Good Enough

Are you crippled by Perfectionism but only in very specific parts of your life? How about all of your life? You’re probably being a perfectionist about something in your life and you don’t even realize it. Right. Now. Let’s talk about how Good Enough will free up your life in a multitude of ways. I promise, it won’t hurt. Naming something just helps you gain power over it.

I’ve been a hiring manager for years. I always ask where people would like to see themselves in 1 year and 5 years. Year 1 hopes usually mirror immediate goals, like having a job, being more stable, but year 5 busts out the pie-in-the-sky Goals and Dreams, the Entrepreneurs and high-level management promotions. When you ask how they’ll get from year 1 to year 5, the actual process, that’s when things get uncomfortable. People may have a general idea of the roadmap they’d need to take to get from Here to There, but it’s always under this hazy impression that they’ll know better, be better than they are now, which will allow them to chase these goals. This is where you become an unwitting Perfectionist. Only when these line items about your core everyday life align can you become who you’re Meant To Be. I’m here to say, “Bullshit.”

Have you ever had one conversation with a business owner and just go, “Jesus, how the hell do you put pants on in the morning.” That guy was not worried about being perfect when he filed for his LLC. He wrote his first invoice and forgot to calculate sales tax. He accidentally added a zero to his order of 500 (now 5,000) pens with his logo on it. He didn’t flinch during his first sale, first tax return, first firing. Oh, he was scared and confused and exasperated. But he got it done because he had to if he wanted to have a business. And you, you’re looking at him thinking to yourself that your business will be tighter run and you’ll check the spelling on your business cards and you’ll have the perfect website and while you’re thinking about what you’ll do perfectly, you’re paralyzed into inaction. Month after month falls away while you wait for Someday.

The reason I want to talk to you about this is because I am a Perfectionist. Every day I write, “Do not let Perfect get in the way of Good Enough.” Every day, I fight Perfection.

Perfection is a worth-trap. It always seems worth it in the moment to spend the extra time strategizing, tweaking, thinking, rethinking, overthinking it. I try to think of tasks in terms of what I could be doing on Day 2 if a 2-day task is done in 1. Then, multiply that by the rest of my life (I don’t sleep a lot.) But seriously, I can get very stuck in the minutia of a task instead of getting the broad strokes done, getting it Good Enough and putting it to bed.

You may now be wondering how I balance overcoming perfectionism with seeking and acquiring high-quality antiques and vintage items. This is the beauty of letting go of perfection. You can see the unique elegance and hidden value in so many things that have been discarded. See what joy it could bring to others. Understand that with age, things gain character. It doesn’t have to be perfect to have value. You don’t have to be perfect to have value.

So yeah, that’s kinda how I get out of bed in the morning. I’m going to get up, kick ass and go to bed exhausted. And it’s going to be Good Enough.