The recent joyous arrival of a new family member has me thinking about perfection. Everything about my new granddaughter, Sophie, is perfect. Of course, every baby is perfect. And every baby is unique.
For something so perfect, there is a lot about newborn babies that isn’t perfect. Babies rarely arrive on time, and when they do there may be challenges. They wake their tired parents. They fuss and squirm. They demand attention at inconvenient times. And they smell.
But still, they are perfect. Perfectly imperfect.
What is perfection anyway? Thinking of my clients who seek perfection, and there are a lot of them, I see the quest for perfection taking an unnecessary toll. Waiting for the perfect time to get organised keeps them stuck in disorganisation longer than necessary. Searching for the perfect containers leads to an abundance of different containers, all contributing to the clutter. Waiting for the perfect system means that years have passed when an imperfect system, a good enough system, would have done the job. I tell them to start with imperfect and make it better over time.
Believe it or not I see it in my fellow organisers too. They get stuck in finding the perfect business name, the perfect marketing strategy, the perfect website designer, the perfect forms and policies. To them I’d say, just get in there. Start with imperfect and make it better over time.
Just as a baby grows and their needs change over time, your lifestyle and business needs change too. Don’t wait for perfection when imperfect will do.
Mont Saint Michel at night
Life is perfectly imperfect. I think of the good things that came along when things did not go perfectly. That time my husband and I missed our bus stop in France and instead of staying in budget accommodation on the mainland across from Mont Saint Michel, we had to stay overnight on the magical island. Worth every penny. We had the quiet streets and stunning views all to ourselves. Perfect.
There was another time when we were on a bus day trip to Delphi in Greece. We were the only ones on the tour who hadn’t booked for the restaurant lunch, preferring to be outdoors and have a picnic. We bought our supplies at a little Greek grocery store, including a tub of what we assumed was margarine. It was lard. We laughed hard and enjoyed our solo Greek picnic in the December sun, overlooking the beautiful countryside and a lake. To our left we could see the rest of the tour group in the restaurant. They did not have our view.
Lunch in Delphi
I encourage you to leave perfectionism behind, and instead embrace imperfection and seek out the perfectly imperfect. And if you’d like help with that, drop me a line.
