Perfectionism

really real: a short book review that isn’t

My daughter came home distraught one day when she was in the second grade. Over the previous weekend her class had an assignment to make a turkey out of construction paper and decorate it. She was upset because she felt hers looked terrible compared to all the other kids’ turkeys. She has always hated doing a poor job and it tore her up.

A few days later we got to see all the turkeys during a parent/teacher conference. My daughter’s looked like it was hastily made by a second grader at 7:15pm the night before it was due (and for good reason). The other turkeys looked like they had been painstakingly crafted by 35 year olds with serious scrapbooking technology and skills at their disposal. Not that I’m judging or bitter.

Actually, it provided the opportunity for some great life lessons about the value of doing your best and comparing your results to your own individual efforts, skills, and potential versus setting your self-worth based on the results of others.

Fast forward to November of 2011 and she was very excited about participating National Novel Writing Month. She was at the computer for a month straight, typing away at six in the morning before she had to get ready for school, in the evenings, on weekends, and begging to stay up late so she could keep working on it. I love to write and it would have been all too easy to take over so I stayed out of it almost entirely, answering questions when asked, but not much more. She did get some help from a 20-something family friend, mainly around formatting and getting it uploaded onto a self-publishing site. The story was all hers.*

I was proud of her perseverance, drive, and passion. It was pretty cool that she had written a 40+ page story. How many 5th graders could say that? How many adults could?  Good stuff.

Then we received several proof copies and that changed everything. It went from being a words on the computer to a glossy cover, paper and ink, honest-to-goodness ISBN coded book. It was real. Authentically real. Really real. She had written a BOOK! Something I had always wanted to do, but never done. She did it at 10 years old.

And then it went live on amazon.com. Not just a really real book, but a really real book that others can purchase – just as authentic as all the other books. Don’t know why that makes it more real, but it does. I’ve shifted from pride to outright awe. A very, very cool achievement.

Lots of leadership and HR related lessons in all this:

  • She’s a great writer. Far better than anyone her age has a right to be. Why? She loves to read and she loves to write. Her skill is not by accident. She’s exposed herself to good writing and she’s practised it. A lot.
  • Commitment matters. Results happen when you are dedicated to achieving getting it done come Hell or high water.
  • Likewise, self-motivation trumps all. I could not have forced, cajoled, commanded, or bribed the amount of dedication forged by her internal fires.
  • She’s more enthusiastic about writing than, say, spelling. As much as she strives to do great work, she never lets perfectionism get in her way. Consequently, she gets stuff done.
  • She cares more about her results than anyone’s opinion. She’s a fearless writer (and public speaker) so she makes it happen.
  • It’s amazing what you can accomplish when you don’t know what you’re not supposed to be able to do. No one ever told her that kids don’t write and publish books. Please don’t tell her now – she’s too busy preparing to write the next one.
  • Physically holding the results – or a symbol of the results – is very, very powerful. It transforms ideas to reality. It makes the ephemeral SOLID.
  • Confidence and self-esteem comes from effort not cheerleading. Trophies don’t matter. The bloodied-but-unbowed effort behind them does.

Your thoughts?

*In case you’re wondering… It’s called “Bo”. Here’s the description from the back cover: Horses are going missing left and right. Nobody’s doing anything. The sheriff is “dealing with other matters.” One morning, ten year old Lucy sees smoke coming out of the canyon. That night, she and her German Sheppard decide to check it out but as they leave the house they find two men stealing THEIR HORSES. What follows is the start of a great adventure.

imperfect action beats perfect inaction

“I can’t remember how it begins.” My six-almost-seven year old son was warming up for his first martial arts tournament and he was pretty nervous. He had been practicing a form – a pattern of movements – for a couple of months, but he went completely blank.

One of his instructors pulled him aside and said, “When you get out in front of the judges, if you can’t remember what to do, just make it up. Just do some moves until you get to a part you remember. That’s better than freezing up.”

Great advice for life. You can stay frozen, not starting until you can do it perfect. Or, you can jump in, get moving, do what you think is right (or close), and correct on the fly. There are very, very few situations where doing nothing is better than doing something and improving as you go.

Words to live by: imperfect action beats perfect inaction.

standing in my own way

“Am I the only one standing in my way? Am I my own merciless enemy?” ~ Jamey Jasta

 

Ever drive the go-karts at an amusement park? You know, the ones that accelerate sloooowly and have a top speed so low that you never need to brake. Press gas pedal as far as it will go and leave it there as you steer around the track. There’s never enough room to pass so you have to get really aggressive to get around that one kart that is even slower than yours. You work and work and work to wring every ounce of speed out of the kart and feel like you’ve finished the Indy 500 when you’re done. Or maybe it’s just me…

As industrial and heavy as those karts look, they actually have the potential to go faster. Quite a bit faster. The engines have a governor on them that restricts power and prevents you from approaching litigious speeds.

A friend once bought a new truck. It ran fine and he was plenty happy with it – no complaints. Then, one day, he discovered by accident that he had only been pushing on the bottom of the gas pedal. It would stop against the floor when there was still room for the rest of the pedal to move. Suddenly, his truck had more power than he knew what to do with. Just by moving his foot. There was no governor on it, but there might as well have been. The truck had a ton of potential power that he hadn’t known existed.

How often do we do this to ourselves? How often do we go along thinking life is ok, completely missing the potential awaiting? How often do we restrict ourselves and go through life with a governor on?

Think about all the times we’re unable to operate at our peak because we eat, drink, or smoke too much or get too little sleep or exercise. It’s like we’ve put a restrictor plate on our lives. The physical side is an easy target, but what about the mental? That’s where we really mute our lives.

How often do we:

not speak up because we’re shy, don’t want to take a chance, fear failing, or don’t think we can?

try to fade into the background and not be noticed at work?

worry about things that have only the slightest chance of happening?

wait “until the time is right” before starting something important?

decide that this is what is and just resign ourselves to every day being just like today?

sell ourselves short?

refuse to do anything unless we can do it perfectly, thereby doing nothing?

stay in a miserable job because the known evil is less scary than the unknown change?

lock our dreams in the basement of our minds because not trying sounds better than maybe failing?

tell ourselves (and anyone who will listen) all the reasons we can’t, instead of all the ways we might?

trade in our unique humanness for false security and imagined stability?

believe the lies we have told ourselves about ourselves?

The go-karts are mechanically restricted and we all have natural limitations, but those are small in comparison to the self-imposed limitations. We’re all really much more like my friend’s truck: we have a ton of potential that’s just waiting for us to realize it’s there.

 

my first triathlon: getting out of my own way

I was going back over some old writing and came across something that holds true even after six years. It’s a bit long, but a significant part of my journey. Perhaps you can relate to the idea of getting out of your own way:

 

I recently entered and finished my first triathlon. It was a short distance event so I was confident that I could finish as long as I didn’t push myself too hard early on, but I had no way to judge how well I would do. An hour thirty-nine minutes and some seconds later I finished a strong third in my age group, only two seconds out of second place and three or so minutes from first. I’m not sure I can convey in words how pleased I was with my finish or how pleased I was that I was pleased. You see, in the past I would have had a much different attitude about the event and about my results.

 

There are several lessons I take from my success in this event that have strong parallels in success in the rest of my life.

 

  1. I entered. This may sound minor, but was a huge step. I am a semi-reformed perfectionist and would not have entered a triathlon even a short time ago. The philosophy of “if you are going to do something, do it right” was often distorted in my mind to “if you can’t do something right, don’t do it.” I had not swam in 20 years and was not good at it way back when. To enter this event I had to let go of my perfectionist ideals, accept where my skills were, and take responsibility for developing my skills.
  2. I gave myself time to prepare. Once I make a decision I typically want to follow through on it RIGHT THEN. Instead, I selected an event that was several months out to give myself time to properly prepare.
  3. I did not over-train. In the months between deciding to do a triathlon and the actual event I did a lot of traveling and working and was quite ill for a couple of weeks. In the past I would have compensated for this by pushing myself to the point of exhaustion and injury. This time, I created a flexible plan and stuck to that plan as well as I could and accepted when I couldn’t.
  4. I allowed time to taper and recover. “Tapering” is reducing the amount of exercise before an event to allow the body to rest and recover. A comment by a former world-class triathlete resonated for me: It’s better to be 10% under-trained than 1% over-trained. Instead of fretting and trying to get one more workout in, I took almost a week off before the event and then took off another week after to allow time to rest and recover. Previously, I would have exercised right up to and immediately after a race.
  5. I had no expectations – I focused on purpose, not outcome. Having never entered a triathlon meant that I had zero expectations for outcomes beyond doing my best and learning what I could.
  6. I enjoyed my results and did not get caught up in the misery of the perfectionist trap of “if only” and “I could/should have done better.” This learning is a fantastic milestone for my personal development. This is one of the first big events of my life that I did not dismiss, downplay, or even beat myself up because I could have done it better. Because anything can always be done better I have deprived myself of much joy and celebration over the years and it would have been very easy to kick myself over the two seconds between myself and second place. Instead I chose to look at the long-term learning rather than defining my life by one instance. Long-term, I gained some great knowledge that will serve me well in every triathlon from here on out.
  7. I compared myself to no one but myself. This is a big one because not too long ago I would have brooded over not being able to set the same time as the experts, nevermind other people in my age group. This time I was able to let go of all of that and enjoy the knowledge that I did my absolute best for the knowledge, ability, and experience that I currently have.

 

Connections to facilitation:

If you replace “triathlon” with “facilitation” (or almost anything that I’ve done) you get a pretty good snapshot of where I was as a facilitator even a year ago and where I am headed. I tended to:

  • Demand instant results from myself. There is a huge difference between setting challenging goals and expecting to meet those goals immediately without allowing time for growth, development, and learning.
  • Drive myself to frustration and exhaustion by over-preparing. While it is critical to be prepared and confident, I often undermined my confidence with 11th hour preparation and would enter the session feeling frazzled and off a roll.
  • Be very focused on outcome instead of purpose. I typically set artificial measures for myself and would forget about why I’m a facilitator, would neglect the joy of the experience, forget that it is a process and abuse myself when every participant didn’t have massive and immediate shifts. In being focused on outcomes I would see myself in degrees of weakness and get very frustrated that I was not immediately at the level of my mentors, nevermind their greater knowledge, ability, and experience.
  • Push myself in mind, body, and spirit by arriving at sessions weary from travel and over-preparation, giving it my all, and then arriving home exhausted and strung out on sugar and caffeine from trying to stay awake while traveling. I would then get about three hours of sleep and expect to immediately be in top form the next day.

 

In retrospect, it is easy to see how I was limiting myself, but the painful irony is that I got results. My perfectionism and drive created success, but several times in my life I’ve hit plateaus or even gone into decline because after reaching a certain point of success, the harder I push the more I limit myself and the worse I do so I compensate by pushing harder, which leads to stalling out and then a downward spiral. In other words, what made me successful at one level actually prevented future development and success.

 

I have been improving over time with letting go of my perfectionism and focus on outcome and my progress is really underscored for me with this triathlon. Going forward I’ll be focusing even more on:

  • My purpose and doing my best. By removing artificial measures and expectations I am much more likely to relax, have fun, and be at my best than if I stress over outcomes. Ironically, this will lead to much greater outcomes.
  • Having a specific plan and purpose for my development whenever I’m practicing rather than putting in time and practicing just to practice. Exercising (and resting and recovering) with focus and purpose creates much faster and more sustainable results and it stands to reason that the same is true with facilitation.
  • Having a specific plan and purpose for my development in each session.
  • Looking to my long-term results and development.
  • Treating each session like an athletic event by allowing time to taper and recover. I want to enter each session fresh and rested in mind, body, and spirit and then allow myself time to recover once I’m home again. Recovery may be a day off or could just be acknowledging that I won’t be at my best. After all, I might go for a bike ride the day after a triathlon but would not expect to break any personal records so why should I expect different from my ability to work?

 

One thing I know for sure is that I have not fully appreciated the depth of these realizations. Although I am excited about applying this learning I know that these are key lessons that I will continue to get at deeper and deeper levels. I welcome any insights about the shifts that you are experiencing as you become better and better in your own life.

 

too safe is too dangerous

Ok, back from vacation. I’ve returned from visiting family and friends with a strong desire for a rat rod T-bucket, an AR-15, and a new mountain bike. I’m not sure what this says about me (or my friends, for that matter). Fortunately, I’m going to use the time proven method of combining a complete lack of introspection with denial and not think about too much. Beats Prozac.

Speaking of mountain bikes. I decided it was time to expose my bike to sunlight and try out some trails I’ve been hearing about. (Hang in there, this is going to connect to business sooner or later). There was one easy section of trail where the left side was a rock wall and the right side was a steep descent into the river. Nothing life threatening, but it would certainly inconvenience the morning to somersault into the murky water. My first instinct was to head to safety by veering away from the edge leading to the water. That’s a rookie move. The rock wall is no safer. Getting close to the wall risks catching the handlebar on the wall and pinballing over in slow motion. Move away from the edge, clip the wall, and fall in anyway.

The safest way to ride that stretch of trail is to stay in the middle and look at where I want to go. Just like business and life.

Although I don’t advocate unnecessary risk, how often do we create more problems for ourselves by lunging for safety? We avoid, we choose to not take action on the iffy belief that it’s safer than taking action. We sit still when we should be moving or if we do move, it’s backwards at full speed. Our peers, our competition, the world passes us by when we insist on trying to create absolute safety.

Where are you trying to be too safe?

 

Quick thought on perfection

Imperfect action will beat perfect inaction any day of the week. It’s easy to get caught up in planning every detail perfectly and not moving forward until everything is meticulously thought through. And if you fall for that trap, you’ll get crushed by someone who was able to immediately execute a pretty good plan.