Quote:
Lately, this quotation from Voltaire has been on my mind. “The perfect is the enemy of the good.” This is a message that I need to internalize. So many failures in my life have been due to rigid thinking on my part and a notion that if I can’t do something perfectly, or at least extremely well, I won’t do it at all. This kind of thinking is what caused me to give up on so many weight loss efforts after just a few weeks or to stop exercising due to being awkward or getting sore. It’s played out in other arenas of my life when I’ve tried to add new skill sets and when I didn’t immediately grasp and excel at them, I just quit. Striving for perfection, and then falling short, has generated a lot of negative, nasty self-talk in words like failure, idiot, spineless, weak-willed, lazy, ugly, clumsy, stupid… Ah, ****. I’ve got a veritable thesaurus in my attic chock full of negative words I use to describe myself, particularly when I don’t excel at something I try to do.
“The perfect is the enemy of the good.” There are things in my life in which I excel. In my job, I tend to set the standards to which others aspire. This is not just idle boasting. My work products are being used as the gold standard throughout the state. There are documents and methodologies that I’ve developed that have been incorporated into Michigan’s system design methodologies. However, there are many more things in my life at which I’m not particularly good or maybe even just average. I tend to beat myself up about those areas in my life where I ain’t so good. Being fat is a big sledge hammer that I swing around in my attic, destroying any budding sense of accomplishment. “So what, you’ve just finished a major project under time, under budget and made the client very happy! YOU’RE STILL FAT! So what you climbed out of the swamp of bankruptcy! YOU PUT YOURSELF THERE IN THE FIRST PLACE, OH, AND YOU’RE STILL FAT! So what you quit smoking! YOU NEVER SHOULD HAVE SMOKED IN THE FIRST PLACE AND YOU’RE STILL FAT!” Get the picture?
“The perfect is the enemy of the good.” This weight loss effort is not just helping me physically, it’s helping me emotionally. Early on, I made up my mind to take this slowly, to not overwhelm myself with expectations of perfection and to do something at which I’m very poor; I made up my mind to treat myself gently. I sometimes fail at all of those. But this time, instead of quitting, I calmly acknowledge that I shan’t be the perfect WWer, if there even is such a beasty. From time to time, I will stumble, I will misunderstand, I will choose wrongly, I will eat too much or too little, I will make poor food choices, I will skip exercising, I will have lapses of will power and breaches of rationality. I will do all these things and yet…
I will still be good. I will still be good because I will reach out for help, dust myself off and get back to it instead of quitting.
“The perfect is the enemy of the good.” Yes, well, no longer, at least not on this journey. I don't strive for perfection here; I strive for health, both mentally and physically. And that, my friends, is good.
Lately, this quotation from Voltaire has been on my mind. “The perfect is the enemy of the good.” This is a message that I need to internalize. So many failures in my life have been due to rigid thinking on my part and a notion that if I can’t do something perfectly, or at least extremely well, I won’t do it at all. This kind of thinking is what caused me to give up on so many weight loss efforts after just a few weeks or to stop exercising due to being awkward or getting sore. It’s played out in other arenas of my life when I’ve tried to add new skill sets and when I didn’t immediately grasp and excel at them, I just quit. Striving for perfection, and then falling short, has generated a lot of negative, nasty self-talk in words like failure, idiot, spineless, weak-willed, lazy, ugly, clumsy, stupid… Ah, ****. I’ve got a veritable thesaurus in my attic chock full of negative words I use to describe myself, particularly when I don’t excel at something I try to do.
“The perfect is the enemy of the good.” There are things in my life in which I excel. In my job, I tend to set the standards to which others aspire. This is not just idle boasting. My work products are being used as the gold standard throughout the state. There are documents and methodologies that I’ve developed that have been incorporated into Michigan’s system design methodologies. However, there are many more things in my life at which I’m not particularly good or maybe even just average. I tend to beat myself up about those areas in my life where I ain’t so good. Being fat is a big sledge hammer that I swing around in my attic, destroying any budding sense of accomplishment. “So what, you’ve just finished a major project under time, under budget and made the client very happy! YOU’RE STILL FAT! So what you climbed out of the swamp of bankruptcy! YOU PUT YOURSELF THERE IN THE FIRST PLACE, OH, AND YOU’RE STILL FAT! So what you quit smoking! YOU NEVER SHOULD HAVE SMOKED IN THE FIRST PLACE AND YOU’RE STILL FAT!” Get the picture?
“The perfect is the enemy of the good.” This weight loss effort is not just helping me physically, it’s helping me emotionally. Early on, I made up my mind to take this slowly, to not overwhelm myself with expectations of perfection and to do something at which I’m very poor; I made up my mind to treat myself gently. I sometimes fail at all of those. But this time, instead of quitting, I calmly acknowledge that I shan’t be the perfect WWer, if there even is such a beasty. From time to time, I will stumble, I will misunderstand, I will choose wrongly, I will eat too much or too little, I will make poor food choices, I will skip exercising, I will have lapses of will power and breaches of rationality. I will do all these things and yet…
I will still be good. I will still be good because I will reach out for help, dust myself off and get back to it instead of quitting.
“The perfect is the enemy of the good.” Yes, well, no longer, at least not on this journey. I don't strive for perfection here; I strive for health, both mentally and physically. And that, my friends, is good.
