Years ago I had what I thought was a slam-dunk business idea. But before I could even look for a single client I had to have certain things set up. I spent countless hours agonizing over website design and color palettes, the ideal logo, the clever (but not-too-clever) business name, the drop-dead gorgeous business card, the astonishingly persuasive ad copy.
Is it any wonder the business never got off the ground?
I didn’t see it as stalling. I saw it as standards. I literally could not put myself ‘out there’ unless everything was perfect. And when my projects inevitably stalled, I had an explanation ready: I’m a perfectionist. I would say that with pride, as if my exacting requirements were a positive thing, not something that was keeping me from doing what I wanted to do, and how I wanted to express myself.
Maybe you have a project like this too. The thing is ‘almost done’, ‘a work in progress’, or ‘nearly there’. You are still tweaking it, massaging it, refining it. (Call it whatever you want.) Nothing goes out until it can’t be criticized.
Here is what the word does. “I am a perfectionist” takes something that happens around certain tasks and makes it who you are. A trait is supposed to be permanent. So the sentence promises this will keep happening.
What is actually there, though, is not a personality trait. It is a feeling attached to a task. The feeling says: this has to be above criticism before anyone sees it. Under it, the belief: if it isn’t flawless, it says something about me.
It is a layer of thoughts, feelings, and beliefs we add to the task. That layer is resistance, and resistance can be neutralized. That is the work of The Frictionless Mindset: Acceptance, Alignment, Action.
My business card was a business card. My website was a website. Neither one was a verdict on me. That meaning was mine. I added it, and it cost me the business.
The usual advice doesn’t address this. It says: Lower your standards. Aim for good enough. Done is better than perfect. Each one asks you to argue with the feeling or push past it. I tried that advice too, for years calling myself a recovering perfectionist. But I stopped that when I realized what that sentence was doing. It was keeping the layer in place, waiting to reappear on the next task.
Take the layer off and the label goes. The standards can stay. You can still want the logo to be good. Without your added layer, though, you stop needing it to say something about you.
Keep the design tools, the drafts folder, the style guide. They work. They can make the work better. They can’t make you let it go.
You don’t have to recover from who you are. Nothing about you needs fixing. You only have to put down what you added.
Imperfectly yours,
Alessandra