NO SUCH THING AS PERFECT

Let me tell you a hard truth: no matter how hard you try, you will never be perfect. Nothing you do will ever be perfect…and now that you know that, you can get busy taking action and changing your life!
Admitting and accepting that you will never attain perfection is an important step in your business, your career, and your life. When you worry too much about doing things perfectly, one of two things happens: you do the thing, but you don’t meet your expectations (which are usually unrealistic in the first place) or you completely avoid doing the thing so that you don’t have to deal with the potential disappointment in yourself or judgment from others.
It doesn’t have to be this way.
Perfection does not exist. I want you push it right on out of your mind and focus instead on progress, on striving for excellence instead of perfection. When you focus on progress, on EXCELLence (the act of excelling…aka: getting better at something), you will see measurable results and will enjoy the process of getting those results.

If you have been part of this blog for a while, you know that I am a huge fan of Adam Grant. He is one of the few people I follow on social media because he provides such valuable information and insight into the ways people think, communicate, and act on information. Recently I came across this post on his Facebook page:

That last part is the part I want you to remember. Success equals improvement from the starting point! Falling short is not the end of the world. It is often just one of many steps to success. When you reach the goal, it won’t matter that you fell short once, twice, or even ten times, it will only matter that you succeeded!

It’s football season in the US. We are die hard Green Bay Packers fans at house...I know I know, they’re not doing so great this year, but we love them anyway.

Sports are a great example of striving for excellence while never reaching perfection.

Let’s talk about the 1972 Miami Dolphins football team, the only team to ever have the “perfect season”. The 1972 season stands alone in NFL history as the only one where one team was undefeated all the way to the super bowl and won it, hence the “perfect season”.

But it wasn’t perfect. Yes, they won every game, and their record reflected 0 losses. But the season was filled with errors.

In order to be the perfect season, there would have had to have been 0 fumbles, 0 turnovers, 0 missed plays, blocks, and tackles, 0 penalties, and 0 points scored by any of the teams they played in every single game.

That’s not what happened at all. There were missed catches, dropped balls, and points scored by the opposing teams. The perfect season wasn’t perfect at all. That doesn’t make it any less great.

Greatness is achieved in the journey, not in the results.

I’m telling you this because I want you to know that perfection doesn’t exist, but the idea of it does and it can stop you dead in your tracks if you let it.

As a business owner, there are a lot of things we have to learn. It is overwhelming. Pile on top of that the unrealistic desire to do all of those things perfectly and in a certain way, it makes it hard to see how anyone is ever able to get a business off the ground.

Let me tell you the secret of those you see that are killing it in their business: they don’t try to be perfect. They just take action. That’s it. They do the next thing that needs to be done. If it doesn’t work or doesn’t turn out the way they planned, the adjust their course of action and then they do it again utilizing the information they gleaned from the first attempt. It is that simple. Think of the old adage “if at first you don’t succeed, try try again!”

Thanks for stopping by! If you are tired of letting flawed ideals of perfection get in your way, reach out to me. Book a call or reach out to me on social media - I would love to work with you one on one and help you get out of your own way.

I currently have openings for new communication and mindset coaching clients and would love to help you build your skills, change your mindset, and change your life! Head on over to my resources page now! I can’t wait to connect with you!

I hope to see you soon!

Ciao for now!