Or, how not to succeed.
I was driving to work today listening to a talk from church and had this thought pop into my head.
“What do I work on next?”
If you haven’t noticed, I don’t like being stagnant. I was feeling OK with life, and they always talk about pushing yourself out of your comfort zone. At church, and oft-heard refrain is that “God afflicts the comfortable,” to which the given prevention is to always be afflicting yourself.
(As an aside, I’m not entirely sure that’s how it works. If the idea is that God wants you to grow and improve and knows exactly the best way for you to do so, why would He wait until you have stopped moving to do it? That suggests that God will let you “know better” until you pause to let Him work. That….doesn’t make sense.)
So I had that thought and immediately started trying to think of what to work on. Fortunately, another part of my brain kicked that thought process right to the curb.
I’m in pilot training still. It’s not UPT, but it’s intense in its own way. I’ve still got a wife and now two kids. I’m helping run a real estate business. I am working on a software project. I don’t need to worry about “doing more”.
It’s ok to do what you’re doing. Life is not an incessant race up a mountain. You’re not going to be perfect now. As Jesse Mecham discussed in a recent podcast, there are infinite things to do, infinite ways to improve. In the religious perspective, perfection is therefore an infinite goal. You cannot reach it in this life, so stop demanding it right now.
Just do your best. Stop demanding so much and go do some good instead.