Relax! One Step at a Time – Why You Shouldn’t Rush Things

After a long time without posting, we are back with full force! My life has taken a completely different direction in the last few months. Many changes in my routine made me have to change and readapt my plans, but that’s still ok – so I want to share some thoughts about this struggle today!

About the importance of understanding that not everything goes as planned, but that still, we can and must move forward. It doesn’t matter how quickly you reach your goals – whether in your fitness routine, work, or personal life – as long as you understand that you are on the right track and did your best in that difficult period.

Keeping your Routine is Hard, so Forget About Perfection!

In the last few months, I made a new career transition and got a job in a completely different area from the one I had worked in the previous few years. While I’m delighted with my new position, I’ve put a few personal projects on hold over the last few months, which greatly messed with my head.

I started to question if that was the path I wanted to take in my professional life and if it would be worth interrupting my projects – like this blog – to have better financial stability in the coming years. The truth is that, sometimes, I am very immediatist, which makes me automatically want to skip steps so that I can see and measure the results of my actions as soon as possible – and that paralyses me in many ways.

That’s precisely why I’m getting back to writing today. I decided to put aside my immediacy and that constant feeling that “if you can’t do it perfectly, it’s better not to do it at all”. More than that, I decided to follow my instincts and do what I’ve always done with any obstacle I’ve overcome in my life: try. There is only one way to achieve your goals: keep trying – no matter how difficult and challenging it will be.

Your performance and the fruits of your labour won’t be perfect in the first few tries, but they will definitely improve over time – and become less challenging! Worry about delivering the best you can at that moment, and believe that with time you will have better results. Forget perfection and never give up!

The Importance of Repetition to Succeed in any Goal

Understanding that nothing is perfect and that you will hardly be able to control all areas of your life is the first step to promoting profound changes. The second is to understand the importance of repetition and why you should keep trying – especially on the most challenging days.

If you think about it, absolutely everything you’ve learned in your life follows a straightforward formula: error and repetition. No child is born knowing how to walk, yet you learned it brilliantly through a unique mechanism: trying, falling to the ground, and trying again until you stand. I know this example seems pretty irrelevant, but once you start to see life through this lens, it becomes easier to understand the power of repetition and learning to improve the final result.

If this example still hasn’t convinced you, think about the first few times you set out to study something, cook a new dish, start a new job, or simply perform something you’ve never done before. It might have been hard initially, but you got better with time, right? Most things we do in life require repetition and learning, so try not to be intimidated when learning or starting something new. The start will be slow, but you’ll get there with time – after all, you’ve already overcome many things in your life!

What Do You Really Want?

Like any human being, we tend to measure success by what we see or what we can touch – but we often forget that there is an arduous path behind every success story. Regardless of your ambitions, think of a person who inspires you – or has achieved some goal you would like to achieve. Before desiring to have what they have, we must ask ourselves: “What did that person have to do to get there?”

We often want to have the money, fame, success, or even someone else’s body – but we ignore the whole trajectory and sacrifices that person had to make to get to that point.

The secret, in this sense, is to understand that what should be valued is the journey, not the result. If you want to be a millionaire, are you willing to work like a millionaire works? If you want to have the body of a bodybuilder, are you ready to have an athlete’s training and eating routine? If you wish to start a new business, are you willing to give up your free time to invest in that idea?

If your answer to these questions is positive, ask yourself a second question: “Do I want to do this for myself or others?”. I say this because no stimulus will be as solid and transformative in your life as your perception that you need or want to accomplish something. It’s also fine to do things to please others, but it’s almost impossible to succeed in something YOU do not wish from the bottom of your heart. You must want it because that’s important for you – and not for any pressure or outside influence.

Final Thoughts on Why You Shouldn’t Rush Things

Today’s post is the result of a self-reflection occupying a space in my mind for the last few weeks – and I hope it can help more people with these thoughts. In some way, I wanted to use this space to vent and bring out some of my insecurities and weaknesses, hoping to motivate other people who are going through a period of doubt or uncertainty in their lives.

With this intention, I created TheLifesty, and therefore, nothing fairer than resuming this personal project with an open letter, exposing some of my difficulties and anxieties regarding life and my ambitions. In my day-to-day, I have several responsibilities that take up my time and make it difficult to carry out any personal project.

My wife and I have been living abroad for almost five years. In addition to working full-time, we have to share housework, find time to talk to family and friends, take care of our physical and mental health, invest in personal projects and, in parallel, still have free time for leisure and fun – which are also extremely important. I say this because, in recent years, I feel like I’m trying to balance on a tightrope to reconcile all these activities, so I started not demanding so much from myself.

Today, I accept that I’m not perfect, I’m not going to get everything right, and it may take time before I reach all my goals. In this sense, the secret is being present and completely transparent with yourself. I accept that this is the best I could give so far, and I do not doubt that the future is bright! We’ll get there – take it one step at a time!