I believe that in order to achieve best results in our lives, we must put in the maximum effort: giving the best that we have! However when we start to strive for "perfection" that's when things start to get a bit crazy and we start to obsess our goals which ends up creating a lot of unhappiness and anxiety in our lives. So what can we do about this?
As a former perfectionist myself, I know exactly how this feels like and I’d like to suggest a better alternative that is simple and easy to apply instead of desperately beating yourself up into the path to perfection.
The thing about perfection is it’s a bit sneaky; it’s always lurking on in the back of our minds trying to criticize us for not doing things the right way. Now this might sound a bit extreme, but I was at a point in 2017 where my need for perfection caused me to have a mental breakdown. And it took me a bit to recover after that. That’s when I found the concept of “excellency” instead of perfection.
To give you a little context, I was working on a music album with my band Skinny Is Green and I was producing, mixing and recording the entire thing all by myself. And I wanted everything to sound perfect. Pitch perfect.
After working on it rigorously day and nights without any breaks, the album was ready but I never was satisfied with the results. We were working on a deadline, and during the pre-release listening party all the friends who attended told me that all the songs sounded great. And these were people who I totally had faith in, so if something was wrong I’m pretty sure they would point it out to me. But, I thought otherwise. I, on the other hand was able to pick out even the little slips on the mixes for example, I was focused on that one little part where I thought I could still add a bit more reverb. So it didn’t quite feel complete to me. I honestly ended up hating the album that I had literally worked for months!
Perfection was the kind of standard that I had set for myself and my duties as a record producer. But no matter what I did, no matter how much I tried, I was always dissatisfied! And that surely wasn’t healthy. I ended up leaving the band after a few months that was followed by a mental break down and when I talked to a counselor at that one of the lowest points in my life, he was easily able to pin point my biggest problem. And it was none other than the perfection. My need to be perfect without any room to breathe had caused me all this stress and panic! So I chose a different path to change it all for me.
Now before we get into the solution which is excellecy let’s talk a bit more about perfection to debunk some of the myths you may have towards it. When we hear stories about Steve Jobs we can imagine how meticulously he paid attention to details which ended up creating those gorgeous Apple products ever since the start. However, what most of us might not know is how Apple came up with lot of flawed designs time and again. But the world forgets and the world forgives specially when you bounce back. Despite those flaws, Apple kept learning from those mistakes and improving it in the years to follow. And they were always offering whatever they could which were best at the moment for both them, and the costumers. And now most people perceive their products as flawless or even perfect. But they didn’t get there in just one day without any innovations.
If we look up the meaning of the word perfect in the dictionary one of the definition is: make (something) completely free from faults or defects, or as close to such a condition as possible.
The truth is, our lives are filled with flaws. And if we aim for a flawless life, it’s quite unrealistic to be honest! That’s why it is the cause of a lot of frustration, anxiety and dissatisfaction for most of us. And perfection, it’s like a rabbit hole where we keep falling down and we actually feel like we’re getting somewhere. However, there is either no end point to this fall. Even if there is, we hit the ground and get completely shattered.
And for most people the biggest problem is they think they’re perfectionists but they really never even start the project. And even if they do they never finish. That’s not exactly perfection, but that’s the fear of what if their work is not a perfection. And with that there’s always this sense of dissatisfaction that’s eating you from deep inside because you feel like you can’t do or be good enough. It always makes you feel like you’re lacking something in your life and you stop pursuing the things that make you happier in your own life.
Now finally, let’s talk about this simple fix to our obsession to our perfection. So what we could do instead is we can strive for Excellency!
Now, we might have seen these terms used interchangeably at some contexts, but excellency is quite different than perfection! While perfection is striving for something flawless without any faults, excellency is what happens when you’re just trying to give the best you got. It’s not a limiting perspective like perfection, while going for excellency you feel like you can always do a little bit more than how you were doing before. But you’re not coming from this neurotic place where you’re setting this immeasurable standard which you’re never gonna reach.
When you approach your projects from the excellency mindset, we know that there’s always some little room for growth. And instead of needlessly criticizing ourselves and kicking ourselves up which the perfectionists always do, we start to accept ourselves more. And you know that you can’t expect to be totally great at anything the very first day whether it be relationship whether it be in your family or some kind of like job-related problems.
So next time while working on a new project just question yourself do you think you’re trying to strive for perfection? Or are you trying to be excellent in what you do? Just make sure it’s the latter one where you’re trying to give the best that you can, and also that you always have this room for improvement in your life.
When you start approaching things from this mindset what starts to happen is that failure isn’t gonna be something that’s a huge deal. You realize that even if you fail there’s always gonna be the ‘next time’ when you can perform a lot better.
So always remember this phrase “Excellency, not perfection”.
And I wanna wish you very best.
Till next time.
-Rav
P.S. I hope this helps. If you want to clear our any mental blocks that you may have, please feel free to reach out to me. Currently I’m offering 1 on 1 sessions which you might find very beneficial moving forward in your life.