At least…
Sometimes we all get into a funk. I'm not talking about the big-hair, bell-bottomed, kung-fu-kicks in the air kind of funk either. This is the funk where we look at what we are doing to reach our goals, determine that we are not as far along as we'd like to be, and then say, "Well, AT LEAST I'm not as bad as _____" or "At least I do what I need to some of the time..." Why are we consoling ourselves and how we feel about a lack of progress by saying "at least"? It's one thing to acknowledge the effort you've put into something, and then use that to move forward and put MORE effort into it, but when we tell ourselves, "At least I did this much" it's like we are pardoning ourselves and saying, "You didn't reach that goal you set for yourself, but good job for trying at all."Now, effort SHOULD be rewarded. But it needs to be proportionate to what that effort accomplished.
Let's draw a parallel: You start to mow your lawn (good) and it's a hot day out so you decide to take a water break mid-mow. You're standing there, drinking your water, looking at the half-mowed lawn and you decide that you don't wanna mow anymore today. Do you say, "At least I mowed half the lawn"? Heck no; now your lawn looks even worse than it did before you started the job. Good job for starting something that needs to get done, but it didn't get done... now what? Here's another one: You decide you are going to get fit and take the 100 pushups challenge. So you print out the schedule, start doing your workouts, feelin' the burn, and day-by-day you get stronger. Awesome! Then, the inevitable: life hands you lemons, and while you are trying to make lemonade, you got the juice in that paper-cut from the office and now your left hand is in crazy pain! No pushups today 🙁 Following a series of unfortunate events, you look back and it's been 2 weeks since you did your daily workout... "Well, at least..." you begin to tell yourself.

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