I don’t run to be faster than anyone else.

In fact, I don’t run to compete against anyone other than myself.

That’s part of the reason I usually get my training runs and races in by myself. I can be easily tricked into trying to race against others when I train or race with them. It shifts my thought process into a battle for perfection that I won’t ever win.

I’m a self-aware perfectionist. It was only recently I added I added self-aware to that statement. I hate making mistakes and can beat myself up for hours and days when it happens. When I make a mistake I felt that pit in my stomach and my heart rate rises, predictably, as I work to fix whatever happened or is off. After the fix, it still sticks with me. I beat myself up about it because it was made in the first place.  

But, because I’m trying to be more self-aware, this week I tried to dig into that emotion and identify what the underlying concern and cause is. Yes, I want to do things right. I don’t want to make mistakes. But, in the bigger picture… how do I shift that focus from beating myself up to being able to objectively solve the mistake. I want to identify what went wrong and work on developing skills to change that in the future, rather than relive those mistakes over and over. 

This week I also found myself talking out loud and saying, “I just can’t do everything.”

Something that should be a simple admission, but it feels like a failure, like a mistake. I believe part of maturing is understanding that I really can’t do every thing. Some days, I just won’t be able to fit a work out in. And that has to be okay. Some days, I won’t be perfect in my diet. And that has to be okay, too. Cleaning the house will have to fall back some days, while work projects have to be reevaluated and repurposed when competing projects butt heads for limited time.

The hard part, and what I’m going to have to learn, is that those choices and leaniencey doesn’t equate with failure, mistakes or loss of anything other than perfection.

Because, in reality, perfection isn’t possible to achieve. It’s possible to strive for, but not realistic to expect as a result. The end result can always be better, I can always work harder and learn more. I’m working to understand the difference between striving for perfection, which encourages high quality, thoughtful, strategic work in everyday life… with the expectation of perfection and anything less than equaling failure and mistakes.