We’ve all been there: a Saturday morning filled with rare, early-spring sunshine, people chatting amicably in the street, and the door to the fitness class you ambitiously signed yourself up for looming ahead. Suddenly, it doesn’t feel like a good idea anymore. It feels like the ill-conceived, wishful thinking of someone guiltily returning to their New Year’s resolutions a month too late. And now, watching the stream of lean, toned bodies filter into the studio, it also begins to feel like a pointed reminder of what you could have achieved if you’d just stuck with last year’s goal.
But the class was non-refundable and you’re already here. So, in you go. And somewhere between looking enviously at the matching baby pink workout sets that make your own frayed leggings seem immediately hideous and the sympathetic smile the teacher gave you when you collapsed onto the mat after the sixth forearm plank in 10 minutes, the shame creeps in.
Shame that you didn’t come to the class sooner.
Shame that you came at all.
Shame that you can’t keep up with the other women here who seem to glisten with the exertion rather than collapse under the fatigue of holding their 2kg weight aloft.
And as you pack up your things at the end, you do feel proud of yourself for showing up and getting through the hour. But that small pride falters when you remember that moment when you thought you were doing well and then looked up to see that everyone else was doing a completely different thing and you had to pretend you knew what was going on. So, you vow never to show your face here again and you sneak past the receptionist booking everyone in for their next session.
It’s something we’ve all encountered, in one form or another: a stark reminder of the distance between where we want to be and where we actually are. More often than not, it’s not just fear and shame getting the better of us. It’s our desire for perfection that stops us from ever starting.
But this is the truth: it is better to do something a little bit, even badly, than to not do it at all.
Cleaning the room that’s become an impossible mess even 20 per cent is better than leaving it untouched. Drinking two glasses of water rather than the recommended daily eight is better than drinking none. Doing five minutes of exercise at home using tins of beans as handheld weights is better than not giving your body a chance to move. Just because you can’t do it perfectly doesn’t mean you shouldn’t do it in whatever capacity you can.
We often compare ourselves to other people’s highest standard. We see the habits that they’ve built up over many years and feel that we’ve let ourselves down by not being at their level. What we don’t see is the same struggle they faced when they were at the beginning of their journey.
There will always be days when we fall short of all our goals, just as there will be days when we achieve everything we set out to do. There will be moments when we feel like an imposter in our own lives, and there will be moments when we realise we have orchestrated our own success. This is the balance that no one else sees, but the one we all experience.
Don’t allow the fear of failing to stop you from trying.
Don’t get hung up on trying to be perfect.
Starting from wherever you are is good enough.
(It might even be better.)
