I remember where I was when I realized the idiom that had been drilled into my head for my entire life was INACCURATE.

“Practice makes perfect.”

No, it sure as hell does not. More on that in a moment.

A practice is something that’s meant to be continued, worked on, tweaked, updated, and savored. It’s something you’re meant to be enveloped in for an extended amount of time.

That day, sweating on my yoga mat, when the teacher said, “this is your practice,” it hit me. He went on with a warm, reassuring voice to say that our practices are meant to be our own, to look any way we need them to look, depending on how we were feeling, what our bodies needed, and our experience level.

A practice.
What a beautiful idea.

That stuck with me through years of (admittedly dwindling) yoga practice. 

But then something happened.

I began to understand that most things are a practice. Even things that might not classified as such, like celebration, choosing optimism over pessimism, being social, and pleasure.

All practices.

Everything in life can be a practice, especially if it’s not something that comes naturally. 

The things in life you want more of? Sounds like you have a practice on your hands.

I want more sleep. 
Sleep is a practice.

I have forgotten how to let go and just have fun.
Fun is a practice.

I want to be the kind of mom who can create space for my emotionally overflowing daughter to have her emotions, even though the emotions are all too real and make me uncomfortable (because I’m basically reparenting myself) That’s a practice. A HARD ONE!

I want to be a present human, not incessantly looking at/reaching for/relying on her phone.
This is a bitch of a practice, but a worthy one.

Rediscovering joy in daily movement? Total practice.

I know what you’re thinking. Having so many practices in life sounds exhausting. Why would I want to use this classification?

Practices aren’t meant to be hard necessarily, but they do require discipline. The beauty is in the satisfaction of practicing (ha!) discipline. And the reward is the process of discovering new things about your practice, and yourself.

A note about the idiom.

If we are all practicing to achieve perfection which, ahem, barely exists, what are we really doing to ourselves?

Creating a lot of stress, discontent, self doubt, and disappointment.

Practice was never about becoming perfect. Practice was about embracing discomfort, and finding the beauty in the imperfect journey for life.

As I reframe much of how I perceive life, I will choose to view most things as a practice. I believe there’s a lot more joy and satisfaction in this approach— and freedom from having to chase something that was never meant to reach a perfect finish.