You Don’t Have to Be Perfect

Transcript

Let me tell you about something you don’t have to be perfect today. Nothing is ever perfect, nothing is ever complete.

And you are just like a work of art constantly recreating itself throughout this life. And you will never ever be perfect so you don’t have to be perfect today. It’s not going to happen over the course of eternity, you certainly don’t need to expect it today.

Why do I say this?

A lot of people have this certain attitude you might call it “Auto-exigence” or “self-demandingness” Sometimes people use the word perfectionism but that doesn’t entirely encapsulate what I’m talking about.

It’s like you expect yourself to be better than you are so if you make a mistake. Maybe you make a mistake with a client and you say something wrong and it causes you to lost the client or something like that. And you beat yourself up for days going “How could I be so stupid?”

Well there’s a lesson in there for you. And you can use that to improve and to expand your own analytical abilities and interpersonal abilities. But you don’t have to worry because you didn’t get it right. You’re only human. You’re gonna make errors sometimes.

You don’t need to be in a rush to be perfect. Things are gonna happen to you, you’re gonna do things. Perfection is a kind of ideal. Its an abstraction. It’s actually not something that exists in this world. It’s kind of funny to have an idea of perfection because there’s no such thing.

And the thing that really exists in this world is what is. You will never be perfect but you can be exactly who you are. And you can in fact be content with being exactly what you are.

So some lesson that comes from ancient texts maybe it’s from the Bhagavad Gita, is the principle of striving. Putting your heart into something completely at the same time being free of any dependence on the outcome. Doesn’t matter if you get it right, doesn’t matter if you get it perfect. Putting the effort of going through the steps that’s what is important.

Some people talk about the example of the zen archer. In zen archery, you never measure the archer by whether he gets the arrow in the bullseye of the target. That’s not the important thing. The imporant thing is form. So whether he pulls back the bow correctly, his grip on the string and on the arrow. How he lets it go with the appropriate amount of force and the angle.

Those are the things that are important. Your own actions, you have control over them. You can never have control over perfection. You can never have complete control over your results. You can gain happiness just by observing your own actions. Enjoy the process of your own actions. You don’t need to worry, you don’t need to hurry.

In Spanish there is this expression “Hay más tiempo que vida.” There is more time than life which doesn’t make a lot of sense to me in Spanish. It makes even less sense to me in English. What it means is “there is plenty of time to do things, life is long.”

You might live for 60-70 years. That’s quite a long time. Every day you move towards things and the light up the path for others while you’re on your way.

You don’t have to be perfect just focus on being exactly what you are and doing exactly what you do.

Thank you so much for listening, thank you for thinking beautifully. Opening your eyes, mind and heart and letting it shine outward into the world in your beautiful imperfect way that you do and I’ll speak to you soon.