Progress, Not Perfection

This is the last one.

Seven weeks ago I told you that everybody already knows what to do, and that the failure point is never the path, it is the price. Then I spent six weeks naming my own half measures out loud, on air, in front of you. Today I tell you what happened to them.

Some of them moved. Some of them did not. I am going to be honest about which is which, including the one I am literally doing right now while I record this, and I am not going to clean it up to give you a better ending.

But I want to start somewhere else. A few nights ago, around ten thirty, I opened my garage door and the heat hit me like a wall. If you have been with me since Episode 5, you know what that heat did to me a few weeks ago. It got me spiritually twisted up. I argued with an artificial intelligence about a weather forecast, which is about as dumb as it sounds.

This time, standing in the exact same spot, in the exact same heat, something completely different came out of my mouth.

That is what this episode is about. Not arriving. Not being fixed. Standing in the same place you always stood and finding out you are not the same person.

We are also going to talk about how "progress, not perfection" gets misused, because it is the single easiest phrase in recovery to turn into a hall pass, and I would know.

If this series stirred something up in your marriage, come do an intensive with me. Two days, just the two of you and me, tools that work the day you get home. Details at https://www.smalleyinstitute.com/intensive

You can also get the full Whatever It Takes series in audio and transcript, and support this podcast, at https://www.smalleyinstitute.com/offers/jysNpzhW

Text me at (303) 435-2630 or visit smalleyinstitute.com