Step Away from Perfect

Last year I heard two similar thoughts that were freeing. They freed me from a false belief that I had.  Don't you love those aha moments, even when it means you've been doing something wrong? Both taught me that striving for perfection is counteractive to moving forward and to happiness. 

The first thought was just a blurb from a TedX talk from Ashley Stahl. I've shared it below in case you'd like to watch the whole video. The part that stood out to me was, "Perfectionism is the enemy of action." If we wait until the perfect time or until we have every lined up perfectly to act, we will be stuck. 

I picture myself standing in a little mud, and instead of jumping out of the mud, I act like the mud is dried cement. I act like I cannot move and have no power. But that is just a false belief. I can move forward and I don't have to wait until anything is perfect. But what if I jump in the wrong direction? Then I can jump again in a different direction. No destination is permanent. Moving forward in the wrong direction feels better than staying stuck.

How can I know when to go forward? For me, it's important to stay close to my Heavenly Father. He won't show me an entire path to its destination, but I can go to him with my plans and thoughts. He lets me choose, but He is with me wherever I go.  

The second time I heard something about perfectionism around the same time was from the book 13 Things Mentally Strong Women Don't Do: Own Your Power, Channel Your Confidence, and Find Your Authentic Voice for a Life of Meaning and Joy by Amy Morin. It's a good book and she has a couple of other 13 Things books you can check out. (They're also translated into Spanish for my friends who would prefer that.) 

There were a lot of good points in the book, but the perfectionist topic was that most successfully people aren't perfectionists. That makes sense when I think about it. They are willing to take risks, move quickly, work hard but not don't let anything, including imperfection, slow down their forward trajectory. Working or waiting for perfection is inefficient when good or great works just as well. For some reason, when I thought about how successful people aren't perfectionists, I realized that I don't have to be either. 

I know I've heard similar things about perfectionism before, but I guess I was finally ready to hear it and to wake up a little. And I've been trying to practice it this past year since then.

• "Perfectionism is not a quest for the best. It is a pursuit of the worst in ourselves, the part that tells us that nothing we do will ever be good enough - that we should try again."  Julie Cameron

• "Many people think of perfectionism as striving to be your best, but it is not about self-improvement; it's about earning approval and acceptance." Brené Brown