Perfection can hurt you and your project

Today, or the past week, hasn't been a great one. It hasn't been a fruitful period. For various reasons things have been dragging. Too many questions ran a watershed on my mind enveloping it with thoughts of doubt. There has been emotions of frustrations. Almost like I'm back to square zero, although not quite so considering the successes of recent.

It is during this time that I was reminded that as humans we're not perfect and it is perfection that we must not aim for. But we can, by all means, aspire for greatness. And greatness has not much to do with perfection, for perfection is that which has no room for failure and new biginnings. Perfection is getting it right the first time round and having a set formula to repeat that success with each different endeavour. At the same time, be able to maintain the momentum of success throughout.

During the downtime whilst writing my book, I'd sob at my wife telling her that this is just not going fast enough. This is just getting too difficult for my taste. That I'm losing the chutzpah. And I was reminded that 'may be you're taking yourself extremely seriously. Take it easy on you and go with the flow'. I refused to hear this words. But now I know that I mustn't be too hard on myself. For it is when I'm hard that I'm caught up in the dangerous phenomenon that is the perfection trap.

Perfection can hurt you. It can derail your project. It can make you feel like you're not worth the job, because from the onset of the aim, it sets you up for a rude shortfall. When you hit a lower mark, you start feeling that perhaps somebody else could have done this better.

Don't allow it to make you feel like that. Instead, aim for greatness because greatness allows room for failure and starting up again, for it realises that we're humans and we're only aspiring to do better than we have done before. To stretch ourselves. Truth be told, our failures teach us a lot more than our success. Our success measure our progress, our shortcomings weigh our strength. Our rise-again power.

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