The Price of Perfection

The last week has been a lesson to me on the price to be paid when we retreat to the safety of our minds. Once we achieve any success in an activity it’s so very easy to lose sight of our original reason for taking part. I spent the last two weeks not doing what I love, writing, teaching and learning, allowing myself to be controlled by expectations. Having had a few good weeks on myDL I’m struggling to write. Even though the success has been very moderate I’m suddenly finding myself quitting in the middle of posts and shooting down more ideas than ever paying the price for pursuing perfection. It’s not enough to find your passion! you need to find a way to keep it yours too!

Re-connect with your passion

Connect to the original reason you found your passion often. Go back to the reason you started. Whether your passion makes you $1 a year or $100 a day you when you started you started because you connected deeply with it. Connect with that feeling often. Remember all the reasons why you’d gladly do what you’re doing for free. Remember that some time good enough is good enough, the price of perfection is high when you let it stop you producing.

Study how the professionals progressed

Research heroes of your field and look how they progressed. Even the most gifted of gifted athletes and writers knocked their head once or twice. They didn’t start out perfect but they always had passion. No one is born able to do it all. Read about how they did it. Study their mindset. Model their strategies. Use their tactics. Have a good old laugh at the mistakes that they made. When you’re done, have a quick chuckle at your own expense 10 years from now someone will be laughing at how you knocked your head and you won’t care when you’ve made it. Passion will fuel you when you know that you won’t be perfect, but that you’re doing the right things. The price of perfection is less time spent learning.

Change your mindset about failure

Change your mind about failure. You’re going to make mistakes, you’re going to make plenty. Live with it. This is not permission for you to fail! This is permission to make mistakes. Put together a system and incorporate an element of quality checking before you complete. Systems are often passion killers, use your system to channel your energy to the parts of this blogging lark you’re most passionate about. When I write I now complete my outline, knock out my first draft. I then revise the piece while also checking for glaring spelling and punctuation mistakes then I revise again at least 12 hours later. When I just started out I found I still missed a glut of errors. I should have been checking more until my error margin was acceptable. At the moment I still miss the odd mistake but if I do I fix it and move on I still trust my system. You should do the same set up a system and stick to it as long your success rate is within acceptable limits. The price of perfection is going to be a heart attack if you don’t have  trusted system to handle the areas of your blogging which you struggle most with.

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