I’ve had it!

I can’t try to be perfect anymore.

Here’s what happened:  I posted a video for a contest. I initially felt good about my creation. But those feelings of satisfaction with my creation didn’t last long. I started comparing myself to others who had entered the contest. I was driving myself — and a few friends — nutty with the search for flaws, rather than the search for what went well. Although I know better than to beat myself up, it was like I became ultra-focused, addicted even, to seeking out the so-so, rather than praising what worked. And, of course, this focus on the negative left me feeling small, drained, and downright depressed.

I’m done.

I’m fed up with being a perfectionist. I do the “perfectionizing” to myself, so I have no one else to blame. Not even the people who like to point out my flaws.

Today, I officially announce that I’m an “im-perfectionist.” I’m choosing to live in imperfection. That doesn’t mean that I’ll settle for crappy quality, or that I’ll do a so-so job on any project or for any client.

If you’re exhausted by the endless mental chatter of “I could’ve done better,” or “Why didn’t I get this right?” or “Someone else always seems to have just a little edge on me,” I invite you, too, to drop this intense self-flagellation. It’s time to become an im-perfectionist.

I’m sharing this insight to make a point about the stranglehold that perfectionism can have. You see, with the help of a friend, I had happily made a video for Hay House, as part of a Movers & Shakers contest to win either a four week radio show or a live online event. I adore Hay House and their authors like Dr. Wayne Dyer, Cheryl Richardson, and Caroline Myss. I care deeply about helping people to coming alive at work and and about “maximizing your ROLE, your Return on Life Energy.” It would be such an honor to get to share my messages with the Hay House audience, to inform, inspire, and educate them so they can transform their work so it truly fits.

I posted my video on April 30, and felt really proud. Hey, that was a full day before the May 1 deadline. I liked how I looked. I liked the message. Sure,  I had other ideas I wanted to include. But, wow, it’s an improvement over the few videos I’ve ever made. I played the video a few times, then sent the link to friends and family to get their reaction. They were mostly positive, with a few suggestions here and there.

Those suggestions got me nervous. I started thinking about what I could’ve done better. Like telling more of my story of career change. Or shortening the introduction. Or telling people that this message is important whether you want to stay in your job, change jobs, or you’re out of work. I started to not feel so good. Not so proud. I started to see all the problems, not all the passion and promise that I poured into the message originally.

My wanderings into perfectionistic torture made me do something downright dumb. I went to YouTube and started looking at the other contestants’ entries. And one in particular stopped me in my tracks. That person looked better than me. Showed better graphics than mine. Told better stories. Looked more polished…

I agonized. I cried. I wished I’d done so many of the things that this contestant had done. I felt like a failure.

And then I realized I didn’t need to do this to myself. You know the saying that “hindsight is 20/20 vision?” Well, sure, if I’d known all of these things, I might have created my video differently. But you know what? I did the best I could in the moment. And that was perfect. And in the next moment, as soon as I looked at anything else, my creation would look like a mess. If I let it. And then I’d deny myself the chance to learn.

More importantly, I’d deny myself the chance to celebrate what I had accomplished. I entered a contest. I made myself vulnerable. I shared a message that really matters to me in a very public way. I poured my heart and soul into a creation. I asked for help and got it from a friend who taped me and set the lights and helped me to edit the video.

I’ve decided that it’s important to allow for (seeming) im-perfection. That it’s more important to stretch and grow and try than to stay stuck or worried. I realized that if I want to grow and do bigger and better things, I’m going to naturally bump into what I could do better. Hmm, I believe that’s called learning. That’s true learning, in the moment, as opposed to what we do in the classroom, where we’re graded, and we either get the answer right…or wrong. It’s just not that binary when we’re out of school. The school of life is about being an im-perfectionist, of allowing what we create in the moment to be just perfect as it is.

What is an im-perfectionist?

• Someone who chooses to do his or her best, and who revels in what does work, not what doesn’t work
• Someone chooses to stop negative mental chatter that somehow naturally arises (it seems to be part of our culture to be critics)
• Someone who is compassionate with him/or herself
• Someone who chooses to learn from others’ examples, rather than playing a nasty game of comparison
• Someone who choose to believe that as long as you do your best, that’s perfect for now, and, actually, it’s perfect for forever

Sound good to you to be an im-perfectionist? So, will you join me in being an im-perfectionist? I hope you’ll share your story of embracing imperfection. I trust it will be, ironically, perfect!

Imperfectly yours,

Susan