The Perfection Trap

This is a topic that I seem to be facing often, and it is something I am trying to overcome. It is something that I am finding much harder to overcome than I ever anticipated or realized. Now, as I am sitting here still writing this blog, which I actually intended to publish in February, but now it is March already, I am being forced to reflect on what exactly is holding me back from posting the blogs that I want to post, developing the business ideas I want to develop, releasing the podcast that I want to release, or creating the videos that I want to create. I do think that everything happens at the perfect time, and if something is not happening now, then it is probably not the perfect time, but I find that my procrastination goes beyond that. I feel a lot of it is tied to my feelings of my content or ideas or products not being perfect. Reflecting on this, I feel like it is utterly ridiculous because I know that seeking perfection is a trap. A trap that can stop even the greatest creators from producing their greatest creations.

The reason that perfection is a trap is that it doesn’t really exist in the learning or creative processes. Perfection is something that may be tied to a feeling, a moment, or a view of nature, but it is not an achievable point in a process. There is always more to learn, more to improve, more to develop, and more to grow. Thank God perfection is not a reachable point because if it were, it would mean that we would stagnate from that point forward. We would have nowhere to go and nowhere to grow. Even the most well-educated PhD literature professor does not speak or know every word in the English language. We can always grow more.

In the development world, they often work in an agile environment to ensure continuous growth and development. They do not consider an application complete once it is operational and released to the public. That is simply the completion of a phase or a sprint, but immediately after finishing one, the next set of targets is considered, and the development process continues, ensuring constant improvement, upgrades, and adaptation to the ever-changing technological world. Constant development and growth. There is no such thing as, “This is perfect, and it is done.”

I think that when we want to do something perfectly, our subconscious already knows that it is a totally unreachable target, so it removes any motivation to start or take action. This leads us to dreaming about all the things we want to do and achieve, but with zero drive to even start or pursue the dream. When you think about it, the only difference between the people with big dreams and the people who start multi-million-dollar companies and make a great success out of their lives is action. You are either a dreamer or a doer. Doers are not waiting for the perfect moment to take action. They are not looking for a flawless start or finish. They understand that growth comes through taking action, failing, learning and improving. 

I think if we want to overcome the wall of perfectionism holding us back, we have to reframe our concept or perspective of what perfection actually is. As most understand it, perfection is something flawless and conceived to the highest degree of accuracy. Perfection is what happens when everything goes right and there are no identifiable flaws or errors that can mar the experience or the result. I think this is an extremely shortsighted and narrow view that does not encompass the true nature of perfection.

I want to challenge this idea and reframe perfection as something that is complicated and complete, rather than something flawless and easy. Perfection, seen as a whole, would include all facets and aspects of a plan, idea, or creation. It would encompass dead ends, difficulties, and struggle because it represents the whole, not just a partial perspective.

Let me try to illustrate this through an analogy. I, along with many others, consider nature to be perfect. If we stand at the bottom of a mountain and look up, that mountain is perfect and complete as a whole. There are many roads up the mountain. Some roads have an easy footpath, shaped by many feet walking the same route up, while some lesser-walked pathways are more dangerous and steep. Different people will have completely different experiences climbing the same mountain. There is no one perfect route up because the mountain as a whole is the perfect thing, and every route will give you only a portion of the experience.

If you choose the more difficult route up the mountain, you will surely encounter more challenges, but through facing them, you will learn much more than if you took the easy route and skipped the obstacles. Taking the harder route with more obstacles and challenges will give us a deeper experience that shapes us more fundamentally, but it still provides only a partial experience. It would take a lifetime to climb every route and truly explore every facet of the mountain to even begin to understand the true perfection of the whole.

I think maybe sometimes people expect “perfect” to mean that everything happens easily and smoothly, but I don't believe an easy and smooth journey defines perfection. I had a discussion with one of my students yesterday, and he reminded me of a butterfly story. When a butterfly is in its chrysalis and ready to emerge, it faces a really hard journey. It has to struggle, sometimes for days, to break out of its chrysalis. This process of struggle is vital, as it builds the butterfly’s muscles. If a human were to intervene in the emerging process by cutting open the chrysalis to help the butterfly out more easily, that butterfly would be permanently damaged. With weak and underdeveloped wings, it would never be able to fly, as it never built the initial muscle strength required to break out of the cocoon naturally. Even the butterfly’s perfect path to flight and freedom requires great struggle and difficulty.

So now that we understand that perfection is actually a whole and not just a partial experience, and now that we know that even attempting to understand perfection will require a great deal of struggle and difficulty, it begs the question: How can we look at the perfect mountain and start taking action on the climb, instead of standing at the bottom with shaky knees, unwilling to begin because we know it won’t be easy and that we will face many difficulties?

This is where most people get stuck, I believe—an unwillingness to suffer. A deep desire for everything to be easy. Taking action guarantees a difficult process, so let’s just procrastinate and not even start the journey because we don’t want to do something that takes us out of our comfort zone. We don’t want to do something that will be hard, that will bring criticism from ourselves and others, and that will push us to reevaluate ourselves—our strengths, our weaknesses, our good sides, and our bad sides.

Maybe people don’t want to see or understand their own shortcomings. People don’t want to consider themselves as a whole either. I think most humans believe that being a “perfect” person means doing good, being humble, being successful, and being kind. But again, I challenge this notion because I think a perfect person is a whole person. A whole person has many aspects and facets to their personality and behavior. A whole person is happy, kind, generous, successful, humble, sincere, and good—but also angry, broken, depressed, dark, complicated, egotistic, and selfish. A whole person has had many experiences that have shaped their personality, and they would not embody all that is light about themselves without also experiencing all that is dark.

You exist in duality, and there is always balance within. You will be equally as dark as you are light. Some will experience you as positive, while others will experience you as negative—and that is both good and normal because you are a perfect whole, not a broken half of only goodness. Make peace with your dark sides. Make peace with the fact that not everyone will like you, and you are not supposed to be a source of goodness in the lives of every person you encounter. For some, you will be darkness, and that is perfectly fine because that is what complete balance and wholeness are supposed to look like.

Consider the idea that you will criticize yourself more harshly for doing nothing than for taking action, trying, and failing. The “perfection” we seek is an inner journey of learning to understand, accept, integrate, and love every aspect of ourselves to shape the perfect whole that we are.

If you spend your whole life standing at the bottom of the mountain, looking up at everything you want to experience and achieve but never take the initial steps, you will hate and resent yourself and your life forever. It is impossible to have both an easy, relaxing life and feel fulfilled, happy, and complete at the same time. You need to overcome challenges to feel fulfillment. You need to suffer to understand what joy is. You need to bump your head and learn from many failures in order to achieve success on any level. If you are too scared to suffer, then you are too scared to live. If you are too scared to truly live life, you will continue to sit in a corner and blame the world for not dealing you an easy hand. You will remain the butterfly that never experiences the freedom of flight because it never had to face the struggle of life. 

So how can we accept wholeness, fight against perfection, and overcome stagnation? The best advice I have is the advice that completely changed my own life two and a half years ago—the advice presented by James Clear in the book Atomic Habits, summarized in this wonderful video here. When I first watched this video more than two years ago, I finally started breaking free from my own inability to take action in my life. It all started with me immediately putting down cigarettes and quitting that awful 17-year habit that had destroyed my lungs, my skin, and my self belief. 

In the book, James explains that taking action happens in the moment, in the now. If you want to change something in your life, learn something new, or do something different, you have to take immediate action today because tomorrow never comes. He recommends breaking it down into the smallest possible step and then creating small habits of taking daily action toward your goal. These small actions compound over time to create massive and notable changes in your life in the long term. The trick here is consistency. Decide what you want to do for yourself, and then, when you face the decision in the moment—whether to do or not to do—choose you. Choose you, again and again and again. Choose you consistently. It’s hard in the beginning, but when you do it again and again, it becomes easier every time. Before you know it, you’ve changed your habits, broken your addictions, and learned something new. Remember that the harder something is to overcome or break free from, the more you will learn and gain from the experience. The more you struggle, the stronger your wings will get.

Something I always tell my students when they tell me they want to be fluent in English is that they need to stop seeing fluency as the goal sitting at the top of the mountain. Instead, they should focus on making progress and taking steps. Stop seeing the goal as reaching the top, but see the goal as enjoying the total experience of the climb. My life coaching instructor once said a phrase that I love – "Practice doesn't make perfect, but practice makes permanent progress." Practice means you are taking steps, and taking steps means you are actively pursuing your goals instead of just procrastinating. Make Progress your ultimate goal, instead of considering perfection as something to reach for.

I know that another thing that often holds people back is the comparison to others. "I can't do it as well as they can, so why bother?" Maybe recognize that those people you are comparing yourself to also started as beginners. Everyone sucks when they begin something new. But those people put in a lot of time, effort, and energy to grow their ability, develop their name, and hone their skills. They consistently chose their own progress again and again until they reached the level they are at now, and they continue to practice all the time. Try not to compare yourself to others but rather use them as motivation. Think, "If I practice as much as they do, then with time, my skills can also reach that level." Let the amazing skills of others motivate and push you forward.

I think the last thought I can add here is to stop worrying about making mistakes. Failure is not failure unless it makes you stop trying. Mistakes generate feedback and experience, which are vital for growth. If you are not making mistakes, you are not pushing yourself very hard. When you make mistakes, it is a sign that you are stepping out of your comfort zone and really pushing yourself to improve and level up. Start to embrace and celebrate mistakes. They are the most valuable teachers.

Celebrate those small wins along the way. Set milestones, reward yourself for sticking to your habits, and keep going. This is how you break free from perfectionism and start moving forward.

"Ok, now just post the damn thing,” she says to herself as she finally completes the blog post that has been waiting for a month. Sending it off to be published as an imperfect piece of progress that is infinitely more valuable in that form than the post that will wait forever to finally be perfect before it can be good enough to be seen.

The image at the top of this post is another piece of my procrastination. A glass artwork that I started in 2020 after George Floyd was murdered, during the "Black Lives Matter" movement. I never completed it because the looming mountain looked like it was going to be too hard to climb. But now today, I am starting to work on it again. Even if I work on just one piece a day, I can have it finished by the end of the year. But if I don't start taking action, it will surely stay on my table for another five... The question is: What do I really want for myself and for my life? Do I want progress, or do I want stagnation? Do I want to move, or do I want to feel stuck? I create my reality every day through the decisions I make and the action that I take, and I am done standing still.