Conquer Perfectionism

Deo volente.

What do you say to yourself when things don’t go as planned?

Stephen Guise wrote a great little book called How to Be an Imperfectionist. As a still-recovering perfectionist, I found it very useful.

Speaking of perfectionism, let’s look at the essence of Tal Ben-Shahar’s great book The Pursuit of Perfect.

Imagine yourself as the Director of a movie.

Have you ever made a mistake?

Imagine this: It’s your first day of art class. You signed up for an intro class on pottery. (Nice! Go you!)

Abraham Maslow studied the greatest people of his generation—extraordinary humans like Albert Einstein and Eleanor Roosevelt.

In a prior +1 we talked about the risk of overwhelming ourselves as we go ALL IN on Optimizing. One of the ways to deal with that tendency is to practice the science of self-compassion.

Peter Drucker tells us that all great people have great weaknesses. Where there are peaks, there are valleys.

In our last +1, we talked about a word Aristotle coined to capture that Life Force within each of us (and everything) that pushes us (and everything else) from potentiality to actualization. He called it “entelechy.”

In our last +1, we talked about zero-based thinking and reflected on the powerful question of asking ourselves whether, knowing what we now know, we’d have started doing some of the things we’re doing.

In our last +1, we talked about Phil Stutz’ great phrase: “Endlessly evolving process.”

I don’t know about you, but I’m still kind of attached to the idea that I should never make a mistake.

In our last +1, we talked about the fact that batting .300 over the course of your Major League Baseball career gets you in the Hall of Fame.

The other day I was working on a Note on Phil Maffetone’s book called 1:59. It’s all about how he thinks someone will run a marathon in less than 2 hours. He offers his perspective on how they should approach it and, of course, how we can apply that wisdom to our lives and to our training.

In our last couple +1s, we talked about Michelangelo and his studio.

We’re kinda on a roll with our Fire Walk to our ultimate potential so I say let’s keep going.

In our last couple +1s, we talked about the art and science of lining up our dominoes in one neat and shiny staircase to moon-heaven. 🚶 🌝

In our last +1, we enjoyed some zigs and zags with Ralph Waldo Emerson and talked about the importance of maintaining self-trust in the midst of inevitable setbacks and lack of clarity/confusion.

Geoff Colvin’s Talent Is Overrated is a great book.

Continuing our brief trip through Marie Forleo’s brilliant brain and equally wise book Everything Is Figureoutable, let’s redefine one more f-word.

This morning Alexandra and I were chatting about her new Heroic +1s.

Today we’re going to return to David Brooks’ great book The Second Mountain for a little more wisdom.

As I typed out the title for this +1—”How to Be a Perfect Person”—I laughed.

In our last +1, we talked about How to Be Perfect.

Continuing our little series on the science of courage, how about some more wisdom from Robert Biswas-Diener?

In our last +1, we spent some time with an Academy Award-nominated documentarian who reminded us that we need to be willing to fail.

In our last +1, we took a moment to shine a flashlight on some of our strengths that we may take for granted that we’d be wise to take AS granted.

The other day, Emerson and I were doing some reading together.