Aim for better

Don't aim for perfection; just aim for a little more than you are doing now

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Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:03):
Welcome to Before Breakfast, a production of iHeartRadio. Good Morning,
This is Laura. Welcome to the Before Breakfast podcast. Today's
tip is that when it comes to good habits, you
don't have to aim for perfection or even a big

(00:23):
jump from where you are now in order to see improvement.
Just aim for better and that should be good enough.
If you are, like a lot of people probably listeners
to this show, you have some self improvement goals. Maybe
you'd like to exercise more often, or build more social

(00:43):
connection into your life, eat better, or save more money.
It can feel appealing to set lofty goals, but in
many cases, when something requires a huge change, it just
won't happen. Our lives as they are for a reason.

(01:04):
So instead of aiming for perfection or dramatic improvement, just
aim for better. Little tweaks stand a much better chance
of sticking. So if you track your time and see
that you are generally exercising once a week and this
doesn't feel like enough to you, just try to get

(01:25):
to twice. If you are doing twice, aim for three
times a week. After all, three times a week is
a habit, And if you don't exercise at all, just
try for once one more time per week than whatever
you are doing is meaningful progress. Once that rhythm becomes established,
you can always nudge the goal up a bit higher

(01:46):
if you want, but even if you don't, you will
still be in a better spot just by aiming for
better than what was happening before. If it is social
connection that you are hoping to increase, figure out what
you are doing currently and then just aim for a
little bit better. If you currently do something social approximately

(02:08):
once a month, see if you can add something else
little in Maybe it's having coffee with a colleague, or
going to an event at your house of worship or
that your neighborhood association is hosting. You don't have to
become a social butterfly. Going from once a month to
twice a month is doubling your social occasions but doesn't

(02:33):
require making a huge change. If you want to eat
more healthfuly, that doesn't mean you have to eat fish
and kale at every meal. Just aim for better. Maybe
you decide on a few healthy breakfasts that you rotate
through an aim for healthy brown bag lunches twice a
week or so. You don't worry yet about everything else.

(02:56):
It can come in time if you want it to.
When we aim for better than before, we can make
progress at a rate that is sustainable. When goals are
impossibly high for life as we actually live it, we
may give up or at least feel discouraged. So if
you have a goal that you haven't made much progress

(03:16):
on in the past, try reframing it. You don't have
to reach for perfection to make progress, just aim for
better in the meantime. This is Laura. Thanks for listening,
and here's to making the most of our time. Thanks

(03:44):
for listening to Before Breakfast. If you've got questions, ideas,
or feedback, you can reach me at Laura at Laura
vandercam dot com. Before Breakfast is a pre production of iHeartMedia.
For more podcasts from iHeartMedia, please visit the iHeartRadio app,

(04:06):
Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to your favorite shows.