Perfect/not perfect

​I’ve come across something that has given me pause, something that I couldn’t figure out in my head right away.
I am a firm believer that you are perfect the way you are, right now, in this very moment.  There is nothing wrong with you. You are not broken so you don’t need to be fixed. 

There is an online personal trainer by the name of James Smith that I have come to admire. I appreciate his thought process about fitness as well as his no-nonsense communication. (He uses adult language and makes no apology for it, so if you look him up on FB or IG, you’ve been informed)

James wrote an email recently stating “things don’t have to be perfect to work incredibly well."  Brilliant!  It is also something I believe in whole heartedly, yet in my head I’ve always phrased it, you don’t have to be perfect to start. It was one of the things that got me moving last June and into the gym.

But I found myself struggling with the two concepts. "You are perfect the way you are" and "things don’t have to be perfect to work incredibly well".  It sounds like I am saying two very different things yet, I think they are interconnected.  

I fundamentally believe that people are perfect, just the mechanics of the human body alone is impressive.  We all have a past, some pasts were intense and messed up.  Some of us skated through life and some of us survived by the skin of our teeth. We may feel messed up inside have serious stuff to conquer.  But with all of that, there is nothing “wrong” with us.  Let that sink in, for some this will be a difficult concept to try on.

Then, I say you don’t have to be perfect to start.  This thought is more about our ego, our relationship to those things they we know we “should” do or “need” to do to be a better person…blah blah blah (there is nothing wrong with us remember)
But those thoughts can often hinder us when we have goals we want to accomplish. You may want to lose weight, look better naked, have more self confidence in the skin you are in. Most of us know the steps we have to take to get some of that stuff taken care of.  Eat right and exercise right? That is the nitty gritty, no nonsense answer - eat right and exercise. It seems to be a pretty simple concept. So, what stops us?

Some of us think we need to buy the right clothes in order to start exercising, or buy all the right groceries to start eating right, or print out all the right recipes.  We may think we have to know all the right weights to lift or master all the exercises we need to do before we step foot in a gym.  This isn’t just about exercise by the way.  How many people think we need just the right notebook or planner before we can get our desk/life organized? (I am guilty of this)
Or that we have to have a list of all the things we want to take into our therapists office before we even call to make an appointment.  Maybe its that we feel we need to have just the right thing to say in just the right way before we can post our blog or that I need to complete my personal training certificate before I can start sharing some of my thoughts or things I’ve learned.

Things do not have to be perfect to start.  The more I blog the better I’ll get.  The more I write down everything I eat the more conscious I’ll be about what goes into my mouth.  The more times I go to the gym, the more I’ll learn about my body and what it can do.  Going to the gym is something I have to recommit to on a weekly basis (that will be an upcoming blog).

So you are perfect, there is nothing wrong with you.  Now stop worrying about having all your ducks in a row before you take that first step, whether it be out your front door with your sneakers on, or into the gym to lift weights, or before you make an appointment with a health professional.  I can take that step, post my blog and watch how incredibly well it works out.

The point is to just take that step, then the next.  Things do not have to be perfect to work incredibly well. 
Thank you James Smith!