Mia L.

Photography by Alyssa Jackson

If you are reading this, you don’t have to be perfect to be proud of yourself.

For a long time, I thought being proud of myself meant finally reaching a point where everything felt finished. Where the grades were high enough, the goals were met, and there was nothing left to fix. But every time I got there, the standard moved. The next goal appeared before I had time to recognize how far I had come. The grind mentality slowly started to eat at me. What I thought was motivation slowly became pressure, and pressure started to sound like my own voice.

I became really good at noticing what I could have done better. What I had done wrong. Not the effort, not the growth, just the gaps. I told myself that being hard on myself meant I cared. That if I relaxed, I would fall behind. The voice in my head convinced me that everyone else was holding me to this expectation of being perfect. I kept pushing myself to be better, but all it really did was make every accomplishment feel temporary, like it only counted until the next expectation replaced it.

I started to realize that no one else was expecting perfection from me the way I was expecting it from myself. The pressure I thought was pushing me forward was actually preventing me from appreciating what I had already done. I wasn’t allowing myself to feel proud before moving on to the next thing, and in doing that, I kept turning progress into something that never felt like enough.

I am still learning that pride does not have to wait for perfection. That effort matters even when the outcome is not flawless. That growth is not supposed to look polished while it is happening. Some days, doing your best means finishing something even when it feels incomplete. Other days, it means letting something be good enough.

So if you are someone who keeps raising the bar for yourself, take a moment and give yourself some grace. Think about how far you have already come, not just how far you still want to go. You are allowed to feel proud before everything is perfect. You are allowed to feel proud while you are still becoming.

Mia L., University of Wisconsin

Connect With Us

To follow IfYoureReadingThis at Wisco on Instagram, get in touch with our chapter, and learn about more resources available to Wisco students, visit our chapter’s homepage.