It’s okay to have high expectations and want the best for yourself. However, you should be able to draw a line between excellence and unrealistic perfection. Most people tend to forget that life is full of mistakes and flaws, which is what makes it ever so interesting. In fact, if you aren’t making mistakes, you probably aren’t challenging yourself enough. Yet, we still strive for perfection. 

The only thing I can compare perfectionism to is drama. Once you get hooked on perfectionism, every step you take will be filled with endless worry. Is my business idea any good? I don’t know anything? How am I going to manage all these people? What if I fail? What if I Succeed? 

Perfection can be ruthless and birth feelings of inadequacy. On the other hand, progress has helped me develop a more mature attitude where I appreciate each step and season in life.

Building My Website From Scratch – 01:28

In entrepreneurship, every time is always a perfect time to handle your business, which again makes it the best and the worst thing about entrepreneurship. What do I mean by that? With all the freedom that comes with entrepreneurship, you can work on your business whenever you like. Mind you, there are deadlines to be kept and clients to please, but you can do it whenever you like, as long you’re getting it done. So, a couple of months ago, I decided I needed to upgrade my website. I was growing, so I felt like my ‘online real estate’ needed to grow too. I had no experience whatsoever on website building, themes, and all those stuff, yet here I was pumped up and ready to go. I spent days, missed deadlines, consulted the ever-reliable Google and YouTube, and still felt like I needed to do better. Here I was defeated, tired, stressed out, and frustrated about something that I could see results, but I still craved perfection.

Progress Over Perfection – 08:00

The more I stressed over the situation, the more I noticed the imperfections on the website. But then something crazy happened; I realized that my website could never be perfect; heck, nothing can. But, if I’m satisfied with the progress and the outcome of what I’d come up with, it’s all good. Unfortunately, most of us spend time aiming for perfection when perfection doesn’t really exist. It’s even more disheartening when we burden our teammates, spouses, or employees with unrealistic expectations when you can already see some progress. This is by no means permission to condone sloppiness; all I’m saying is that progress is better than perfection. As long as someone (or you) is always trying to improve themselves, that’s excellence. There will always be room for improvement; that’s why no one’s perfect.

Perfection is Not an Excuse – 10:57

As earlier mentioned, all I wanted to do was make my website the best it could be. However, I didn’t realize that the more issues I tried to fix, the longer I postponed the launch. I was essentially finding an excuse not to launch and concentrate on other stuff that needed my attention. Remember, I had already missed a deadline and was contemplating missing another just to make the site better. Today, I ask you, what’s that thing that you’ve been working on that’s never good enough? Have you ever asked yourself what other people think about it? Humans are naturally programmed to seek perfection, which always leads to unnecessary stress. Once you let go of the ‘perfection mentality,’ you’ll start living a more fulfilling life. This also applies to your education, relationships, businesses, basically everything. If you believe something is excellent, then it’s good enough.  

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