Recently a friend of mine said to me, “When you review your progress, there are two ways to look at your results: glass is getting fuller, or glass is getting less empty.”
For example, if you are trying to lose weight, you can see things as “I’ve lost seven pounds,” or you can see them as “I still need to lose eighteen pounds to reach my goal weight.”
I think this is a great distinction. The first way of looking at things, where you celebrate your progress, is the much healthier and productive attitude.
When you focus on how far you have to go, things can become overwhelming. It’s tempting to say, “What’s the point?” What you do today can seem like a drop in the bucket. The entire time you spend working toward your goal is time you spend feeling inferior, because you haven’t reached your definition of success yet.… Read more