The last few months I’ve been slowing down my activity level, due to a human brewing inside me. Instead of hitting up the climbing gym or going on big day trips I’ve been downsizing my adventure days and incorporating more handmade homemade days.

Today is our fetuses 6month birthday and I’ve completed a mini quilt that I had started a few days ago.

When people see my projects they think “wow, you just whipped that together!” Or “I could never do that, I don’t have the time. ”

The thing is I didn’t “whip it together.” It took me 30 hours over four days with early mornings and late nights of sewing and a crap load of Net Flix – and it took patience.

The other thing it required was accepting imperfection.

While I was sewing away I tried my best to keep my cuts straight, my lines straight and my measurements as accurate as possible. However as the quilt got bigger and bigger every millimeter off became an inch and everything started to shift.

Similar to life we often begin new challenges thinking we’ll learn step by step and do everyone perfectly, but as we invest ourselves – whether it be climbing, paddling, painting or singing – we tend to make, what seems like more and more mistakes along the way.

It can be frustrating, yes, but this is what separates those who say “they can’t” from those who “I can, I am, I will.”

I look at my quilt as each phase passes me by and I think to myself well it’s one little thing that’s off here, will the quilt still function? And what will it look like in the end ? The big picture. I come to the conclusions over and over again that’s it’s going to still be awesome and I’m okay with the hiccups.

I wasn’t always this forgiving with myself. Even with my progress, I sometimes I still get frustrated when I fail, but I realized while making this quilt that over the years in my learning I’ve become more of a big picture person.

Instead of giving up when I make crooked stitch, I make the next one a little straighter. Or I take it apart and try again. Instead of going home after failed attempts at a climbing problem, I take a break and try again.

Life is like making a quilt. It’s a long hard road to get to the end. Often times monotonous, with clumps of knots along the way and crooked lines that take you places you never expect. You can choose to keep making new quilts and quit every time you mess up, but where will that get you?

It’s often better to continue on the same path, the same quilt and accept those mistakes because in the end… the big picture results in something quite amazing.

As a great mean once said (insert quilts instead of kicks):

I fear not the man who has practiced 10,000 kicks once, but I fear the man who has practiced one kick 10,000 times. Bruce Lee

What was the last thing you tried and pushed through to the end ? Share your growth story with us!