Perfection is a quicksand that will drag you into hell.
So many authors I have read over this past year have pointed out the pitfalls of perfection. Perfection destroys creativity. Perfection is a ball and chain to finishing and therefore eliminates the possibility of success. Perfection, quite frankly, keeps you from even starting.
We don’t start because we believe that we will not to be able to accomplish that perfect vision we have in our minds of our work. We don’t start because we believe that we will not live up to the perfection we see in other people’s work. And so why even begin?
But what if we embraced the opposite of the perfection paradigm? Failure. What is we started our days with the hope, and expectation, of failure? I am going to fail today…and that is OK. I am going to do it anyway. I am going to live anyway. I am going to create anyway. I am going to take those risks in life that perfection would keep me from with the understanding that I will likely fail.
At least I will fail…to achieve those things perfectly. The embrace of failure is not an embrace of the lack of success…but a redefining of what that success really is. Success is not achieving perfection, it is simply achieving. It is doing. It is going. It is moving forward and pushing the ball further down the court. By embracing failure and being ok with the results, I am actually succeeding because I have entered the game. That game of life where nobody comes out perfect.
That game of life, where the only true failure is not playing.
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