Stop Trying to be Perfect — Live your life as you want
When I was 18, I thought my life would be perfect at 25. I even remember creating a Bucket List in 2015 and out of the 23 goals I listed, I could only manage to strike 5 off it.
Today as I am writing this story as I am about to turn thirty but my life still feels like a mess.
I am still working in a job. I wanted to start a business.
I wanted to have a good muscular physique. I am nowhere even close to it.
I wanted to travel but apart from visiting a city or two in three years, I couldn’t go any further.
I have a long list of uncompleted goals. To be honest, some of those goals were made by looking at what people were doing around me or because I just wanted to impress somebody.
Over the years I have realized that I am quite lazy in terms of physical activity and I get tired very easily. I am that kind of person who prefers staying indoors with a laptop than go out on a long drive. I can get exhausted by just sitting in the car. Yet, I was doing things that were just not ME.
By creating these goals I was only pressuring myself. Trying to live a life defined by others. I was searching for happiness by following what others think.
I was so wrong!
And then finally it happened, I had a breakdown. I couldn’t hold on to all the weight of my own expectations. I couldn’t concentrate on anything, couldn’t write, I was angry and frustrated. It was not only affecting me but everyone around.
Instead of aiming for improvements I was aiming for perfection.
May be if I stop striving for perfection I can be less worried and more happy.
Is it really worth it?
Striving for perfection is stressful. You push yourself beyond the limits and the goal still appears far away. You never seem to get to the destination.
I know this because I have longed for perfection all my professional life.
By striving for perfection I created unrealistic expectations from myself, without even realizing.
Perfectionism eats away our most precious resource, time
Today I am trying to live as I want to. I am lazy and sometimes I take my own sweet time to complete my tasks. I can live with it because this is who I am. And frankly, this whole perfection thing is very exhausting.
I am yet to find true happiness in making sacrifices. I think I am ready to trade happiness with perfection. I was rarely happy with perfection.
Perfectionism is not a quest for the best. It is a pursuit of the worst in ourselves, the part that tells us that nothing we do will ever be good enough ? that we should try again. — Julia Cameron
You can live with imperfection!
As a writer and digital creator myself, I always run after perfection in everything I create and it just never ends.
If you are a writer you will relate to this. Whenever you reread your work, there will always be something to edit. An inner voice which will keep nagging you about the imperfections in your work.
As creatives, the urge to get things right never goes away.
We should strive to create the best but not for perfection. We can always achieve quality without perfection.
Jake and JZ in their book Make Time, writes
Perfection is another shiny object taking your attention away from your real priorities.
It truly does. We always second-guess our work. Always revising, and editing till we get everything right. In the process, we are just stalling while the meaningful work was completed a long time back.
It’s totally fine living with some imperfections in your life.
I am not against people who work for perfection. I believe every person needs to live their life the way they want. I also feel striving for perfection is not a bad message to profess. But one needs to draw a line somewhere. We just cannot go on working forever.
Like for example, I could have written this article much better. But I don’t care, this is the best piece I can produce right now. I can live with it and I am happy.
