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Say it with me: Perfection is Bullcr*p
If you’re a stress bunny, an anxiety-fuelled over-worker, or a full blown perfectionist - this is for you.
We need to get past the idea of perfection being the goal, that thing we strive for. Instead, we need to understand that there is a huge chasm between the healthy pursuit of improvement, and the impossible ideal of total perfection.
In that chasm is the difference between motivation and misery, self development and self punishment. In essence, we should always want to be a little bit better today then we were yesterday. But we should not be competing with ourselves or others to the point where we lose all joy in the process.
“Comparison is the thief of joy,”
— President Theodore Roosevelt
As I said in my book, The Musings of an Elective Orphan (apologies for the self promotion), I truly believe that being perfect would be rubbish anyway.
Why? Because once you have reached that point of perfection on every level, there would be nothing left to strive for anymore. Yet striving is what keeps us going. It gives us purpose, a direction, and a focal point for our efforts.
As human beings, we need a goal of some kind at all times.
