We live in an imperfect world. Nothing is perfect and, in this life, nothing ever will be. We live in a world where things break down and need maintenance. We live in a world where one solution may seem great for one period of time, but insufficient to serve us in another. Constant innovation keeps things always improving with changing times. When we are attached to having things a certain way, we are almost always then entered into a losing battle. Changing times always call for changing methods. Nothing is ever perfect, even in its own time. Even when we seemingly have things going pretty well, we lose contentment and gratitude for what we have, we start becoming focused on what's wrong and how we can fix it. When we focus on what is wrong, we are dissatisfied. We should have realized by now that life or work is just not going to be perfect.
This should be a relief. It should save us hours of worrying and stewing over trying to make things come into perfection. We suffer from procrastination because we don't want to start a project until it is perfect. Guess what? It never will be. We are not going to reach a state of happiness when perfection happens. If that is the case, we will never be happy! We need to find contentment and peace even in the midst of pressure. We can stop pretending we have it all together. We can start to be a little vulnerable as we were as children. A little more authentic. We can actually enjoy life and work a whole lot more and find joy in our work. We can actually ask others to help us without feeling weak, because guess what, we are! No person can be strong in every area. Weakness and imperfection allows space for others to come into our lives and demonstrate their strengths. When we try to do things others are more suited for, we rob them of the chance to find joy in their specialty through helping us.
Stop stressing over how things should be. Start appreciating things for the way they are. Life really is ok the way it is. Don't be robbed of enjoying the present moment with all its imperfections. Sometimes our struggle with perfectionism comes from things in our past. We don't want to repeat the same mistakes. We don't want people to hurt us. We don't want to be embarrassed again. We don't want to be wrong. We all live with some sort of past regret. Perhaps, many of them. We can make this serve us well by learning from it, but we don't need to fear it. We certainly don't need to let it define our present or our future. I believe once you begin to eliminate your need for perfection in all areas of your life and work, your life and work will get easier.
Let it go. What is it in your life you are always stressing over to be perfect? Slowly turn it loose and let yourself be free. The objective is always success, not perfection!