One key concept that those of us who were raised to be perfectionists need to understand is that mistakes are inevitable. There is no possible way that any degree of planning, handwringing, thinking, or analyzing is going to avoid making mistakes. You are going to start out on something, and you are going to stumble. You are going to look foolish at times, and you are going to find out that you really did not know what you were doing at all when you started.
Let me repeat. Mistakes are inevitable.
Can you do a bit of thinking before you start? Yes. Can you consider some options before you pick a path? Yes. Can you reduce some really stupid mistakes by thinking this through a bit? Yes. Can you avoid making mistakes at all? Never.
This is not shocking news and should come across as painfully obvious. However, is this painfully obvious? Not to the perfectionist. The perfectionist is actually a person who lives in constant fear. Fear of rejection. Fear of being discovered. Fear of being foolish, of being found out. Fear of discovery and fear of appearing like they do not know what they are doing. They have lived a life of pretense, and the idea of going out into the world to try something is terrifying. Why? They do not want to make any mistakes.
I know this well. Because I am one. Born, raised, groomed to be a perfectionist. I am an idealist. I work from the ideal and make my way downward. I want everything to be right, to be awesome, and to look good doing it. However, I am now well into my fifth decade in life, and I have learned, the hard way, that perfectionism is not the right way at all. It is completely the wrong approach. If I could trade the million or so moments of hesitation in my life for one bold and gutsy start, I would do it. My greatest failures in life have not come from mistakes I made along the way, but rather the times I hesitated because of fear.
I know this sentiment well, having lived it. I see it in others, and I see it in my children, and I see it in countless salespeople that I have worked with over the years. Fear of reprisal. Fear of rejection. Fear of failure. All are attributes of the perfectionist. Here is the message that I wish a wiser person would have got in my face about when I was in my teens. “You are going to fail. You will fail. You will be rejected. There is nothing you can do about it. The only thing you can do is start… now.”
So I have learned. Failure is inevitable. Now, I do not necessarily believe in the try, fail, try, fail mantra. I think that is an important consideration for iterative discovery, but I think we also need to be smart about things. Do them the right way, if we can. Get good advice, if we can. Give yourself adequate time to learn and to understand. Follow what others have done. Copy first and then innovate later. I think that is the best path, however, only for a limited time. Give yourself a time limit. Figure out these things, but once you get to the time limit, pull the trigger. Go for it. Do the dance and see what happens.
A good friend of mine was telling me of his experience on a diving board. I had a similar experience as well. You might remember these contraptions in the seventies. They would commonly open up the high school swimming pools to the public, and as a consequence, they would have the high dives in place. Nowadays, this would be a liability nightmare, but when I was young, you could go to these public swimming pools, climb way up the ladder, walk out onto the plank, and stare down at the water to try to get the courage to jump. My friend told me that he tried this, but at the last minute, ditched to the side as he jumped to try to be closer to the edge of the pool when he hit the water. This was a mistake, as falling close to the pool edge is not a great idea at ten meters in the air. Best would have been just to jump. Jump wide and clear into open water. The difference between my friend and me? He actually jumped. I stood there, and after peeing my shorts, crawled back down and spent the rest of the day crying because I was too much of a wimp.
But I learned. I am no longer that little frail kid on the ten meter high springboard. I am an experienced pirate who has walked this plank many times now and jumped into the unknown with one arm waving free as I go down. Now I know. Perfectionism is the curse of the fearful. I will swan dive, belly flop, or do three and a half somersaults on the way down. Something. Anything. Today, I give myself a few days to think about it, and then I just run and jump off the edge. Mistakes are inevitable. I do not care if that cute girl from third grade is watching. I am going to fly and have a smile on my face as I plummet to my fate below.
