how to deal with perfection

I’ve battled my whole life with perfection. I used to think that in order to be worthy, I had to be perfect.

That’s a tall order. And it left me wondering “will I ever be good enough?”

Smart enough, skinny enough, pretty enough, courageous enough, I never felt like anything I did was ever enough. It left me ragged - so tied up in perfection, comparison and guilt. My negative inner dialogue was on a constant loop. Maybe you’ve been there too?

It kept me from living. And I’m not being dramatic. Chasing perfection was paralyzing because I was so afraid to fail.

But eventually I realized the exhaustion wasn’t worth it. I realized the reason people loved me had nothing to do with how “perfect” I was (or wasn’t). I realized that as an adult, there’s no one to give you a gold star or an A. I realized that allowing fear or procrastination to take over didn’t help me at all, in fact it kept me from doing the things I really cared about and the things I really wanted to do.

And so I adopted this mantra - that done is better than perfect. Because it’s easy to agonize over everything - even this note to you. But if I sit here for hours, taking apart every word, until I feel like it’s “perfect,” two things can happen. 1 - maybe I finally feel like it’s “worthy” but I’ve wasted so much of my time that I can’t do the other things I wanted to do, or worse (and more likely) 2 - I might feel that this is and will never be perfect, and so I never send it off to you.

But if there’s one thing I know for certain, it’s that we all have unique gifts to share with the world, that we NEED to share with the world. And so we can’t get caught up in whether or not it’s perfect. Instead we need your gifts to be out there, we need you to be out there.

Choosing that done is better than perfect has helped me keep moving even when I was afraid or feeling stuck. Because done doesn’t mean sloppy. I still do my best. But it helps us let go of chasing perfection because that just isn't attainable