Not Quite Perfect

This morning, I got to thinking about perfectionism, about what it is for me, and why it's not a good thing.

The big thing is that perfectionism and a passion for excellence are not the same thing at all. Wanting to do things well doesn't make me crazy; perfectionism does. For me, perfectionism is an expression of fear: if I don't do something perfectly, Bad Things, Very Bad Things, will happen. So I get tense and a little freaked out. I also lose all sense of proportion--perfectionism doesn't let you look at the whole picture, so context is nonexistent.

Perfectionism is my great bugbear, the beast I will wrestle until I die. I'm getting better at taming it, at easing its grip on me, but I'm pretty sure it will come back as long as I live.

Oddly, its recurrence helps me learn the lesson that things don't have to be perfect to be excellent. Perfection in this instance would be to get rid of perfectionism and I know that won't happen. Excellence, however, lies in increasing skill at managing perfectionism. I can look back and see I do a better job of containing this monster than I did last year, and even better than the year before.

Pursuing excellence, on the other hand, is free of fear. Pursuing excellence means giving the task at hand everything I have in terms of effort, skill and focus, being completely in the moment, barely aware of myself, oblivious to all my anxieties. When I'm in that mental place, mistakes are not really mistakes--they're blessings, doors onto paths I might not have found otherwise, insights that might not have come any other way.

Chasing excellence brings me joy, chasing perfection brings me pain: maybe all I need to is remember joy.