Perfect is the Enemy of the ... Perfectionist

I confess one of the phrases that gets under my skin the most is "Perfect is the enemy of the good." Part of me think it's a kind of a cop-out, you know, so that things that are "good enough" are acceptable.

But then again, what's so wrong with "good enough" anyway?

The organization I work for did a study a few years ago where we uncovered that girls at EVERY age, even as young as 6, were feeling a paralyzing pressure to succeed, to be perfect. The word "paralyzing" is no accident. What was happening to these girls is, what is STILL happening to girls (and boys and women and men) is that they were so afraid to make a mistake, to fail, that they didn't even try.

When I reflect on moments in my life I most regret, it's not the moments where I failed and embarrassed myself, it's the opportunities I missed because I was afraid to take a risk, afraid to put myself out there and fail.

Education experts/psychologists, etc., and many people way smarter than me, tell us that the way to build confidence, the way to build a healthy self-esteem and sense of self, is to try and fail -- and to get back up and try again, and to keep trying until you succeed. Confidence isn't built from doing things well over and over, but from learning and knowing that you can persevere.

I find that a lot of high achieving people that I know are really afraid to try things. Because many high achieving people have always been told from early days that they were smart and really good at certain things ... so things that they are not so good at, no thanks, we'll pass.

My challenge for the new year is to start pushing myself to try new things and fail at them, which I will surely do. This blog is an example of that. It's something I've wanted to do for a long time, but was afraid that it wouldn't be good enough -- no one would want to read it, it would be boring, whiny, all of those negative things that your head tells you when self-preservation kicks in and tries to stop you from going out onto the ledge.

But I decided the main reason I'm doing this is that I like doing it -- I like writing, and yes, I've always been pretty good at it. But I still do care what people think. I hope I get to the point where I don't care, but I'm not there yet.

So if you see a typo or hate what you see, do me a favor, don't tell me. Well, unless your definition of "doing something new this year" is criticizing others, then knock yourself out.