Not There Yet

My second year of teaching was much more difficult than my first. I actually allowed myself to relax some that first year. I forgave myself for my ignorance and mistakes. After all, I was new to teaching.
As an ambitious perfectionist, I felt as though I should have mastered teaching by the second year. Been there; done that. I felt frustrated and ineffective because I was still making many of the same errors that I made the first year.
Then I took a class with a teacher with over 20 years of experience. On the first day, she told the class all about an awesome, detailed, seemingly perfect new strategy she wanted to implement. She followed that with "but I'm not there yet". Over the 4 months of the course, which we took in her actual classroom, we got to see her strategy grow through all 4 steps of the plan-do-check-act cycle. By the end of the course, the strategy was integrated efficiently in her normal classroom routine. Even before the seamless transition was complete, the teacher was talking about another brilliant strategy, but she "wasn't there yet".
I have had the privilege of taking another class with her. She had incorporated the last strategy and several others, and she was excited about something new. Of course, she openly admitted that she "wasn't there yet".
By seeing her patience with herself as she continued to reflect, learn, and grow as a teacher with over 20 years of experience, I learned that I too need to be more patient with myself and my process.
Now when I do not perform as well as I would like or I make a mistake, I do not beat myself up or berate myself to others. I simply smile and say, "I'm not there yet."
How do you show yourself patience and kindness? Do you have any tips or tricks that help you to move through your process of improvement?