While some things merit striving for perfection, others don’t warrant such aggravation. Mathematics, science, and engineering tend to be areas benefiting from getting as close to perfection as possible.
Nevertheless, stressing too much to try and achieve “perfection” can be counter-productive. Perfectionism can become a controlling obsession. Let’s look at several everyday areas where “borderline to perfect” may actually be preferable.
Cleaning: Have you ever noticed how housework seems to be never-ending? Dust, dirty clothes, and “stuff” in general seems to reproduce exponentially. Does it really make sense to make sure everything in our home is immaculate before continuing with our day? If we were to do so, we might not achieve anything else, not only for a particular day, but perhaps for weeks, or even months, depending on our previous diligence with regards to cleanliness.
Rather than striving to have everything perfect, we can make our bed, clean areas which are most visible, and clean the dishes. It’s amazing how a few critical tasks can make our environment look nice, even when it’s not spotless. A time will come when a deep cleaning will likely be necessary, but from day to day we can do simple maintenance to keep our home clear of clutter, even if there happens to be some dirt in the corners. Then we can get out into the world and live life, or just take a nice long nap, instead of striving to eliminate every speck of dust and dirt from our surroundings.
Sales: Make no doubt about it, selling is an art and to perfect it, can take a lifetime. I have seen certain people who spend so much time perfecting their sales pitch that they never actually get out to talk to potential customers. It’s important and necessary to know our product, it’s benefits, and how we can best serve our clients; but in my experience the salesperson who talks to more people in a day, even with an “imperfect” approach, normally sells circles around the one who stays in the office because they don’t have their sales pitch quite “perfect.”
Personal Relationships: We are emotional beings inside imperfect bodies. While the human body is pretty amazing, we are constantly reminded it is not perfect when we get sick, don’t feel well, or are otherwise hampered by our emotions. Rather than trying to please all of the people all of the time; we can give our greatest effort gratifying those who are most important to us.
We can be kind and courteous to the rest, but is it really worth the extra time and effort to strive to make everyone happy with what we do? Even when do our best to please those we love, we are likely to come up short from time to time. This doesn’t make us “bad” people, it simply confirms our human condition.
Learning to let go of perfectionism can positively impact our lives, as well as that of those around us. When we realize the universality of the concept of yin and yang —where there is a little bit of bad in all that is good and a little good in all that is bad—, we can embrace the fact that being borderline to perfect is often as good as it gets, and indeed a great place to be, regardless of where we happen to be.
∞ Rob McBride ∞
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