Have you been constantly waiting for everything to be in place before you go after your dream?
Have you been extremely obsessing for everything to be just right?
Have you been over planning for everything to be just perfect?
If you answered “yes” to all three, knock yourself on the head and face the truth: Nothing will ever be perfect.
So stop waiting, obsessing and planning and start doing!
Always aiming for perfection does not help help you to achieve your dream, but accepting imperfection does.
My desire for perfection almost killed my dream
Next month, this blog turns one year old and I realized how it has suffered from my excessive desire for perfection. You see I wanted to make this blog my dream blog, my passion project through which I would fulfill my grand dreams.
I wanted to make it the best and the greatest. I wanted it to be perfect. So I got busy checking out other blogs admiring how flawless their posts were written and how perfect their blog designs looked.
I was constantly watching and admiring others while I was thinking and planning on how I can do it myself.
I was obsessing about what to write, which posts get published when and what features the site will have. I read and studied other bloggers writing style and how much impact it made on their readers.
And don’t even get me started talking about blog design. I spent countless hours searching for blog themes, tweaking codes, loading them up in my blog, deleting them then starting over. Nothing seemed to look right.
Meanwhile, my blog stayed dormant and neglected.
Eventually, I felt drained with all the planning and thinking I did that I ran out of energy to do anything.
After a year of chasing perfection, I ended up accomplishing close to nothing. I felt so frustrated at myself that I wanted to just forget the whole thing and dump the whole idea into the waste bin.
Thinking and planning is good because it guides you to achieve your goals. But if you overthink and overplan so much so that it becomes a hindrance rather than a motivator, STOP! Just go ahead and do it the best you way you can now.
Striving for perfection is good because it moves you to exert your best effort. But if your perfect-shun-ism makes you shun doing anything for fear of making a mistake and gets you stuck in the hole of procrastination, it’s time to throw it into the trash basket and start taking action now.
Accept your imperfections
We won’t always get it right the first time and that’s okay. Doing something and making a mistake will get you closer to your dream than just planning and doing nothing.
Stop planning perfectly and start doing it imperfectly. Then you open yourself up for improvement: you’ll know what you did good and how to do it better the next time
The important thing is you take action now then improve yourself later.
And that’s what I’m doing now.
As Be Passiotive marks its first blog new year in September, I’m kickstarting it again now with this blog post.
And I intend to fuel this blog with all my imperfect writings about how I’m learning and trying to live a positive life while passionately pursuing my dreams.
I’m sure there are a lot of other things I could have done to make this comeback post perfect to read but this is the best I can do now.
The good thing about it is, you can help me and other readers of this post by sharing your thoughts or suggestions about it.
Feel free to share in the comments section below.
Before you leave, I will leave you with two questions and two action steps.
Questions to ask yourself:
Is your perfectionism holding you back from your dream?
What one action can you do that can take you a step closer to your dream?
Action step to do now:
Take time to reflect on the two questions stated above.
Act on your answer to question 2 and just do it. Now.
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