You’ve heard it before and you’ll hear it again:

Anything Worth Doing Is Worth Doing Well…

Is that true? I don’t know, probably…

But maybe that’s not your problem…

Maybe you always do things well…

Maybe you ONLY do things that you do well, and maybe your real problem is that you refuse to do anything POORLY.

Call it fear, call it pride, call it OCD (or CDO for those who prefer it in alphabetical order)…

…perfectionism has destroyed more masterpieces than it’s ever created.

Maybe you know what I’m talking about.

Have you ever…

• Given up on a goal for fear of looking stupid?
• Procrastinated starting a goal because you didn’t know what you were doing?
• Compared yourself to others and given up on a goal because you could never be as good as them?

The French have a saying that goes:

Perfection is the enemy of good [or good enough]

I Struggle With This…

This is something I struggle with constantly.

Like Cézanne who never wanted to sign his art, feeling like it always needing a little more work; I struggle to press ‘PUBLISH’ on every post.

When I started in sales, I had the delusion that I was going to be a natural…

That others would need to put in long hours of work and study, but not me.

I was naive and foolish, and of course, I was awful…

I had to struggle, sweat and bleed as much, if not more than most.

It almost marked the end of my selling career…

But luckily I was far from home and the shame of returning home a quitter felt worse than the embarrassment of goose eggs on the score board day after day.

Had I not come to grips with the inevitability of being horrible at sales (for a while at least) I never would have come to enjoy the success that came in the years that followed.

Perfectionists Often Don’t Try

I read a study that showed that many obese people in America suffer from perfectionism.

That sounds strange doesn’t it?

Normally we glorify perfectionists as over achievers living a meticulously manicured life. How could a perfectionist ever become obese?

The study showed that many believed they can never reach their ideal weight, so they never even tried…

You’ll lose more weight doing exercises poorly than doing none at all.

You’ll sell more customers by barfing your way through a pitch, than giving no pitch at all.

You’ll find more success by bumbling your way through every mistake than by not bumbling at all.

You’re Going to Have to Go Through a Lot of ‘Suck’ Before You Reach ‘Success’

We often think of Success like a mountain to climb that elevates us from our current position…

What people rarely talk about though, is that the mountain is surrounded by a deep valley we have to travel through first, which sometimes takes us quite a bit below our current position…

It’s the valley of ‘Suc’ before climbing the mountain of ‘Cess’.

After what feels like an eternity, the horribleness of your performance begins to be replaced by a polished level of experience as you emerge from the valley and start making your way up the mountain.

Almost imperceptibly you inch your way into expert class, and your starting position now seems so far away.

To be great, you’re going to have to suck for a while, maybe even a long while.

The only question is, is it is worth the pain, the shame, the heartache and stress?

If it is…

It’s worth doing poorly.