Tuesday, January 6, 2015

Reader Mail: 7 Perspectives on Perfectionism & Making Mistakes

Hello, new and returning readers!  Happy New Year!  I realize I haven’t posted since June.  Yikes!  2014 was an extremely busy and super fun year!  

I’ve been getting all of your great questions and comments.  They are all such good questions and pressing questions that I am honored, and flattered, and excited that you write to me.  However, I do have a confession to share with you, my dear readers.


I think the hardest part of writing this blog is not being able to answer every single one of your questions or concerns.  And it’s not because of lack of time or lack of interest.  My absence, my lack of responding, or my lack of infrequent posts is most often because I do not have the answer either.  I don’t even have an interesting inner dialogue of ponderings.  If I was forced to write a post it’d be one word entries such as:


Week 1
Lost…


Week 2
What?!


Week 3
@#%&*!


In all honesty, more often than I care to admit, I do not know what to tell you or how to even begin to address your situation.  Sometimes your question is the exact same question I am asking myself or the universe.  Other times, I realize I don’t have enough information.  Or I know the answer really has to come from YOU, WITHIN you, somewhere deep in your heart or a tiny seed of an idea in your brain.  And it is only something you will discover if you give yourself time, patience, love, and age a little bit or move through life with a plan, or most likely without a plan…  


I believe the best answers and revelations come in that quiet moment when one day something just clicks in your brain.  All the cogs, screws and inner workings of your mind just move a millimeter to the left or the right and things fall into place like a solved Rubic’s cube.  So this is why I am silent at times.  


I am searching just as much as you are; I am bathing in stillness in search of enlightenment.  


Which leads me to today’s reader mail; I am excited about it.  They don’t ask a question, per se, but that’s the brilliance of it.


“Thank you for your blog posts, which I read heartily and with intense interest! I've been an EA for nearly 20 years and have come to realize that the longer one is engaged with this work, the more specialized a field it becomes, and the harder it is to find others who relate to the particular challenges that the position presents over time. Your blog is an amazing resource for people like us. So, again, thank you!


I struggle with perfectionism and would be very curious to hear your take on the subject. In other aspects of my life, I am trying to let go of the idea of perfection (I have two young children and I am a practicing artist), but in this position, I believe perfection is an expectation of the role, across the board. I understand the mechanisms at play but continue to find it emotionally difficult to reconcile the expectation of 100% accuracy in work when I am only able to deliver 95%, at most.


Please share your thoughts. I would love to hear them.”