Perfectly Imperfect

You are not perfect. You will never achieve perfection. You will cry and have you heart broken. You’ll get too tipsy on a bottle of good wine and snort when you laugh sometimes. You’ll skip your morning run because you want to sleep in. Your job will have its highs and lows, and your relationships too.

I am not perfect either. I break down frequently, struggle, and make mistakes. I eat too much chocolate or ice cream in a sitting at times, and I don’t always take care of myself. I get lost in my work and feel alone sometimes, and when I do, I discovered a renewed commitment to reconnection.

We are perfectly imperfect. We have rough edges that we learn from. When we’re afraid, we lean into that fear and discover its gift for us. We fall in love and break up and fall in love again.

We are something better than perfect. We are growing, we are evolving. We are glorious. 

And yes, it’s hard often. We want to hold ourselves to the ideals society creates, to the ideals that we create. We want to accomplish and achieve, we want to impress.

But chasing perfectionism holds us back. We wait until the conditions are just right, though they will never be. That’s where I was two years ago. I hated my job, but was waiting for an out — ideally, a husband, so I could start my own business but have his health insurance as a safety net. I grew tired of waiting. I wanted the change and I decided to do it. Success or failure, it was mine.

I’ve seen a lot of friends and clients fall into the same trap of waiting for ideal conditions, waiting for perfect to happen. They obsess over their website, convinced every element must be in the perfect place, every word must be carefully picked, and as a result, they never launch.

Here’s what I’ve learned and here’s what I tell clients and friends all the time: Success comes from imperfect action. It comes from being willing to start somewhere and grow from there.

My friends know me to be a skilled baker, but when I first started, results were often inedible, or worse, so hard that they could dent a car (ah, killer muffins…). I learned, I kept experimenting, and eventually, the final products were not only edible but heavenly.

Where are you holding back, waiting for perfectionism to arrive? Where will you take imperfection action today?