Yesterday I had this moment where I had a glimpse of a path I lost. I got an email from a colleague I worked with a few years ago. At the time, we were at the same level in the company and now he’s quite a few levels above me. Just seeing his name and title triggered a whole slew of emotions.

I thought about how I chose to slow down my career and work from home and how I changed job groups to be able to achieve that. And, not just that, but how I gave up potential promotions, raises, power, etc, etc. along the process. The name was a reminder of life I never got to live. The career success I walked away from.

When I drive to school to pickup Nathaniel from school, I have a similar flash of another unlived life. I see all the moms who aren’t working at all and can spend all their time with their kids. I see them take their kids to fun classes or play dates after school. I see them meet each other and socialize. I see the life of a truly stay-at-home mom and yearn for that life I didn’t get to have.

And the same happens when I am around my coaching classmates who are starting their businesses. Or artists who sell their art and pursue it fulltime. People who teach.

I think of all the paths I didn’t walk down. All the lives I didn’t get to live. The direct reminder of the choices I made (or didn’t make) that caused me to be here and not there.

This isn’t about regret. I don’t regret the paths I took. I know that I spent time thinking about my steps and the directions I chose. But when I saw his name, it was just a tangible reminder of what I walked away from. If I had stayed at work, I might not have been able to stay home and hug my kids but I could provide so much more for them. I would be more powerful and maybe they’d be proud of that. I just found my mind wondering and aching a bit. Where the path I didn’t take felt like a loss.

Instead of chastising myself or even reminding myself that there was a reason I made the choice I made, I let myself mourn. I gave myself permission to be sad and really let that soak in. And then I imagined having taken that path. Let’s say I was this powerful, recognized employee now. How did that feel (I tried to imagine since I can’t really know for sure.) and then I remembered the last time I was close to that feeling and how it wasn’t anything special. How it didn’t really fulfill me. Others respected and looked up to me maybe. But I didn’t like it. I didn’t feel special. I didn’t feel fulfilled.

Which was the reason I chose this path to begin with.

I just needed the reminder. There’s a reason I am not working the full career path anymore. There’s also a reason I am not fully at home. Or a full-time coach or artist or anything else. I am very purposeful about what I do and don’t do. I work hard at living my life by design.

But even with that, sometimes it’s ok to mourn the lives I didn’t get to live. It’s ok to feel sad. It’s ok to doubt. It’s ok to imagine trying it on and making sure it still feels like the path I chose not to take. We change over time and it’s valuable to make sure the decisions we made are still consistent with our goals now.

So I let myself soak it all in and then I felt a huge rush of gratitude for where I am. For all I get to have. For all I get to do. Maybe I don’t have the ultimate version of any of those lives but I get to have a bit of all and I get to experience the joy of each.

And, for now, that’ll do.

That’ll do just fine.

Even though I’ve written about this before, One of the things I’ve been trying to remind myself lately is that life is not all or nothing. When I have a goal, I don’t have to look at it as met or unmet.

For example, I’ve been making an effort to eat healthier. I work at home and I don’t cook. What I eat has never been a big priority for me. Some days, it will be 2pm before I’ve had any real food (besides tea) and as soon as I realize I haven’t eaten, I will be famished and make some unwise choices. More significantly, I realized that I tend to have the “all or nothing” mentality. If I don’t have a salad to eat, I’ll just eat something unhealthy. I think “if I can’t do it perfectly right, I might as well just do it wrong.” Like if I don’t have “good” vegetables, eating corn is just as bad as eating chocolate.

Which is clearly not the case.

If I weren’t on a streak, I could totally see myself doing the same thing for exercise. Like if I can’t run for 3 miles, I might as well not bother at all. Which couldn’t be further from the truth. A 1-mile run is still considerably better than no run. And when you add them up, a week of daily 1-mile runs have a strong cumulative effect, especially compared to a week of no runs at all. In one scenario, I ran 7 miles in that week and in the other, I ran zero.

How are seven and zero interchangeable?

But this is how we tend to think: If I can’t do it right, I might as well not do it at all.

Or, “I already messed up, what’s the point?” Eating one chocolate is not the same as eating the whole box. Life doesn’t operate on the black and while extremes. Nor do your goals. When you’re mean to someone, it’s not too late. You have a million opportunities to apologize. When you break one goal, you can restart the next day. This is one of the reasons it’s helpful to let go of the day at the end of each day. If you learn to forgive yourself and let go of your guilt, you get to have another chance tomorrow morning. All you need is some self-compassion.

So, my plan for this holiday season is to remember the value of self-compassion and baby steps. If I learn to forgive myself, I know I am more likely to succeed the next day. And if I can remember that every step counts and there are a lot of smaller things I can to reach my goal (or even to not walk further away from my goal) I know that I am more likely to move forward.

As we go into the craziness and calm and inertia of the holiday season, I feel the need to remind myself that every day I do something towards my goals, however small, is another day I am that much closer to them. It’s not black or white. It’s not all or nothing. It’s all about the millions of tiny, small steps. It’s all about the gray.

It all counts.