Is Perfection Stopping You?

“You’ve inspired me” is what I told my treasured friend last night after parting from our regular ‘mastermind’ dinner.

We talk, laugh & cry just about everything and call each other out if needed - it’s awesome.  Then she asked me “are you a perfectionist?” I sat back and said “yea, actually I am”.

She asked me after telling her I was behind in doing some work I promised someone over a month ago.  And even though I could blame everything and anyone else, "it's just too busy" that's BS...it REALLY IS because I’m a perfectionist.

But being a perfectionist holds me back – in some areas.  It sometimes delays the simple things because I feel people need to see the best, if I am the best I say I am!  (whew, that was hard to write, I can imagine how you feel reading it!) Anyway, I’m sure you get what I mean.

Are you the same, do you need to wait until everything is absolutely perfect before you move on it?

It Affects Business

I thought about this on the way home and realized this is also part of the challenge with Real Estate investors who have not done anything yet.

I can totally relate to someone who has a perfectionist personality ‘over-analyzing’ things and waiting for everything to be just right before they step in and buy an investment.  Sure, if you want to analyze the underlying emotion, you can relate 'fear' even if it's the simplicity of  not pleasing THEMSELVES with the results of their work.

I’m Working On It

Although I’m not 100% ‘cured’, I’ve certainly come a long way.  As I told my friend, I would have never agreed to putting myself on video for instance before ‘perfecting’ my on-camera delivery, but I committed to helping my friend Shae Bynes as best I could and I was not about to cop-out using my perfectionist excuse.

Another example is this blog you are reading.  The perfectionist in my says “wait until your page looks perfect, all your settings work, the colors match, the sponsors are on board etc…”. Yes, a lot has to be said for 'professional' appearance, but I believe in the content I deliver and spend more time on sending my message than worrying about how it compares to other sites.  As time goes by, it evolves and I keep things real.

What about our first investment property?  Clearly, I made HUGE mistakes with this property as you can read here (by the way, you can also see the article published in this month) but the desire to move forward outweighed the perfectionist in me.  What I learned from that experience could NEVER be taught and I may have also still be looking for my FIRST property today.

As you can see, there are a lot of small affected pieces in your business and personal life if you are a perfectionist.

To sum this up, I’m not suggesting you stop being a perfectionist and do something without putting thought, professionalism and due diligence into it.  I’m saying scale back a little and when when things are ‘good-enough’, DO IT.  Yes, you WILL probably have to update, upgrade and change things moving forward but in my opinion, the more you ‘grow’ in front of people, the more ‘authentic’ you are…and you know how I feel about authenticity!