Killing Perfectionism

All too often you set off down a path of getting it done… getting it all done… and yet you somehow feel thwarted.  You’re thrown off, stopped by your own doing.

“I can’t submit this, it’s not ready.”

It looks like procrastination.  It feels like a burden. And the process of letting out something that is incomplete makes you feel so horribly vulnerable.

Welcome to this week’s Wednesdays With Wayne!

The truth is, the not-doing actually brings more unfavorable judgment than producing something that’s not “perfect.”

I’m a five-time author with several #1 Best Selling books.  And you know what, I want to go back and fix pieces of each book.  The voice in my head echoes: “I could have done better. That work could have been better.”  And, yes, I probably could have. And yet, when people write to me to tell me how my words have helped them, I once again become the believer in the perfectly imperfect.

In fact, what really matters is what I’ve called The Perfect Flaw.  It is our imperfections that make us perfect.  It is because we are different that we are perfect.  You could look at Stephen Hawking or Gandhi and have judgement.  You could look at the kids on one bus vs. another bus and have judgement.  Yet, against what criteria are we making a finding?

And it’s that question that we need to be asking ourselves.  Perfection is an iterative process. Against what criteria are we determining something being neither perfect nor good enough?  Remember that as a verb, you cannot perfect something that isn’t already out there to be perfected.

In talking with my brother, Gary, about this, he noted that perfection comes from a beautifully imperfect process.  “Perfection is the result and not the process.  The messier the process, the better the outcome.”  

PERFECTION COMES FROM A BEAUTIFULLY IMPERFECT PROCESS

What, then, is your tolerance for chaos?  

• In your organization as your team members, in their own unique individual ways, come together to align behind a master Vision?
• Internally, in YOU, as you wrestle to find the next word or solution, knowing that putting out something only partially complete leaves you vulnerable?

Embrace the perfect flaw.  Wound procrastination. Kill perfectionism.

Until next time, keep making your magic™!

To read more on what it takes to get yourself to that next beautiful space, boldly and gracefully, check out Dynamic Transitions at www.WaynePernell.com/books

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~ Dr P ~