If you want to finish things…embrace what?
You’re listening to the Love Tidbits Podcast, where you’ll discover a small, tasty, delightful, bite-sized tidbit of love. I’m your host, LeAnn Austin
Hey y’all, welcome to Love Tidbits, episode number six: Finish
I recently completed a book called Finish by Jon Acuff. Highly recommend this book, and he also has a podcast called “all it takes is a goal”.
Well, as you can probably guess the book was about finishing, and most of us don’t have a problem starting things. We’ve started things, lots of things, but we don’t always finish. So, Jon tells us how to finish. He said, “the people who increased their progress dramatically were those that took the pressure off, those that did away with crippling perfectionism that caused people to quit their goals. The less that people aimed for perfect, the more productive they became.” He tells us embrace imperfection. That’s it. If we want to finish, we want to embrace not being perfect.
So I want to share his four perfectionism lies as well as his secrets to finish. First one, quit if it isn’t perfect. So you have a goal, you’re doing your goal, and then you don’t, then you mess it up per se. Well the secret to finishing is the day after you mess it up. When you go the next day and say ugh, well I’m out, I didn’t do it. I ate all the things. I didn’t run. I didn’t do whatever it is your goal is. I didn’t walk. I didn’t get together with that person. The day after you weren’t perfect, is where a lot of people stop. They’re like, oh, I wasn’t perfect, I’m done. Instead, the day after perfect, hmmm, k, didn’t do what I had planned. That’s all right. I’ll try something else. I’ll learn from that. So that’s our first one. We don’t have to quit if it isn’t perfect.
Number two, your goal should be bigger. For whatever reason, maybe it’s like, supersizing things, we think we should have this ginormous goal, that we should make this elaborate thing, or we should do this major event. Why? What if instead of making our goals so big, the secret to finishing them is to cut the goal in half. Take whatever goal we have and cut it in half. If you can’t cut your goal in half, Jon suggests double the timeline, make it take double the time you thought it would. Our goals don’t have to be big, and if we’re going to finish them, it’s very helpful when we make them bite sized.
So number three, perfectionism lie: you can do it all. Well, guess what folks, no one can do it all. Sometimes we think we can, and sometimes we try and cram everything into every second, but we can’t do it all. So the secret to finishing is choosing what to bomb. What are you not going to do? Be intentional. Hey, I might not spend time with you so and so, because I’m working on this. I may not get this thing done because I have something else that is more important to me. I can’t do everything, so I’m going to hone in on the things that I really want to finish, and that’s what I’m going to do. So choose what to bomb. You can’t do it all.
And the fourth perfectionism lie: Fun doesn’t count, if you’re having fun, it doesn’t count when you’re doing a goal. Completely not true. We want to have fun, whatever we’re doing, we want to have fun and to finishing our goals, if we’re having fun, we’ll finish them.
So be thinking about that, as you have things that you’re finishing. What are the lies and what are the secrets to finishing your goals? Embrace imperfection.
One of my favorite quotes from Jon’s book Finish says, “Developing tolerance for imperfection is the key factor in turning chronic starters into consistent finishers.” Hmmm, something to think about.
Have a good one y’all, and here’s to love!
If you would like to become an expert at loving yourself, check out my Lovin Me Program at leannaustin.com
