The episode discusses the importance of focusing on progress rather than perfection in various aspects of life, including recovery, personal growth, and career. It highlights how the pursuit of perfection can hinder progress and happiness, emphasizing the value of continuous improvement and resilience in the face of setbacks.
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ABOUT JEREMY LIPKOWTZ
JEREMY IS A MEDITATION TEACHER, LIFE COACH, AND DIGITAL HABITS EXPERT WHO WORKS WITH ENTREPRENEURS, EXECUTIVES, AND LEADERS.
Jeremy overcame addiction, shame, self-judgement, and depression in his early twenties with the help of mindfulness meditation. Mindfulness not only helped him let go of destructive behaviors, it also allowed him to connect with deeper meaning and purpose in his life.
For the past 10 years Jeremy has been teaching mindfulness and emotional intelligence practices at universities, recovery centers, and companies throughout Asia and the US. He holds a Bachelors and Master’s degree in Genetics and Genomics, and spent several years at Duke University working towards a PhD in Genetics & Systems Biology before he turned full-time to teaching mindfulness.
Jeremy is also an ICF certified Executive Coach. As a former scientist and academic, Jeremy has a great passion for bringing his EI based coaching skills into the corporate and professional world. He realizes how powerful & transformative these practices can be for skeptics and senior-level managers. He is known for his calm and grounded demeanor, his expertise in habits and high-performance, and his compassionate approach to transformation.
Coaching Certifications
* CPCC, Co-Active Training Institute
* ICF Member
* ACC International Coaching Federation
Jeremy is a Certified Teacher with the Search Inside Yourself Leadership Institute, a mindfulness-based emotional intelligence program initially developed at Google. He also spent time living and training as a fully-ordained Buddhist monk in Myanmar. He now combines his science-based expertise with a hunger for personal development to help others discipline their minds and achieve genuine inner- peace and fulfillment.
You're listening to unhooked. On the show today. Why progress? Not perfection is the key to success. So stay tuned.
So welcome ladies and gentlemen, to another episode of unhooked. I'm your host, Jeremy coming at you. Back in Bali. I just arrived a few days ago and I'm settling back into my regular routine back at the gym and back on. My nutrition game plan. I was in Thailand for a few weeks and it was a wonderful time, but I also lost a little bit of my discipline in my routine.
So it's time to get back on it. And I'm very happy to be back in my place in my Villa, having my gym, having my spots where I know I can get good clean, healthy food. So that's a little update for you on where I've been. Today, what we're going to talk about is something that came up for me actually, while I was on my trip in Thailand. So this kind of ties all in together.
I was traveling. And there was a day where I really wanted to get a workout in. But I didn't have that much time. You know, normally when I go to the gym, I like to go for an hour and a half or so. I like to get quite a, a good workout in. But on this particular day, I just had about 20 minutes to spare before I was going to head out and do some things out around the town. So I only had 20 minutes and I decided that I wasn't going to let that stop me from going and getting a workout that I would just go get a quick workout in. Get a little pump going and that it would be better than not working out at all.
I knew it wouldn't fully satisfy me the way that a deep workout would. But 20 minutes, I could still move fast. I could get a good workout and I would feel good about myself. And I would feel glad that I worked out also. And it reminded me of this quote that I once heard, which is to not let the perfect be the enemy of the good. To not let this idea of perfection get in the way of you getting something good.
Done for yourself. And this is one of the ideas that has really benefited me in my own life, in recovery, in my career, in my personal life. In so many areas of my life, this idea of not letting the perfect be the enemy of the good has benefited me. And this is honestly one of the mistakes that I see.
So many people making, particularly in recovery, but also in other areas of their life is thinking that if you are not perfect or if you haven't been perfect, You might as well, just let yourself go completely. So we might slip up and watch a few minutes of porn in a moment of desperation or stress. And since we've lost that perfect streak, we feel like we just are going to binge completely all day and all night. So we go off the rails. We do this with porn.
We do this with food also. You know, you deviate from your meal plan just a little bit. And instead of just letting that be it, letting that one, deviation that one slip up, be it. We think, well, I've lost it. So I might as well just lose it completely and just go off the rails, bingeing on cookies and cheeseburgers and frosted flakes, whatever it is.
That's your. Your guilty pleasure, right? We can also do this in our personal lives and our work lives. And this doesn't just affect our current plans. You know what we're doing now? It can even hold us back from starting something in the first place. So, for example, we might not even attempt starting something new.
If we feel like we won't be perfect at it. You know, if we can't be perfect in the beginning, we don't even want to try. We say to ourselves, well, I'm not going to be perfect. I'm not going to be great. I'm not going to be. Uh, amazing at this. So I don't even want to be good because I don't want to try and again, this is that don't let the perfect be the enemy of the good it's okay.
To not be perfect, particularly in the beginning. So I want you to take a moment to think about this in your own life. Where does this perfectionism mentality get in the way of your success and your happiness? Where are you stopping yourself from trying something new or from being a beginner?
And where does it derail your train completely?
When it was only meant to be a bump in the road. When have you used a relapse or a moment of being human, a moment of desperation as an excuse to then let go completely. And go much farther in your self-sabotage than you would have otherwise. So I hope that this little reflection, I hope you take the time. I actually do this.
So maybe even pause this podcast and really reflect, maybe journal about it. Think about where you are letting the perfect be the enemy of the good again, it relates to recovery in particularly porn addiction, recovery. So well for so many people who are focused on nothing but their streak. They just want the number to get higher. And there are so focused on keeping that streak alive, that the moment their streak ends. They think I've lost it all.
So I might as well just give up completely. And this is why sometimes I, I recommend not putting too much emphasis on your streak. It is important to prolong your periods and to measure and get data and to say, Hey, I've been free of this for a full 30 days. That's amazing. But when you put too much emphasis on the streak being the most important thing, that's where you can get into trouble.
So, how do we combat this?
How do we combat this perfectionism mentality? Well, we need a counter philosophy. And there is one that is fortunately. Captured by this phrase. And another phrase that I love that has been super helpful for me in my journey of recovery, in my journey of business. My journey of health and wellness. Which is this. Progress not perfection. Progress not perfection. By focusing on just making progress each day or each week. You can let go of the need to be perfect. Because let's be real.
Perfection is a myth. We all have moments of struggle. We all have things that happen in our life. And that's good. You know, that's the spice of life we want. Things to change. We want things to be interesting, to be exciting. That's what makes life so beautiful, enrich. That's what makes art and music and love and drama.
And there's a lot of beauty to that. You know, the Tibetan Buddhist tradition, they call strong emotions, the fuel for liberation. Strong emotions. They're not the enemy or hindrance deliberation. They are actually the fuel, the gateway. To deeper happiness. If you get rid of all that, if you get rid of change. You know, there's no possibility of growing and evolving and becoming better. So focusing on progress, not perfection. Now on top of that, as one of my clients reminded me in our call this morning, where I was on a call with a coaching client. And my client reminded me of this. Uh, towards the end of our call, he just said, you know, Progress equals happiness. And that is so true.
I can't stress this enough when you are making progress in your life, even if it's incremental. There is such a joy, such a deep amount of happiness that comes when you know that you are progressing. When you know that you are growing and evolving. And looking at the contrary to that perfection does not equal happiness. Because when you feel like you are perfect, there's nowhere to go from there.
You know, you can actually feel stagnant and there's actually a lot of other weird and challenging emotions that can come with that feeling of, well I'm at the top. You know, that can be some imposter syndrome. There can be a lack of motivation, a lack of meaning or purpose. So we actually don't want to get to that place where we're perfect.
We want to stay in that state of constant progression, constant evolution. And so again, focusing on progress. Not perfection and recognizing that progress equals happiness. So I hope that this has been helpful a little Monday, motivation for you to let go of the idea or the need to be perfect. Don't let this prevent you from. Moving forward in your coverage.
Don't let one obstacle don't let any relapse don't let any negative thing that happens. Any human error or just being human. Don't let that. Make you think that you can't keep going?
So if you've relapsed today, if you've had some slip up in the past week, In the past month, whatever it is. Let this moment be the moment that you forgive yourself. And say, you know what? That wasn't how I wanted to behave.
That. Wasn't how I wanted to act. But I'm not going to continue to slide down the mountain just because of that one slip. I'm going to pick myself back up. I'm going to start again and I'm going to keep climbing this mountain. I don't need to be perfect the whole way.
This is a great analogy. This just came to me right now.
If you're climbing a mountain. And you. Want to get to the top of the mountain. There's no kind of feeling that you need to be entirely perfect on every step, right? If you slip and fall, sometimes that's okay. You know, that that's par for the course, you know, that that's normal that sometimes. You might slip, you might take a wrong turn. The point is not to be in a continuous one direction and never have any missteps.
The point is just to get to the top and keep climbing. And so if you slip it doesn't matter. Just get back up and keep going. Progress not perfection.
So I want to end today by asking for your support, which is again, something I do, because one way I keep this podcast ad free. That I don't need to get ads is that I run this podcast because it grows my business by reaching more people. And so I'd like your support in that. If you can leave a review. Or share this podcast with a friend. It means the world to me, it really makes a huge difference. So I would really appreciate if you can leave a review wherever you listen. Or share one of your favorite episodes with a friend. It really does make a huge difference. So that is it for today. Signing off. We will catch you on the next episode.