The Rayne Water shop near my home posts great thought starters on their message board along the freeway, and this was a recent post: “Don’t Strive For Perfection, Strive For Excellence.” What a great realization this can be; if each and every time we so something we strive for excellence. Only excellence you ask? Well let me ask you; is it really possible to reach perfection? What would perfection actually look like? Isn’t it possible that whatever we do, no matter how much we invest in that thing, it will be viewed by someone as lacking? If we then realize we did not reach our goal of perfection, then we might just consider ourselves a failure.
Our path to IN-powerment is riddled with pot holes which can side-track us. The first pot hole is determining our value based upon what other people think. The next is setting goals for ourselves which are unreachable because those goals do not not have a clear definition.
If however, we invest ourselves fully in a project, do the very best we can every step of the way, listen to our guidance and work in cooperation with others, I think we reach excellence even before the project is complete.
Too often in our life experiences we strive for what we term “perfection” and somehow fall short, no matter how wonderful a job we do. The key here is not about the work we do, it is about our perception of what perfection is. No one is a harsher critic of ourselves than ourselves. If we shoot for perfection and then find reasons to think we failed, we are very hard on ourselves, sometimes so hard on ourselves we give up completely or begin to think that nothing we ever do will be good enough.
I am suggesting we do our very best as we know it right now. Leave the determination of perfection or excellence for others.
