I was recently coaching a participant in the leadership program I’m in.
He shared about what was going on in his project, where things were going wrong, his concerns for how his team would react to his requests… it went on and on.
I stopped him dead in his tracks and asked:
“So, how long have you been a perfectionist? And what areas of your life does it affect?”
He admitted that he saw it playing out in every area of life.
For the remainder of our time together, we focused on identifying possibilities, actions, and conversations that would light him up. No sense trying to dig for gold in the same old predicament.
People sometimes wonder why it seems like I’m working so hard…
But the reality is perfectionism steals us of the few years we have available to accomplish all the things we hope to.
Just today, my aunt had her birthday. I don’t know her exact age. Late 50s? Early 60s? Hard to believe.
65 is just a made up number for a retirement age, but it’s amazing to me how many people around me are starting to get up there.
Time is precious, and it’s not going to wait for anyone.
One of the reasons we get so caught up in perfectionism is because we end up dragging yesterday into today.
Don’t get me wrong – it’s a very human thing to do.
But because we want things to go a certain way, because we don’t want to get hurt again, because we had that bad experience that one time…
We insist on perfectionism.
We try to control all the variables we can control (when there are precious few).
And the people around us only end up confused and not wanting to work with us because from their vantage point, it looks like we’re unsure of ourselves and what we want.
I can’t solve perfectionism for you in 300 words.
What I can do is make an offer. And trust me when I say I do this because I love you.
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