00:00:00 Welcome to tonight's Saturday night, special episode 54. I'm Robert Farrington from the college investor.com. I encourage you to be inspired, to become a better steward through financial wisdom. By listening to this show, the inspired stewardship podcast with my friend, Scott Mader, and it's taken me many, many years to recognize that that feeling holds me back from progress. That feeling keeps me from growing as much as I should,
00:00:39 that feeling can help me at times, but more often than not, it ends up being a hurdle to true growth. Welcome. And thank you for joining us on the inspired stewardship podcast. If you truly desire to become the person who God wants you to be, then you must learn to use your time, your talent and your treasures for your true calling in the inspired stewardship podcast.
00:01:06 We'll learn to invest in yourself, invest in others and develop your influence so that you can impact the world. And tonight, Saturday night special. I talk with you about the second phrase that we often use in our coaching group. Why this phrase can help change your perspective on things and how it's helped me to grow in the last few years. You know,
00:01:40 one area that a lot of folks need some help with is around the area of productivity. Getting not just more things done, but actually getting the right things done can be really, really tough. I've got a course called productivity for your passion. That's designed to help you do this, and then to hold you accountable and walk with you so that you can tailor productivity,
00:02:09 not just to be getting more done, but actually getting the right things done. What's more, we take the approach of looking at your personality and how you actually look at things in the world and tailor the productivity system to your personality. Because the truth is a lot of the systems that are out there are written really well for somebody with a particular personality type.
00:02:32 But if you have a different approach to things, they just don't work, but there's tools and techniques and approaches that you can take that will work for anyone. And we help you do that and productivity for your passion. Check it out over@inspiredstewardship.com slash launch. Last Saturday, we talked about one of the phrases that the coaching group that I'm part of tends to use.
00:02:58 And I end up using a lot with my clients and it's one that I've actually tried to, to integrate into my own life. And today I'm going to cover the second of those phrases as well. And the way we say it usually is it's about progress, not perfect, or it's about progress, not perfection. They're really the same sort of idea,
00:03:20 but slightly different phrasing of them. And the, and the truth is that this is again, one of those phrases that I find, we tend to not think about things that way many, many people. And of course it's not everybody, but many, many people get, get stuck on wanting to do things perfect. They want it to all fall the right way.
00:03:44 And this isn't just about perfection in terms of appearance or in terms of quality or doing something, quote the way that others want you to do it. It's often about the perfection that we feel inside. It's often about the emotional state that we want to have achieved. We want to, to look at ourselves as being able to complete this in a way that is perfect for us.
00:04:11 It takes care of ourselves. It takes care of our families, and it has a positive impact on our life. However you want to phrase it, that perfection, that feeling of perfectness, isn't just about some sort of external appearance or quality. It's about an internal feeling of such. And if you can make it again to integrate this idea of it's about progress,
00:04:35 not perfect. It's about moving forward, not achieving perfection. Have you can begin to hold in your hand, the idea that you want to move forward and make progress on something. All of a sudden you begin to have a little bit more tolerance for the fact that things don't always go perfectly. You know, the truth is the expression about two steps forward.
00:05:03 And one step back, if that's all you ever did, you'd continuously move forward in your life. The real feeling is, is we judge that one step backwards as if it's a hundred steps backwards compared to the two steps forward. Emotionally, the backwards affects us more than the forwards. We have a natural bias in the way we think about things to focus on the negative more than the positive.
00:05:31 And this phrase is about reminding us that the truth is it's just about moving forward. It's not about making perfect move forwards. In fact, oftentimes that gets us bogged down in making a decision. We're waiting until all the information comes and we can make the one perfect decision. When in reality, most of the time, there's not one perfect decision. Instead,
00:06:00 there's a series of good and bad decisions. And all we can do is make the best decision we can. At the time we have it with as much information as we have at that time period. That's all you can ever do. There's always the possibility of new information coming in. There's always the possibility of something happening randomly. There's always the possibility of incomplete information causing you to make a mistake.
00:06:27 There's always the possibility that no matter how good you do something, it's still not perfect. It still doesn't emotionally hold that kind of impact. And by recognizing this, and it allows you to begin to run test, it allows you to begin to do things as if they're an experiment and it allows you to begin to play with things. See the truth is I am a perfectionist.
00:06:52 That is my natural bent. I want to get everything perfect all of the time. And it's taken me many, many years to recognize that that feeling holds me back from progress. That feeling keeps me from growing as much as I should, that feeling can help me at times, but more often than not, it ends up being a hurdle to true growth and beginning to reprogram my brain,
00:07:21 to focus on the process, to focus on how I do something, to focus on why I do something, but to not hold so tightly to the results, to not judge myself based on, did everything work out exactly the way I thought it should, but instead, just about, did we move forward? Did I make progress towards the target? I began to forgive myself for things that I used to hold myself and beat myself up for as if they were vital,
00:07:53 horrible mistakes. And now I can let go of those because now that I've got a broader view, now that I've gotten a little bit more gray hair, and now that I begun to focus on this journey, as opposed to the destination, I began to move forward much more and make more progress than I ever did before and be happier, more joyful and hold other people to the same sort of standard to not hold other people to the standard perfection,
00:08:26 but to recognize that we're all going through the world, trying to do the best we can in what we have most of the time. And that allows me to look to other people without as much judgment, without as much anger, without as much frustration now, to be clear, I'm not perfect at this. I don't expect you to be perfect about this.
00:08:47 In fact, this too is a place where it's about progress, not perfection. It's not about getting it right all of the time. It's just about working on it to get it right more of the time. Thanks for listening. Thanks so much for listening to the inspired stewardship podcast. As a subscriber and listener, we challenge you to not just sit back and passively listen,
00:09:17 but act on what you've heard and find a way to live your calling. If you enjoy this episode, please, please do us a favor. Go over to inspired stewardship.com/itunes rate. All one word iTunes rate. It'll take you through how to leave a rating and review and how to make sure you're subscribed to the podcast so that you can get every episode as it comes out in your feed until next time,
00:09:51 invest your time, your talent and your treasures, develop your influence and impact the world.