Anxious Living

How I Progress

November 2nd, 2006 by Aaron

Triggered by my last post, and Ryan’s insightful comment to it, I’ve remembered a few tricks that have really helped me in the past but that I seem to have lost touch with lately.

The first is a mantra: slow and steady progress.

Any time I get to worrying about some goal, or working through a difficult project, I used to remind myself that the only way through is slow and steady progress.  I remind myself that I don’t have to finish everything at once.  I remind myself that if I work steadily eventually that will build into real progress, no matter how slowly I work, or how little progress it feels like I make each day.  That steady progress accumulates over time and eventually it becomes a solid foundation and the task does not seem so monumental.  Which ties in nicely to second part.

I don’t remember where I heard this, but it is a fairly common idea from motivational philosophies, I believe.  Whenever you measure progress it is better to look backward rather than forward.  Always gauge how you are doing based on where you were rather than where you want to be.  It is easy to look at where you would like to be and despair at how you are not there.  But if you look back instead, you can focus on how things have gotten better.

Looking forward, I see how far off the goal of not being at the whim of anxiety seems.  But looking backward I can see how I have progressed.  Not but a year ago, I didn’t even have a good conceptual handle on what was going on.  I’d mostly just beat myself up for anxious thoughts and wonder what the hell made me so pathetic.  Now I see clearly what is going on and I’ve gotten a much better perspective on my problems.  That in itself is worth celebrating.

And none of it felt monumental at the time.  It was gained through slow and steady progress.  I can never remind myself of that enough.

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