Many people who are focused on success tend to strive for one thing, and that one thing is perfection. The pursuit of perfection is what makes a lot of us tick, but I am here to tell you in the real world there is no such thing as perfection. This is an imperfect world, and striving for perfection makes it even a tougher place at times.
Please do not be confused by what I am saying here. We all must be the best we can be. There are no excuses for those who choose not to work towards being successful and achieving greatness. We must all strive for excellence. You must become the best person you can be and the biggest success that you can be. We all must strive to be great, but the reality of it is that perfect is out of the question. So I am here to warn you about holding yourself to the standards of perfection when it comes to your life and your success.
The saddest thing in life is wasted talent. There are people in this world that seem to let great talent go to great waste. On the other side of the equation are the people who are constantly striving for perfection. They never rest. They never reach the finish line even after they achieve phenomenal success. They tend to neglect family and their own personal well being at times chasing something that is truly unattainable.
I have a news flash for those people, and guess what I was one of them for the longest time. You can do all the things in life right, and you will still never be perfect. Perfection is not an option, but greatness and being hugely successful still is possible even if we are not perfect. If you continually base your achievement and results on whether you are perfect or not, you will find yourself in a constant state of underachievement even when you may be over achieving. This type of constant tension to achieve something that is not completely achievable will tend to give rise to worry and eventually fear of failure.
People who think perfection is possible rarely take the time to acknowledge the progress they have made. They never seem to truly grasp or appreciate the success they have obtained. Success is all about progress, and there will be days you do not progress and days that you do make progress. As hard as we are working to achieve success it is important to give yourself appreciation for a job well done. If you strive to be perfect all the time, you are going to seldom find yourself hitting that mark.
Some of the greatest performers of all time who seemed perfect were not so perfect, but they were still the greatest of all time. Michael Jordan shot the ball and missed more than 9,000 times. He lost almost 300 games. He missed 26 game winning shots, yet he is still considered by many to be one of the most perfect basketball players of all time. Babe Ruth struck out 1,360 times. He struck out almost twice for every homerun he hit, but rarely do you hear people speak about his strike outs. They only talk about how many home runs he hit. These two players strived to be perfect. They fell way short of the goal of perfection, but they certainly did become great. As a matter of fact these are two of the greatest athletes of all time. Not many people would say they were anything but great, but most people would agree they were not perfect.
So forget about perfection and try to focus more on being the best you can be. You must strive for excellence. Forget about holding yourself to unattainable standards and focus on what you need to do to achieve your own personal greatness. I think you will find life to be much easier, and you may even finally figure out that you do not need to be perfect to be great. You may actually find yourself for the first time acknowledging that yes you are not perfect, but you are special and you can be very successful even though you will never be perfect.
