Can striving for perfection kill you?
Okay, seriously most likely not in a literal sense. But it can cause you to freeze up and not pursue your goals.
It’s just over the mid-way point for January 201o and I’ve already fallen short on my blogging goals (as well as commenting on other people’s blogs).
I wrote out my 2010 Goals for Thrive Business Accounting on January 7th and shared with my readers that I was going to blog 6 days per week. Now here it is January 18th and I’m already supposed to be off the computer for the night. This means I have missed 8 posts I had committed to writing.
I had an interesting chat with a friend on Twitter this past week about striving for perfection. In an attempt to deliver perfectly executed subject matter on specific days of the week to my readers I have literally stopped myself in my tracks. Suddenly I realize I don’t want to box myself into what I am blogging about on a specific day.
But what are goals really? By no means are they an “end” but rather a journey. Perhaps I was too rigid for my personality in what I will blog about on specific days. If I don’t blog daily who do I disappoint? Myself? My readers? Both?
As my wise friend @JosephRanseth said to me recently when I was belaboring my perfectionist tendencies: “Better to have imperfect action than no action at all”
Tonight I stopped by Dave Doolin’s aka Dr. WordPress Website in a Weekend site and read his post on “When B.L.O.G. turns into J.O.B.” and could totally have written that same post myself. Reading through the comments that others left on his post I was encouraged by Valentina from Blog Income Life’s words in her comment to Dave: “passion like the ocean has its ebbs and tides but it is still an ocean and it is powerful”
I haven’t lost my passion so if I go “quiet” for a bit….it’s only because I am Rediscovering. Re-evaluating. Refining. And as always applying new things I am learning.
Do you find that striving for perfection has the ability to stop you in your tracks?
What do you do to energize and motivate yourself to continue your action plan?
