Slow, relaxing progress
What if I didn't chase a goal with perfection but with the slow back and forth of natural progress?
Recently I was talking to my daughter about a change she had made in her life a few months ago. John and I had been reflecting the day before on how significantly we could see a difference in her but as I talked to her it was obvious she didn’t think it had mattered at all. In the middle of our journey it is hard to tell if we are going anywhere. Our day to day life changes so slowly we don’t even know we are moving.
I’ve been thinking about the slow progress of change lately. I have always loved setting goals and getting after a new habit so I can be more productive, more organized, get more done, be a better person, etc. But as I spent this year recovering from surgery, experiencing that slow but steady progress with no option but to keep going forward whether it was making a difference or not, my way of thinking about managing and improving my life is changing.
After surgery-gone-wrong1 my life was about healing and getting back to normal not about trying to be more productive, not about having the perfect routine, not about managing my social media usage, not about writing, not about finding new clients, not about hitting a work out goal, not about hitting any goal. I was just surviving and believing the moment would not last forever.
In the aftermath of that space, I find I am less in a rush to set and meet big goals2 and trying to rush into being something different. I am more satisfied with the slow progress of change. There were things I liked about the relaxed pace of that season. I watched my body recover one day at a time, slowly. I took steps, ate different, used caster oil packs, carefully moved my body on slow, short walks each day, I took the medication and supplements. I did all the things I could but I could not make my body heal faster than it was going to, could not tell it which days I wanted it to feel good based upon my schedule, could not control the pace at all. Nothing I did created instant results. Mostly I just showed up each day and hoped for the best. Some days, many days, it felt like nothing was improving.
There wasn’t a moment where I was better. It didn’t happen over night. One day I am not OK and the next I healed. In fact, even though I am back in my life there are some parts of me I am not sure are fully healed yet. I just slowly added to my life as I felt better until one day I realized I had been full energy and pain free for weeks and maybe I was better and could fully return to my life.
It was hard to be in between. I wanted to view myself as either completely functional and therefore fully productive, or on the couch all the time barely surviving. If I can get up and do one thing why can’t I do all the things? Last summer taught me to embrace that space in between. Where I might be able to get up and do one or two things but was not in fact at full capacity. I am allowed to be in that space while recovering. I could show a couple houses but then I need to come home and rest. I could focus on a topic for an hour or so but then I start getting fuzzy. I could attend an event and not think about my pain but then not be able to leave the couch the next day. It is all real and it is part of the process of recovery. And it was all OK.
What if it is part of the process of growing as a person, building new habits, and becoming who God wants us to be? What if that is not a linear path, good/bad, right/wrong, success/failure, on-track/off-track. What if there is more of a back and forth inside progress. What if it is both/and? Good and bad, right and wrong, success and failure, on and off track? What if that is the real path God has set before us as we move forward and become?
A friend told me that addiction recovery groups are starting to move away from counting days sober because it is so common to relapse at some point, even years later, and telling someone they are back at day 1 and all the work they had been doing no longer counted was not telling the true story of recovery. Are we allowed to make mistakes, have bad days and still move forward? Is perfection the only measurement or are we living a life of grace that allows all the good days to count even if bad days are mixed in?
As I head toward the one year anniversary of the surgery I find myself abandoning that search for perfect productivity. The real forward progress of life happens when I mix my productive days with my lazy days3. When instead of trying to do it all every day I focus on doing a little each day. Maybe real life is a little like recovery. Some days you feel great, some days you feel terrible. In between you do what you can and give yourself grace for what you can’t. The goal is not daily perfection but small movements that over time make a big difference.
What small movements are making a difference in your life these days?
Truthfully I was never great at meeting big goals. I would set them and do a few small things but never quite make it. I had come to a point of setting goals I knew I would not accomplish but knew if I set them I would do a few things that might accomplish something. Why did I think I needed to chase the big goal to make the small activities count? So instead of writing a plan to create the perfect morning routine I am focused on the small tasks I would like to do written with broad ideas rather than specifics. Basically the exact opposite of what goal setters will tell you, but I think with the right intension, of moving forward and improving my routines, it will make a bigger difference over the long term than constantly feeling like I am a failure of my goals and starting over thinking it will be different next time.
I probably need to call the something different than lazy days. The days that I don’t push, the days I am more present to my emotional, physical and spiritual needs and less active with tasks and perfect routines. The days I am present rather than pushing. Hmmm, what will I call those days? Honestly, I am OK with re-defining lazy to mean what I am using it for but that will probably confuse people who have negative connotations with lazy.
Stay strong in the middle!