Perfection – Is It Holding You Back?

Does being perfect hold you back?

One of the biggest hurdles as a business owner I had to overcome was perfection. Trying to ensure everything was perfect before anyone saw it was holding me back. I was taking action but not getting anywhere as there was always something to tweak.

I was:

• • Consistently working but not seeing anything in return as I wasn’t getting anything out there.
  • Frustrated with myself as I wasn’t finishing anything.
  • Not looking at the big picture.

I couldn’t just let go.

Although I was told on numerous occasions that I need to let go, it’s not as easy as that. I would say to myself ‘OK, this time I will limit my revisions to two maximum’. However, that would never happen.

It took a while to adapt my perfection mindset. Yes, I still have days where I struggle and yes, I do make mistakes. However, by getting out there, perfect or not, my businesses have grown.

A Perfection Mindset Limits Your Growth

Why Change?

Perfection holds you back. If you want to get your name out there and help your business grow, you have to learn to adapt your mindset. No-one is perfect. If you try to portray a perfect image, you will put people off. They will think you are trying to hide something. Making the odd grammar or spelling mistake, forgetting your words on a live, are all perfectly normal. It helps people relate to you as it’s something they do too.

Just make sure the errors are not critical or will damage your reputation. For example, if you post your prices incorrectly on your website and they are lower than what you charge, you would need to honour them otherwise it’s false advertising. If they are too high, you could be losing clients. If every page or every email had errors, people would question your ability.

How to Change.

First of all, you have to accept it will take time to change your perfection mindset. Any work you do on mindset takes time and effort. You have to be determined and focused.

How I started working on changing my perfection mindset was:

• • After each piece of content I created (blog posts, social media items, website amendments, emails, etc.), I saved it and left it for the day.
  • In that evening I would write down my thoughts on how I thought it went and what I think needs to be revisited along with why.
  • The next day, I would read the content, make notes (not changes) and compare to my thoughts the night before. It start with, these would be very similar.
  • After the comparison, for each note I would make a comment to if my ideal client would be put off by the error and rate it in terms of:
    • If it would damage my reputation.
    • Stop people from contacting me.

To start with, I’d stop there and make the changes.

After a few weeks, I analysed the data I had collected. The majority (in fact all) were just minor errors. Nothing would have caused serious damage to me, my business or my clients. From that point, I started limiting the number of items I tweaked.

It was hard to change my perfection mindset. To help me, I purchased Grammarly to do some of the checks as I went along. I also continued to write my thoughts down after each piece as it helped to clear my mind and move on to the next task.