Doing what you can

I only made a fraction of the progress I was planning to make today due to unexpected challenges.

With the luxury of hindsight, it’s easy declare that obviously focusing on making progress is the right response and that feeling frustrated over the unexpected challenges simply is a waste of energy. But the reality is that in the heat of frustrating circumstances we’re bound to feel at least a little frustrated.

Teddy Roosevelt famously offered the sage advice, “Do what you can, with what you’ve got, where you are.”

Allowing yourself to be human first is key to embodying this advice. That means means allowing yourself to feel frustrated instead of viewing it as yet another failure to get back on track with your goals and then, when you’re ready, focusing on the progress you can make.

We don’t need to be this spitting image of a perfectly zen, emotionless rock to be effective. We just need to remember and accept that we’re human.