Focus on Success, not Perfection

Let's start off the New Year with the intention to be more successful, NOT to be perfect.  Often it's the bid to be 'perfect' that creates the vision of the unachievable, an unobtainable goal that limits our success.  Focusing instead on being more successful allows for even small achievements to count, each of which, when combined with other small gains, may serve to move us forward exponentially.

Making a conscious effort to be 'perfect' in everything we do can serve to delay, if not deter, us from achieving.  The ideal of perfection is a near impossible standard to meet, considering we will almost always believe that we could have given or done more, if allotted more time, money, support, resources, education, etc.  Who wouldn't agree that they couldn't have done 1% more? 

That 1% is enough to keep you from earning the 'Perfect' title!  It's enough to label your accomplishments 'less than perfect', if only to yourself.  Many will find that they hesitate to take action, or even to try a new activity, when they know that their first efforts will likely fall short of that perfect mark. Thus, they have lost before they start.  Not trying prevents them from learning and developing new skills, from moving forward through achieving even small wins and successes.

Airplanes are constantly flying ín error, having to readjust their heading constantly, to enable them to get where they want to go.  In essence, they take action (set their direction), readjust their heading and take a new action (by setting a new heading), readjust.  These continuous course corrections are needed to keep the plane moving in its desired direction.  Effective and successful?  Yes.  Perfect?  Hardly.

How many times have you seen someone receive accolades for a project that you felt fell short of your mark, your standards?  Was it perfect?  No.  Was it 'good enough'?  Judging by the feedback of others, absolutely.  Take a moment to think about what 'good enough' bought them.

• Likely the same recognition, rewards and reputation boost that you received from your last 'perfect' project
• Less time spent on the completion of this current assignment that they were able to spend on completing other projects, or to focus on themselves, their family, their friends
• Less stress,given they were not agonizing over the need to be perfect or to having to hand something over that they felt was less than perfect
• They felt good about what they accomplished and were able to celebrate its 'successful' completion, rather than stressing over the elements they couldn't get to due to budget or time constraints.

In essence, letting go of the need for perfection frees you mentally, physically and emotionally... freeing you to accomplish more, to be and feel more successful.

The Work:

1.  At the beginning of a new project, take a look at the goals and milestones you have established and define 'levels' of performance.  If you have perfectionistic tendencies, you likely have already identified the 'ideal' for each milestone.  Add to it defined performance levels that aren't perfect but that are sufficient to meet the needs and expectations of others.  In essence, create a vision of the 'good enoughs'.

Establishing this 'good enough' level up front gives you a clear and okay fallback position for when time, money, people and life intervenes and makes the ideal a seemingly unobtainable goal.  Setting that fallback position upfront gives you the permission to use it when required.  Creating it later will always leave you feeling like you've failed.

2.  Some clients find it helpful to view performance standards through someone else's eyes, using someone else's yardstick instead of their own perfectionistic one.  You might use someone else's views to help you establish the 'good enough' mark, while your standards might establish the 'íf time permits' level of performance.  If you find that you are uncomfortable with a 'good enough' goal that someone else establishes, then use it as a minimum level of achievement and set levels of performance in staged levels of achievement beyond this point.  Good enough plus 10%, good enough plus 20%...  You might then discover that you can feel pretty good at letting go of a project at 'good enough plus 15%', giving you a lot more flexibility than always having to achieve 50% more than everyone else in your bid to be perfect.  What could you do with the gift of time that 35% represents? 

This isn't settling folks, it's called being strategic.  If putting an additional 35% of effort into something will not net you at least 35% more in gains, you are wasting your effort... which likely could net you additional gains by being applied elsewhere. Your time and effort are not limitless commodities.  Learning to assign your efforts and time appropriately is what effective time management and ultimately, your success, is dependent upon. Our mantra for the New Year then?  Success through Imperfection!

Visualize Your Way to Success

We're moving into the New Year and, like many, you are likely beginning to think of what you want to achieve over the course of this brand-spanking new year!  There may be some hesitation in creating this new vision for yourself though, given that you may not have managed to realize the goals that you set for yourself this past year.  What can you do this year to make it better, to increase your odds of success?  Take a lesson from professional athletes, sit back and 'visualize' your way to success!

If you can't picture what 'success' for you looks like, it you can't visualize (in detail) taking the steps needed to accomplish it, then you are missing out on a very powerful tool in helping you not only reach, but quite possibly exceed, your goals.  Trust me on this - if you can't 'see' it, you likely will never achieve it.  Our unconscious mind has difficulty in deciphering reality from fantasy.  Therefore, it tends to try to deliver whatever images and scripts you feed it.  The clearer the picture, the more successful.

Soviet sports scientists conducted a study on the effect of mental training and conditioning (which included visualization) on the performance of world-class athletes at the 1980 Olympics.  They divided the athletes into four groups.  Group 1 received 100% physical training and conditioning, Group 2 received 75% physical and 25% mental conditioning, Group 3 received 50% physical and 50% mental, while Group 4 received 25% physical and a whopping 75% mental conditioning.

Certainly, researchers were expecting the athletes receiving 100% of their training through physical conditioning to perform the best.  However, they found instead that Group 4, those receiving the greatest level of mental conditioning, showed more improvement than Group 3, Group 3 showed more improvement than Group 2 and Group 2 showed more improvement than Group 1. Clearly then, the mental training and conditioning proved to be significantly more important to their overall success than physical conditioning alone.

In another experiment, researchers took a look at Basketball free-throws.  The subjects were divided into three groups.  Each was tested for their free-throw accuracy prior to beginning any conditioning.  Group 1 physically practiced their free-throws for 20 days. Group 2 didn't practice in any way for the 20 days, while Group 3 spent 20 minutes per day visualizing themselves throwing free-throws successfully.  The results?  Group 1 improved their scoring by 24%.  Group 2 (who had done nothing) showed no improvement.  Group 3 - who had only visualized themselves throwing - improved by 23%.  Mentally practicing their free-throws resulted in an almost identical level of performance improvement as had the physical practice.

Now imagine the results of combining the two - physical and mental practice.  This is a Key Success Strategy.  Consider now though, what messages are you replaying in your unconscious mind?  Do you clearly see yourself succeeding at each task or do you visualize yourself failing, or messing up in some way?  What are you programming your brain to live to?  Our perceptions of what we can do, can be, can have... help to determine what we do, be, have in our lives. 

If you can't imagine yourself wowing your audience, getting that promotion, making over $100,000 a year (or more!), then you likely won't.  How often do you catch yourself starting sentences with... I'm not... I can't?  Consider that each of these statements is sending a visual image of that failure to your unconscious mind, telling it that you should be less.

Andre Agassi, tennis great, once said he had won Wimbledon already 10,000 times, before ever actually competing in it, because he had visualized it over and over in his head since he was 5 years old.  For him, winning Wimbledon in actuality was just a repetition of what he had already accomplished in his mind and knew he could do.

Your Assignment?  (you knew this was coming!)  What one 'thing' do you want to achieve, to do better?  Craft your visualization.  Make it as detailed as possible, adding more to it each time you walk through it.  Add in as much texture (what can you feel, hear, see?) as you can.  The more detailed, the more realistic, the more 'real', the more powerful.  Run over the visualization until the script becomes as comfortable to you as putting on your favourite pair of jeans.

This Success Secret may just prove to be the key to unlocking potential that has been largely untapped, by breaking through hidden barriers and negative scripts, helping you to live more fully to your potential.  Let's hear it for a New Year and a New Start!