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Tom Adams’ Marketing Jolt column in this issue got me thinking about perfectionism. Or, more accurately, got me thinking more about perfectionism, as it’s an issue that I’ve been struggling with lately. It’s a personality trait that I inherited from my dad, who has many home projects (including projects at my house) that remain unfinished because he encountered some difficulty that made his definition of perfection unattainable. “Sometimes good enough is good enough,” I remind him. I also have to remind myself of that fairly regularly. If you’re like Dad and me and you find yourself putting off starting or completing projects, whether they are that new marketing piece, painting the living room or training for a race, because you’re afraid of falling short of perfect, I recently read a blog post by Nicole Antoinette that offers some good advice. Antoinette, a life coach and endurance runner, is the women behind the website “A Life Less Bullshit,” www.lifelessbullshit.com. (If you decide to check out her website, be warned: She’s very fond of swearing, as you might guess from the title of her website.) She describes a life less bullshit as “you at your best—confident as hell, exploding with creativity, brilliant at time management, free from perfectionism, procrastination and self-limiting beliefs and armed with healthy habits for being happy, fit, fun and deliciously fulfilled. Basically, it’s everything that shines through once you ditch the bullshit you think you ‘should’ want in favor of what you actually do want.” Her advice for avoiding the crippling habit of perfectionism is deceptively simple. First, she suggests that readers “do more stuff,” saying that quantity over quality in the beginning can be helpful in getting past fears of messing up. Second, she advises her readers to stop comparing themselves to others. Social media often provides the fodder for this sort of thing. She reminds her readers, “You have complete control over what you let into your life—and it’s time to start exercising the hell out of that control.” Third, Antoinette suggests that the world is not black and white and that many things cannot be described as either good or bad. “There’s a huge colorful spectrum of everything, and it’s time we start seeing the world that way. With the black-and-white mindset, we eat a food that we think is ‘bad,’ and then we say, ‘Well, I’ve had one bad thing, which means I’ve messed everything up, which means I've failed, and so I might as well eat 12 more bad things and start over again tomorrow—because tomorrow I'll eat perfectly.’” She closes her post by reminding her readers that what they tell themselves becomes their realities. (In my case, I’ve been telling myself for the last year that I’m not a runner, though I go running regularly. I bet my runs would be much easier if I starting telling myself I am a runner.) “Tell yourself that done is better than perfect,” she advises. “Tell yourself you’re going to do whatever your ‘it’ is, even if you’re not ‘ready.’ Even if you don’t have all the I’s dotted in your ‘perfect’ plan.” I’d add one more suggestion to Antoinette’s advice: Give yourself permission to fail, as we often learn more through our failures than we do through our successes. |
