Wednesday, July 19, 2006
Better is the enemy of good.
I have known so many people (librarians and others) who think that perfection is an attainable goal. It's not! Please don't go for absolute perfection -- it's never going to happen. Instead, go for GOOD ENOUGH and have confidence in yourself that you can handle whatever happens. You can tweak or change things if necessary.
Too often I hear people say "well, we could try this, but what if we can't handle it? What if it's too successful? What if it tanks?"
So what?
Failure is inevitable. It would behoove us to remember this, and to not expect ourselves to get things right the first time, every time.
The thing to keep in mind is that, if you allow yourself to be paralyzed by the fear of failure, then you can't move forward. Deciding to do nothing is still a choice. And if we decide to do nothing, and the world moves on without us, then people may decide that we are not really necessary anymore. I don't want to end up like the dinosaurs, so even though I am not a big fan of change, I'm going to try to remain open to it. And I'm going to keep failing, and picking myself up again, and dusting myself off and going back into the damn fray.
And by the way, I like to refer to myself as a "recovering perfectionist." I'm not sure I am ever going to get over my desire for everything to be neat and in control and organized and perfect, but it keeps getting easier to talk myself down from the perfection ledge whenever I find myself up there. :) ¶ posted by Mary Martin @ 1:46 PM
Too often I hear people say "well, we could try this, but what if we can't handle it? What if it's too successful? What if it tanks?"
So what?
Failure is inevitable. It would behoove us to remember this, and to not expect ourselves to get things right the first time, every time.
The thing to keep in mind is that, if you allow yourself to be paralyzed by the fear of failure, then you can't move forward. Deciding to do nothing is still a choice. And if we decide to do nothing, and the world moves on without us, then people may decide that we are not really necessary anymore. I don't want to end up like the dinosaurs, so even though I am not a big fan of change, I'm going to try to remain open to it. And I'm going to keep failing, and picking myself up again, and dusting myself off and going back into the damn fray.
And by the way, I like to refer to myself as a "recovering perfectionist." I'm not sure I am ever going to get over my desire for everything to be neat and in control and organized and perfect, but it keeps getting easier to talk myself down from the perfection ledge whenever I find myself up there. :) ¶ posted by Mary Martin @ 1:46 PM
