“Would that there were an award for people who come to understand the concept of enough. Good enough. Successful enough. Thin enough. Rich enough. Socially responsible enough. When you have self-respect, you have enough.” ~Gail Sheehy
I’m late posting today and kind of beating myself up for it. When we decided that HHP should have a blog, I created a picture for myself of being a part of people’s mornings, of being that perfect emotional biscotti to go with your mid morning cup of coffee at the office. Clearly, since it’s now 5:10 pm, and I’m about to go back into session, today I have failed rather miserably in this goal.
I have a confession… I’m a perfectionist – actually, I like to say, stealing from my dad, that I’m a recovering perfectionist. This means that I’m aware that, as a big picture person, I have the ability to see how things should be, but that, as a logical being, I also understand that sometimes (often times, really) I have to let myself off the hook at “good enough.”
Kevin Sullivan, a counselor and Director of Academic Support in the Office of First Year Programs at the University of Connecticut, has developed a concept he calls “The Perfection of Effort” as a replacement for our perfectionism. Hind sight is indeed 20/20, and those of us with perfectionist tendencies can look back at something we’ve created and kick ourselves for not having reached the pinnacle of “what could have been.” Perfection of Effort asks us to look at what we wanted to accomplish in light of how much time, energy, resources, and information we had going into the project. If we can honestly say, given limitations in any of these areas (and there are always some,) that we did the best job we could, we must not only forgive ourselves, but take pride in what we’ve created under the circumstances.
So I’m going to take pride in the fact that, despite having a very hectic schedule today, I remained true to my commitment to post something upbeat and hopefully illuminating every day… and also that I’ve turned something that I was not happy with myself about into a positive – who knows if I hadn’t been berating myself for not posting sooner if I would have gotten to share “The Perfection of Effort?!”
There’s always a silver lining… : )
I think this is one of your best entries. Go figure. We all need to be reminded that we do not have the time in our hectic lives to be perfect at everything we do. So often we are paralyzed by the fact we will never be able to write the perfect words so why bother. If the fairies gave us one gift it should have been the art of being able to learn from the experiences where we perhaps did not write Moby Dick or Catcher in the Rye. If you never write anything we will not be able to find the gems that will appear. Keep on writing. Mary
i feel like i need to read this post every single day! yes, at some point we need to send whatever it is we have toiled over out into the world and know that is our best work in that moment. it’s a hard lesson to learn though!
Thanks for posting, T.
The drive towards perfection is sometimes maligned, but it, as you note above, is not necessarily a bad thing, as long as the fear of almost assuredly not being perfect does not paralyze you. If the glue is setting in and the motivation is leaking away, perfection of effort can help because, for most of us, imperfect is often objectively pretty good, and certainly better than nothing at all.