A personal struggle
If you ever listened to an author being interviewed, this question is always asked — who do you write for?
99% of them answer — I write for myself. I can also include myself in this group. Whenever I write, I do it for myself. To visit ideas that I want to write about and often that I need to read about.
I personally relate to all the articles I write, but this is a special one. I've always struggled with perfectionism since I was a kid and this became even more evident during adult life.
How many times we give up on ideas because we did not foresee a clear path? Or because it didn't feel like the so-called perfect moment? Not surprisingly, most often the path never shows itself and the perfect moment never comes.
In time, I learned to counter this — all we need to do, is to take the first step, no matter how small it might seem.
Striving for perfection
As a kid, I always tried to be perfect on everything I did. I am not discussing if this is wrong or right, this is not the point here, I am talking about the price that comes with pursuing perfection — overthinking things and not taking action.
"To pursue perfection is the best way to actually do nothing", Rich Roll.
If we dig deep, perfectionism is nothing more than a defense mechanism against making mistakes. It is the tireless and incessant attempt to question everything we do, in order to send failure as far away as possible.
Everything starts with the desire to only show our work, when we consider it to be perfect. We fear the mistakes we might have made, so we take extra time to do it.
Then, the fear of mistakes becomes a fear of exposure. If we expose our work, people will judge us and our mistakes will be out in the open.
Finally, the fear of exposure drives a dangerous idea — if I never expose myself, I won't get judged over my mistakes. If I never act, I actually never make mistakes.
There you go, the damage is done. Perfection turned into inaction.
Done is better than perfect
The more I try new things the more I realize — the path will never show itself until we act. The path is in the doing, not in the planning. Done is better than not done.
“Action is the foundational key to all success”, Pablo Picasso.
When we have an idea, we all have that feeling that we must do something about it. At this stage we start an intellectual war to formulate the perfect plan. What paralyzes us, is our desire to control all the variables — and we have control over very little of them.
We need to take the first step not knowing. We need to trust that the brick will get laid one step in front of us — and as we move, it always does.
I remember when I first started this blog, I was not sure how to do it. There were so many unknowns — How do I create a website? Will I be consistent? Will I run out of topics to write? But here we are on the 14th article and things are looking good.
The path will unfold
When I started the blog I had 2 article ideas, and was afraid that was it. When I took the first step and wrote the welcome article, 2 more ideas appeared. The same happened for the following article.
Now I have more than 70 articles in my backlog — way more ideas to write than time to actually write them. The path was laid out by action.
The same can be applied to anything else we do in life. I remember when I started running. 1k was a struggle. Where do I start? Do I need proper shoes? Where should I run? What pace? Then the little voice kicked in — just go out and run, just start. Now 10k is nothing.
This little voice is something we develop over time by doing. Do, do, do, act, act, act, create, create, create. The path will then show itself.
Take a step right now
Whenever you feel you don't have the perfect plan, take the first step.
The breakthrough is in the doing, and the process is what reveals. The waging of the war against perfectionism is action based.
Nothing matters more than trying. When we make this a daily habit and keep grinding, something mysterious happens. A process is set in motion and clarity comes to our aid. Things start to take shape.
As you are reading this article, think about a goal or idea you had and never pursued. Now think about what I described here. What is the first step you could take today, no matter how small, towards that goal?
Now close this article get to work!
