Not Perfection

My latest post is up over at the 50-something moms blog. I just emailed someone about leaving PHOTO SENT on the end of the title. I don't mean to be picky. I think presentation matters. Those words included in the title are a message to the women who manage the blog that the photo to accompany the post has already been sent via email and are not meant to be included with the title upon posting. Someone may or may not be able to edit the title now that it's posted. Today that's okay with me. There was a time when I would have been anxious and pacing over the mistake.

I am a recovering perfectionist, which I wrote a bit about in my post Good Enough. A good friend left the comment, "Strive for excellence, not perfection." I took that to heart, so much so that I say those words often as I work to finish a project. It has helped to have a mantra of sorts to move things along, and I've actually finished projects that otherwise would still be undone.

For the first thirty years of my life I thought that perfection was attainable. My father used to say, "If it's worth doing, then it's worth doing right." In my childlike mind that meant that I should always do my best, and I translated that into the need to accomplish perfection. Whether sewing a dress, painting a room, writing a paper, or forming an argument, I wanted the end product to be the best it could be. That meant there was always more that could be done to improve the seams sewn, the painted edge of the molding, the sentence structure, and so on...and on and on. My mother or my husband used to say, "But no one else will know, Sharon." And I thought to myself, I will know. I will know that I didn't do my best.

I realized years ago that the bar was so high that I would never be able to reach the standards I had set. I was paralyzed because there were things I could not make perfect, and in trying to do the impossible I set myself up for failure. It was me that I needed to talk down off the ledge of perfection. The person I needed to please was myself, which meant that I needed to change my perspective. I have been working on that change for more than two decades.

There are times when I am not completely satisfied with something I've done. Now, that's okay with me. I don't have to be 100% satisfied with everything I do. I do the best I can, and sometimes I need to let it go.

The interesting thing I've learned is that it's often not the physical thing I'm doing that is making me unhappy. There is something in me that is bothering me. I have learned to stop what I'm doing and acknowledge how I'm feeling. Then I ask, "What's really bothering me?" I've planted the question, so even if I keep going with the project or errands or whatever, I have acknowledged that something is out of kilter. Sometimes I stop completely and make myself a cup of coffee or go for a walk. I change gears if what I'm doing isn't working. I focus on what I'm doing at that moment. I intentionally think positive thoughts. Then my mind relaxes and releases what was gumming up the works: my fear about what's wrong with the car, my worry about getting/not getting the job I want, or my concern about something that is none of my business. Invariably, the physical thing I was doing gets easier and I'm content with the results.

I still like to do things well. The difference is that now I am not obsessed with perfection. I haven't done everything I set out to do today; there's always tomorrow or the next day or next week. And the small glitch with the title of my post at the 50-something moms blog? Well, that rates no more than a passing thought.