Imperfect Progress

I came across a phrase this week: Imperfect Progress. The explanation that came after it read: slow steps of progress wrapped in grace. To me, those are beautiful words. Words that stop you and cause you to reread them, slowly drinking them in and feeling a gracious release of weight.

I don't know when I developed a perfectionist mindset, but somewhere along the lines I clearly did. I'm not alone in it either, God only knows how many others out there stop and do a double take at a phrase like "imperfect progress". The thing about a perfectionist mindset is that it's not realistic...or even healthy. In fact, I think it diminishes learning and performance more than elevating it.

 
During college tennis I went through this drought where my serve completely disappeared. I mean, I'm not talking a double fault here and there, I'm talking gone. Like, Gone Girl gone (great book, by the way). I couldn't get a serve in half the time to save my life...in fact I can confidently say I would have been even less likely to get it in if my life had depended on it. So, I did what any perfectionist athlete would do and I hit the court...harder. Clearly three to four hours a day wasn't enough, I needed more -a lot more. Except, that didn't fix the problem. Not even close. Maybe, it even made it worse.  The fact was I already knew how to serve. But, there were outside factors in my life at that time that had changed my mindset, and deep down there was an unconscious fear that didn't believe in my ability to serve anymore. Fear, even unconscious, can change the way our brain and body react. Combine that fear with a perfectionist outlook and you may begin to see a jaded view of progress.

The point is: our mindset and the framework of words and beliefs, or disbelief, we feed ourselves strongly correlates to our performance. I know this isn't just me because the fact is there's a whole juicy market out there in sports psychology. But, it got me thinking: it's not just sports. This applies to all learning and performance. It applies to problem solving. And problem solving directly feeds into literacy, mathematics, science, you name it.

Some of my first graders already struggle with a perfectionist mindset. One thing about first graders is that they are very concrete. There is right and there is wrong. There is good and there is bad. It can be a challenge helping them to see that there isn't only back and white, but also many shades of grey. However; adult influences on them are so strong at this young age while their minds and beliefs are molding. They need the right words to give themselves. It's crucial they learn that progress is slow, and should be wrapped in grace. That mistakes lend themselves to that progress, and aren't a sign of failure. Because, at the end of the day a child who believes that they can learn to read is going to make far more progress than a child who secretly fears they won't be able to read. And that has nothing to do with skills they know (I'm not saying teaching skills isn't important -it is!). We need to be teaching them the proper verbage to use in their own self-talk in order to see risk as opportunity rather than a fear to avoid. It's vital I'm teaching the whole child in order to set them up for a life of successful problem solving and learning.