Summary of How to Measure Your Health in Progress, Not Perfection:
The pursuit of perfect health is both stressful and often miserable, and impossible to achieve or maintain. Instead, it’s better to focus on progress, which involves movement towards a goal, no matter how big or small. Perfection is often vague and subjective, and tends to be context-dependent. Pursuing progress driven by clarity of purpose and an honest commitment to improvement, can help celebrate the moment and look forward to the possibilities. To achieve progress, it’s important to know the ‘why’ behind a health goal, prioritize longevity-based goals, follow an 80/20 approach, not let setbacks faze you, and create a routine you love with an arsenal of habits that fit your preferences.
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Rethinking Health: Strive for Progress, Not Perfection
Introduction:
There is an enormous amount of pressure to achieve perfect health. Countless diets, supplements, and magazines push the idea that perfect health is attainable. However, this pursuit often leads to feelings of stress and an unattainable goal. In reality, perfect health doesn’t exist. Pursuing progress rather than perfection is a much more beneficial and sustainable approach towards health and longevity.
What Does “Strive for Progress, Not Perfection” Mean?
The concept of progress is one of movement towards a goal. Perfection, on the other hand, is a rigid and subjective goal that is often dependant on context. Pursuing progress instead of perfection allows for the freedom to learn and optimize, providing a more positive outlook on the journey towards better health.
Why “Progress, Not Perfection” Should Be Your Default
Pursuing perfection can feel overwhelming and stressful due to the futility of the pursuit. Progress-oriented thinking evokes clarity of purpose and an honest commitment to improvement. A progress-focused approach allows for trusting gradual change, resulting in a more enjoyable journey towards better health.
How to Measure Your Health Progress
To embrace a progress-oriented mindset, it is important to adopt the following five tactics:
1. Know Your Why: Focus on understanding why you want to achieve something, rather than a specific goal post that can change in response to external factors.
2. Prioritize Longevity-Based Goals: Short-term goals require sacrificing important routines and relationships, making progress difficult to sustain.
3. Follow an “80/20” Approach: Planning for imperfection allows for a sustainable and healthy lifestyle. Prioritize choices that promote progress four times as often as you allow for discretionary treats.
4. Don’t Let Setbacks Faze You: Not all progress is linear, and setbacks happen. Progress is resilient, while perfection can be brittle and crumble under pressure.
5. Create a Routine You Love: Select and cultivate habits and routines that contribute to making progress on your health and longevity journey.
Conclusion:
Perfection is an unattainable goal. A mindset towards progress allows for the freedom to learn and optimize, resulting in a positive outlook and a more enjoyable journey towards achieving better health. Use the above tactics to measure progress towards health and longevity, prioritizing habits and routines that contribute to feeling and living better.
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