is this. Become clear on what you want in your life and write it down. Write it down and put it somewhere where you see it all the time. And then ask yourself every single morning, what can I do today to become better so that I will be able to achieve my goal and that achievement of my goal will become even easier to attain because of how much work I've put on myself. So ask yourself that. Write it down, become clear on what you want, and then ask yourself, what can you do today to become better to achieve that goal?

So that's the first action step. And the second action step, as always, make it your mission today to make somebody else's day better. I really appreciate you. I hope that this episode helped you and I hope that you have an amazing day Well, that's it for today's podcast if you want the show notes for this episode they can be found at mwfmotivation.com Also, if you liked this episode Please spread the love and share it with a friend Because it's our mission to help as many people as we can. And to keep in touch, you can follow us on Instagram and Facebook. Both handles are at MWFMotivation with no spaces.

Now you know what time it is. So go out and make your dreams a reality. Outro Music