PERFECTION VS EXCELLENCE
Let’s explore what seems to be one of Human Being’s most negative common pastimes; Beating ourselves up. Not so much physically but verbally and mentally. Have you ever done that?
Beating yourself up for not doing something, or doing something wrong, or forgetting something, or making a mistake? It seems to me that I could verbally beat you up for an hour and I wouldn’t even come close to what you do each day of your life regarding beating yourself up, or making yourself wrong, or pad. We are going to look at ways to stop this negative behavior and to replace it with a much more positive behavior. Again what we’ll be examining is not only the conversations that come out of our mouths but also the conversations (thoughts) that go on in our mind, somewhere between 300-800 words per minute, every waking hour.
Why would anyone want to beat him or herself up? We probably wouldn’t want to consciously but subconsciously is where most of the beat up comes from. I believe one of the main reasons we beat up on ourselves is because we think we’re supposed to be perfect. We’re not supposed to make any mistakes. We’re always supposed to look good. We’re not supposed to not know what we’re doing; Were supposed to have it all under control. GOOD LUCK! Perfection Isn’t possible. Not with us mere mortals anyway. Mistakes will happen. You won’t always look good. You’ll sometimes say or do something foolish. You’ll NEVER be perfect.
Let’s look at how we set ourselves up to fail. If we can never be perfect and what we are looking for in ourselves is perfection, we have created a game that we never can win. Then when we don’t accomplish perfection (which we never will) we beat ourselves up, make ourselves wrong, and tear down our self-esteem. Self esteem being how we feel about ourselves. Seems absurd doesn’t it? Yet that’s what we do.
How can we eliminate the need or desire to be perfect? By removing the desire and need to be perfect and replacing it with the need and desire to operate In Excellence. Operating In Excellence is attempting to do your very best at whatever you’re doing. Striving to learn and grown, and being willing to make mistakes that you also learn from.
You will make mistakes in your life. Things won’t always turn out the way you think they should. The key to operating in Excellence is to minimize the mistakes and maximize the results being what you want them to be. Forget perfection strive for Excellence.
Beating ourselves up reduces the chance for excellence. When you make everything about you, you’re not going to learn the two essential qualities for Excellence. Those two factors you need to learn for Excellence are: “What Worked and What Didn’t Work”. Separate and distinct from you and who you are. At the end of each goal or each day you need to separate yourself personally from your results (YOU ARE NOT YOUR RESULTS), and ask yourself the question: “What worked such that I have or created such and such”. Because that worked you need to leave it In. Then you need to ask the question: “What didn’t work, such that I don’t have such and such”. Not what did you do wrong, or what’s the matter with you, etc. Just what didn’t work? Once you’ve discovered what didn’t work you need to decide what will work (most likely it will be the opposite of what didn’t work), then re-declare your goal and do the whole process over again. Doing the process over and over again always working toward excellence. Make sense?
Give yourself a break! Get off the perfect expectation and move to the excellence expectation. Always, along the way acknowledging yourself for what you do right and changing the things you’ve done that didn’t work. That’s now a game you can win.