PERFECT

What if I told you perfection is achievable? You’re probably thinking to yourself yeah right, what the hell does this guy know. The thing is you have achieved perfection and been perfect multiple times in your life and you were just unaware of it.

Missing your perfect moments is like not paying attention to your favorite people, or enjoying your favorite food, or drinking water after being dehydrated for 3 or more days straight. I’m almost positive you don’t want to miss these events again. But more importantly, how do you get into the exact same flow to produce your perfect, perfection events?

Before we even dive into the 5 things you should be doing to maximize your perfect moments. What does the word perfection even mean?

In the Cambridge dictionary, it defines perfection as, “The state of being complete and correct in every way.”

Okay great now that we have the definition we can speak to what it really means.

It’s all bullshit, perfection by being complete and correct in every way give it a rest. I’m sure you are very aware and have tried to achieve perfection but in your mind never achieved it.

But didn’t I just say you have achieved perfection multiple times in your life? Yes, I sure did and here’s why.

5. Care What Others Think

A lot of the issues that come with thinking about perfection stem from the perceptions of others. The problem is when you are out there creating you start to think what others will think.

You start to create your website for your awesome new product. All you want to do is sell your product. Ultimately all you need is a shopping cart or a landing page for purchase. But then you start to think what if somebody comes on my website and I don’t have this, that or the other thing?

Then your 3-hour website build turns into an epic one-month event. In the end has every conceivable page, attribute, and plugin you can think of. Oh, wait we just wanted to sell something, where did that go?

I’m not immune to this problem. That example is very near and dear to my heart, to the point where I made two websites for nearly the same thing. The worst part is I never launched them because I felt the people I never met weren’t satisfied.

I have created some kickass websites and I leave them in the box because I’m worried what someone I have never met thinks.

Perfection strikes again with arm bracelets, chaining you to the floor with a metal table and a glass of water you can’t reach.

The fact is you will never please everybody. But you will be perfect for some people, and that is the key. If someone is overly critical of you for misspelling something, not having this or that, or just being mean. You probably don’t want to work with them in the first place.

They are perfectly misaligned with you leaving room for those who are perfectly aligned with you. Who understand what your doing, think your product is just right, and don’t even notice the things that are “Missing in action.”

Don’t let people who you never met dictate your entire life before it truly begins.

4. Success of Others

You’re out there kicking ass, hustling, grinding, keeping your head down and making some real progress.

But then you come up for air and you see it. Someone or something in your market showing all the signs of success. What the hell is happening? How did they do it? Their stuff doesn’t look anything like mine. Maybe I need to incorporate what they have? Or you say, “You know what I should stop because they are obviously way more accomplished and well known and it’s not even worth it.”

Yet you can’t leave it alone you look for the quick fix or some other training, some high-speed marketing trick or business development idea. Maybe it will give you the edge this time? Maybe this is exactly what I need to achieve perfection?

There’s only one problem what works for one person or company may not work at all for you. Your client, customer, or whatever you call them are unique to you and they may not even own a computer. Now what?  

I have been caught in this trap all too often looking for the next big thing, spending money on training I do not need. Doing everything the training asked, listening to all the right people and still being exactly where I started after the dust settled.

We all have to think beyond what someone else has done and what they are doing. The little voice in your head is happy to pop up and say how stupid you are for trying. It wants you to be small so you can be comfortable in your sweat pants staring into the moving pictures box.

Other people are successful and it does not mean you can’t be successful alongside them or even beyond them. Success is not just for a small number of people. As long as you are willing to work for it you will find it.  

3. Make Mistakes

How do you learn if you know everything already? Might as well call you the oracle and put you on top of the highest mountain and ensure a treacherous climb to find you.

No one ever wants to make a mistake. We all want to be perfect, have the right thing to say, never offend, build the thing that everyone wants, speak everyone’s language.

Get over yourself. You do not need to know everything, nor do you need to act like a punk when someone is trying to help you. You may have failed in the past, and your ego is bruised. Take it as a humbling experience and learn from it.

In the Teams, we failed a lot more then we succeeded. However, we were never afraid to try something out of the box, and if it didn’t work we would debrief. The debrief was where we learned what went wrong. We then reassessed and would reattack with modified tactics. Learning from our mistakes every step of the way.

A failure is a failure if you never learn from it. Read that again…. A Failure is a Failure If You Never Learn from It.

If you follow this philosophy then you never truly fail. Alas, we all still do not want to make a mistake so we become afraid of our own potential. We just purely don’t want to fail.

If you don’t want to fail, good neither do I. Flip the way you think about failure and mistakes. Start asking yourself what is there to learn from this mistake and/or failure.

2. Stop Talking

There has never been a better time to get your message out there into the world and try to affect people in a positive way. Disclaimer alert: If you want to be nefarious, there is no place for you here so move to someone else who is destructive.

Often times we love to make excuses for why something is not right, or why something went wrong, or blame it on someone else. It is just so much easier to pass the buck off and hope it never comes back around.

But when you do this you are showing no real leadership ability. We all have choices to make like I said before it is okay to make mistakes if you learn from them.

There is a philosophy we should all live by and that is to not be afraid to fail, but fail differently every time. Because this signals that you are making progress and you are learning from your mistakes.

When you keep talking and stop listening you are not learning. Even further then listening is appearing to listen but formulating all the problems or solutions to what someone is saying before they are done. That is not listening that is posturing to fight or prove your imperfection.

However, you are not the oracle. You need to shut up and listen actively. Because if you don’t want to make the same mistake then learn and move forward.

1. Be yourself

Do you remember hearing the phrase, “you are perfect just the way you are.” I’m sure we have all heard it from one place or another.

But I’m here to tell you, you and I are not perfect, we have flaws, broken emotions, problems big and small. Things we cannot stand, body issues, and preconceived falsehoods that live in our minds.

All these things make a pretty awesome soup sandwich. If someone saw everything that was true they would run in horror and probably judge the hell out of us. Who wants that?

Well, guess what those things are the exact things that make you perfect. You are perfect for a particular situation someone else is in. That weird skill you have with finding edible plants in the forest is the exact thing someone is looking for before they live off the grid.

You are already perfect the exact way you are right now. All the experiences, hardships, mistakes, failures, hitting brick walls, etc. Are building you to help in some way or another. You may be perfect for helping people with drinking problems. It does not matter what a person who never had a drinking problem thinks of you. Because you are doing positive work towards helping someone through their drinking problem.

Think about it, Bob Ross was an amazing painter who had a show on PBS back in the day. He would paint happy fluffy clouds and a lonely cabin who needed birds for some company with the flick of his wrist. To some, he was perfect at making them laugh, for others he was the perfect painter to help them get to the next level. On the other hand, people hated him just to hate him.

Bob wasn’t trying to be perfect for everyone, he was trying to help and inspire those he was perfectly aligned with.

The Perfect Conclusion

When it comes down to it you are a unique person. You are perfect for a lot of people. Helping them through what you are perfectly geared to help them with. It may not be a mainstream thing and it may be a really hard thing that takes a lot of effort to find your people. But those people are out there that you are perfectly aligned with.

Do not let perceptions, people, past mistakes, others success, your little voice, or your inability to be yourself stop you from being perfect for those who are seeking you.

If you’re having trouble figuring out who you are or who you need to help. Set some goals and have a vision. Watch this video about setting goals and vision, and start taking action for yourself.

Remember, Perfection is an impossible task when you are not being who you were meant to be.