When Ok is Ok—Really!

April 10, 2019

I am a recovering perfectionist. My nature is to obsess about ways to take something to the next level. On the one hand, my perfectionist mentality is what has made my work great and led to accolades and promotions, but what I’ve come to realize is that this obsession with perfection also can be paralyzing.

There isn’t anything wrong with wanting to produce our best work. It’s not about putting out “shoddy” work. However, there is a big difference between excellence and perfectionism. Perfection is mostly about protecting ego and pride.

When I find myself obsessing over whether something is good enough, I must remind myself that progress is better than perfectionism.

Hiding inside perfectionism is fear of failure, which never would have allowed me to start a communications business over 11 years ago or stand in front of hundreds of people conducting personal branding workshops. While those ventures didn’t start “perfect,” over the years I have been able to tweak both ventures to improve them.

Perfectionism is a personal standard, attitude, or philosophy that demands perfection and rejects anything less. Excellence is a talent or quality which is unusually good and surpasses ordinary standards.

In his book, Moving Past Perfect, Thomas Greenspon referred to the following quote that has been adapted by various people:

“Excellence is risk. Perfection is fear.”

Excellence is confidence. Perfectionism is doubt.”

So how do we move past perfect? Below are a few tips:

• Be willing to put out less than perfect work. No matter how perfect you think something is, you are probably going to change it. For instance, the initial draft of my blog is never perfect. It takes several iterations before I am satisfied with it. Also, there are times when I have pushed the send button based on my production schedule and had to go back and update/correct something.
• Get off the sidelines of life. Perfectionist is a roadblock between the life we are living and creating a life of our dreams. Draw a line at 90% versus 100%. Your 90% is better than most people.
• Silence the inner critic.Sometimes negative self-talk happens so often that it becomes background noise, but this kind of criticism can seriously damage your self-confidence. Giving yourself a little pep talk when you’re overly critical can do wonders. 
• Don’t worry what people think. Perfectionism is the ultimate fear that the world is going to see you for who you really are. I find that the people who are the most critical, are the hardest on themselves.

Don’t let perfectionism hold you back in life. Remember we are all human and all have flaws. By removing the “all or nothing” mindset, you can make improvements, without the unrealistic expectation of getting it perfect every time.