‘Practice Makes Perfect’ Gets a Makeover

Well, actually more like a make-under.

Or whatever it is you’d call the new parenting movement in America wherein we stop over-promising results and rewarding mediocre behavior. Wherein we strip all the make-up away and take a good look at reality.

Yikes. That could be seriously scary.

I don’t know about you, but if I’d been told practice makes progress, which is the new Pro Practice campaign, I’d have given up.

I mean progress? What the hell kind of promise is that?

This is America! We want perfect. And BTW… sooner rather than later!

Progress??? It has all kinds of incremental and unimpressive connotations. It whispers, look at me, I’m doing my unexceptional best. And maybe one day I can eek my way up to slightly above ordinary.

What kind of legitimate marketing campaign can you build around ‘progress’.

Not your Parent’s Progress!

Maybe she’s born with it. Maybe it’s progress.

Progress. Don’t leave home without it.

Progress. Takes a licking and keeps on ticking.

Got Progress?

Progress. Can You Hear Me Now?

Progress: There is no substitute.

Progress. We try harder.

Think Progress.

There are some things money can’t buy. For everything else, there’s progress.

Not really feeling it. I mean if we’re talking about construction on I-95 or the national debt, okay. But where personal potential is concerned don’t we want to be striving for something slightly more promising than… progress.

Now, obviously perfect is a flat-out lie.

But it’s something to shoot for, no? I mean what if we switched up Shoot for the Stars to Shoot for the fourth branch of that sapling. Uh, no thanks.

I’d rather take a nap.

I heard this ground-breaking news about the shift in what we can say ‘Practice Makes’ where I hear most of my headline stories– at the gym.

The instructor started to say that if we practice a certain stretch wherein our knees bend outward and touch the floor like grasshoppers eventually we will achieve perfection.

Then, she caught herself and referencing the new school protocol she lowered the bar to we will achieve… progress!

And the crowd goes… quiet.

I sarcastically scoff, “”Well there’s an incentive!”

The sweet woman behind me quietly says, “I think progress is better.” I immediately turn around and agree, say I was just kidding.

I don’t want to be one of those horrible over-achieving Fairfield County parents.

Oops. Too late.

In all seriousness, I’d like to make a plea for something more aspirational than progress. Is it true that practice makes progress? You’d sure hope so. Otherwise there’s really no point!

And perfect as in without flaws is unattainable.

But what about Practice makes you powerful.

Powerful as in resilient, filled with fortitude, and the strength to make some serious mojo.