an epic life

Note to Perfection: I Quit

January 28th, 2019

“Perfectionism is the voice of the oppressor… It will keep you cramped and insane your whole life, and it is the main obstacle between you and a shitty first draft.” –Anne Lamott, Bird by Bird: Some Instructions on Writing and Life

Hi there!

I have struggled with Perfectionism for most of my life. Thankfully, in recent years I have been in recovery. And it is in that spirit that I offer you this shitty first draft. 🙂

I remember, vividly, a night somewhere in the middle of our 15-year ownership of our first company, Yellowstone Journal Corporation / YellowstonePark.com. I was feeling desperate and overwhelmed–and in fact, incapable–of meeting a fast-approaching deadline for the Winter edition of our magazine. It was approaching midnight and I was still at the office. No matter how hard the team and I were striving, we were not going to make the deadline. Correction: We would make the deadline, but only if we settled for less than perfection.

In my desperation, my Dad (who was a partner in the business at the time) instructed me, “You need to lower your expectations.”

At first his advice, to lower my expectations, felt completely wrong. Unreasonable and unacceptable. After all, I hadn’t gotten to this point in my life by having low expectations. I’ve always had high expectations and I felt my successes were very much a result of my high expectations.

I thought to myself, If I lower my expectations now, then I’m accepting mediocrity, and if I do it now, then I’ll risk lowering my expectations on everything I do from here on out. But then, I also felt, physically, a sense of relief come over me. What a relief it would be to care just a little bit less in that 11th hour of desperation. So I did. I “accepted” a lower bar. It felt like I was willingly letting my guard down. Physically it felt like I went from stiff and bracing, to soft and free. Somehow, our files made it to the printer, and the finished printed magazine was beautiful, despite not being perfect. So that story ended well. (And by the way, it was way better than mediocre. I mention this because to a Perfectionist, imagining aiming for anything lower than perfection can seem like mediocrity. But, rest assured, it isn’t.)

The point is, I’ve never forgotten that advice to lower my expectations. (Thank you Dad!)

For those of us who struggle with perfectionism, it’s not easy lowering our expectations. It’s so hard that we seldom, if ever, allow ourselves to do so. But I can tell you, doing so has made a world of difference for me and in my life. When we lower the bar from unrealistic perfection to “Good Enough” or “Excellent,” the pressure isn’t off, but it certainly is lifted. I’ve also made the important discovery that when we quit striving for perfection, we let up on the self-criticism that so often accompanies perfectionism, and we respond more compassionately to ourselves. (Replacing self-criticism with self-compassion is a whole other blog post I promise to write another day. But in the meantime, if you’re interested, check out Dr. Kristen Neff or Kelly McGonigal to learn how we achieve more when we’re self-compassionate than when we’re self-critical, not to mention it’s a much more enjoyable and fulfilling experience.)

Today, I’m 50 years old, and in my 8th year of operating my second company (Epic Life Inc), and I can tell you, I aim for Excellence in all that I do. But Excellence and Perfection are not the same things. The difference between Perfection and Excellence is the difference between feeling oppressed and feeling free. It’s the difference between feeling disappointed and never satisfied and feeling fulfilled and satisfied that I gave it my best, whatever that happened to be that day.

Over the years I’ve come up with a personal mission statement that helps me. Whether I’m getting ready to get on a coaching call, or before I get in front of the room to deliver my keynote presentation, I remind myself of my personal mission statement, which is: This is the most important thing in the world, and this is not the most important thing in the world. For me, this works brilliantly because the high importance  I’m placing on all that I do keeps me at the top of my game, while also reminding me to be humble and that I’m only human. And that in the grand scheme of things, this is but one small task, even if it is a very important one.

Speaking of personal statements, I wrote a Manifesto some years ago for how I want to live, and one of the sentences I wrote in it, that I want to live by, is “Good enough is good enough.” That statement made the cut for my Manifesto as a result of my wanting to end the emotional suffering I experienced all those years I set the bar at Perfect. I continue to read my Manifesto every morning. When we read something enough times, we start to believe it and embody it and live it.

If you struggle with perfectionism, I encourage (dare) you to lower the bar a little. Let’s all acknowledge that most of the time, perfection is not possible, and certainly not sustainable. Nobody can achieve perfection all of the time. And when we strive for perfection, it’s exhausting because it’s elusive, and add to that, we are likely to be disappointed. This disappointment doesn’t only cause us to suffer emotionally, it gives off the vibe to others that we’re never satisfied. I don’t know about you, but I don’t want to be never satisfied. Life is too short and our time too precious to spend (waste) it striving for something that is most of the time unachievable.

I would be remiss if I didn’t mention the Inner Critic. We all have one, or many. Steven Pressfield, author of The War of Art, Do the Work, and Turning Pro, refers to the critic as The Resistance, and coaches sometimes refer to it as the Saboteur. No matter what we call it, we all have one.

The inner critic is the voice that shows up whenever we’re struggling. We could be doing something for the first time that we don’t know how to do, or public speaking, having a difficult but important conversation with someone we love, and/or pushing our limits in some way. Basically, the inner critic shows up to try to get us to stop stretching. Our inner critic is out to protect the status quo. It wants us to stay small and to play it safe. The inner critic says things such as You gotta quit. Whose idea was this? You’re making a fool out of yourself. You’re going to die. You don’t know how to do this. You’re holding others back. You can’t do this. And on and on…

By the way, I don’t believe we can ever defeat the inner critic. And I would even argue that we shouldn’t try to. After all, the inner critic does serve a purpose in that it reminds us that the stakes are high, and it also reminds us that we’re pushing our limits and stretching our abilities, which I find inspiring and reaffirming. But I do believe we can practice being with our inner critic, and that we can learn to better manage its presence when it shows up.

You may think this is cheesy, but over the years, as I’ve pushed my limits more, I’ve developed a strategy for how to deal with my inner critic. When my inner critic appears, I acknowledge its presence, and I say to it, respectfully,  “Thanks for stopping by. I appreciate your concern. But I’ve got this.” And then I mentally and visually move the inner critic to the backseat. I can still hear its nagging, but its voice is not as loud–and not as “in my face.” And then I proceed with great care…

I should mention that I have grown to love imperfection. I find imperfection more interesting and beautiful than perfection. Imperfection, to me, feels like authenticity.

I’m going to wrap this blog post up with a video of me reciting a poem called Perfection Perfection by Father Kilian McDonnell, a Benedictine monk, and theologian from Great Falls, Montana. I love and appreciate the poem so much, and I hope you will too. (I’m also including the text of the poem under the video if you’d prefer to read it and/or copy it and share it with others.)

If it resonates, maybe you’ll join me and quit perfection.

Thank you so much for stopping by and reading my blog. I really appreciate your time and support.

Perfection Perfection, by Kilian McDonnell

I have had it with perfection.
I have packed my bags,
I am out of here.
Gone.
As certain as rain
will make you wet,
perfection will do you in.
It droppeth not as dew
upon the summer grass
to give liberty and green joy.
Perfection straineth out
the quality of mercy,
withers rapture at its birth.
Before the battle is half begun,
cold probity thinks it can’t be won,
concedes the war.
I’ve handed in my notice,
given back my keys,
signed my severance check, I quit.
Hints I could have taken:
Even the perfect chiseled form of
Michelangelo’s radiant David squints,
the Venus de Milo has no arms,
the Liberty Bell is cracked.

• Categories: Life and Leadership
• Tags: discontent, fixed mindset, inner critic, perfect, perfection, perfectionism, self criticism
• Comments: 4 Comments