What Counts As Progress?

The idea for this post stemmed from what I wrote last week about setbacks. I’ve been trying to think of different ways to process setbacks, and a large aspect of that is thinking about the progress I’ve made. Sure, I can take a step back on something in life, but am I remembering the three steps forward? It is a good reminder to think about the ways we process setbacks, but it also made me realize something about progress – and that is that I don’t always know how to track it.

This might make me sound old (I’m starting to say that a lot these days), but it does seem like in today’s day and age, we can track everything. If you want to plan something, organize something, or sort out a routine, there’s an app or a tool or something to help you track it. There are a million and one ways to see our progress in all aspects of our lives – and I think because of that, we start to feel like we should be able to track our own progress as human beings (oh, if it were only so simple).

How do you measure your progress? Take, for instance, exercise. Pretty simple, right? If your goal is to run a marathon, you can train for it, and use distance, time, or other measurements to track your progress leading up to the race. There are plenty of ways to measure progress like this – we look at where we are now, where we want to be, and where we’ve been to count that progress.

But life doesn’t always work like that. We have ups and downs, periods where it seems like nothing is happening and times where it feels like one thing after another. When it comes to mental health, our journeys can have more twists and turns than we know what to do with. And when it comes to our mental health, knowing what progress looks like is very similar to knowing ourselves.

When I was first dealing with my mental health challenges, I don’t think I knew how to measure progress. One of the reasons for that was that I didn’t know myself all that well. I didn’t know what I was dealing with. But after more than a decade of learning about my own mental health and the challenges I have, I’ve come to know myself just as well. Today, I can measure progress in a way that was impossible a decade ago, or even just a few years ago.

This might sound like I’m just pondering on the concept of progress, but I promise it’s deeper than that. Because each one of us has our own definition of progress and what it looks like in our lives. And because of this, it’s up to each and every one of us to know what actually counts as progress.

For instance, I currently have a goal of meditating at least five times per week. And while I don’t often meet that goal, it exists because of progress I’ve made in meditation over the years. It only exists because of the hundreds of times I’ve sat myself down, pressed play on a meditation, and focused on my breathing. But for someone else, that same goal might feel easy. It might feel impossible. And whether they succeed or fail, they would have a different vision of the progress they’ve made based on who they are and their own life experiences.

I guess my point is, at the end of the day, progress is progress. And what looks like one step forward to one person, could look like ten steps forward to someone else. It’s up to you to know what actually counts, and I hope that gives you confidence as you move forward in your mental health journey. Because while it’s nice to keep on top of everything little thing, there’s nothing wrong with zooming out, looking at the bigger picture, and realizing that human beings often accomplish a lot more than we ever give ourselves credit for.