Is Perfectionism Sabotaging Your Success?

I recently met someone (in real life) for the first time after following her for years and taking some of her courses online.  This is someone I respect a great deal so it was a treat to finally meet her.  I was excited to hear she had been looking for someone with my skill set to help her with a project and remembered me from the classes I’d taken.

I was even more excited when she told me she had actually been referred to me by someone I got to know at a recent conference — another person I have much respect for. I felt honored that these two dynamic women had actually had a discussion about me. But my excitement soon gave way to embarrassment when she told me she had visited my website and this blog and wondered if I was even still in business because it had been so long since I had posted an update.

Ouch!

I started to make excuses about how busy I am with client work and how I knew I needed to pay more attention to doing things for my own business that I do for my clients on a regular basis.  But the truth of the matter is that I could make the time to post to my blog. And I am not at a loss for things I want to say to the world.  The real truth is that I get stuck in perfectionism when I try to write. The fear of saying something that might not be extraordinarily eloquent or exceptionally profound or (heaven forbid) might have a grammatical or spelling error simply paralyzed me.

How many times have I quoted the saying “imperfect and done is better than perfect and unfinished” or the variation, “imperfect action trumps perfect inaction”?  But my own need to be perfect has stopped me from sharing things I know could make an impact on my readers and clients.  It was then and there that I realized that it was time to take my own advice and just do it!

So I’m making a commitment, a public pledge, to post to this blog on a regular basis going forward even if it isn’t perfect.  In fact, you can almost be assured that there will be occasional mistakes made. And every post may not rock your world. But I hope you will find value in most of them and I’ll be reading them over for errors (probably more than really necessary) as I try to minimize mistakes. But they will be done — even if imperfect.

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