by Allison Whitehead
We all want to be successful in our chosen career, especially if this involves a business we have set up ourselves.
Working for yourself can easily mean an increased workload the word delegation is not part of your vocabulary if you are self-employed and on your own. It is natural, therefore, to push yourself to (and beyond) the limits to satisfy your customers, meet new orders and get each job finished on time and to the highest standard.
However, there is a big difference between wanting to succeed and do well in business, and becoming obsessed with total perfection. Nobody likes to fail, but when a healthy dislike of failure becomes an all-consuming fear, you and your business are likely to suffer as a result.
Due to these perfectionist tendencies, there are many people who are not as successful in business as they might otherwise be and it is all due to their frame of mind.
So how can you avoid becoming a perfectionist?
One of the most important things to remember is how to spot the early signs which could mean you are setting your sights much too high for anyone to reach.
Allow me to give you a personal example. When I first started to write, I used to get very depressed and self critical when a piece of work was rejected. I felt as if the rejection was a personal one as if the person who returned my work had actually told me I wasnt good enough, rather than just my work. Sometimes it would be weeks before I could pick up a pen again, so strong was the fear of failure.
Eventually I came to realise I was failing myself. Nobody likes to be rejected in work or otherwise yet continually playing safe leads to a stagnant life and dwindling opportunities for success and advancement.
Once I had found new determination, I began to see my rejections as part of the learning process, rather than seeing them as failures. They were part of the journey towards my goal of being published regularly, and as such were hugely important. In time, acceptances began to outnumber rejections, and I became more confident in my work. I had changed my focus, and as soon as I stopped being hard on myself and focused on my end goal, rather than on each stumble I made along the way, I got better at what I was doing. My frame of mind changed when I stopped trying to attain perfection, and I started to analyse my rejections to improve my work the next time round.
Some people have perfectionist tendencies in them by nature, yet they can easily develop in any of us. This is especially true if you are in the early stages of setting up your own business. In this situation, it is quite likely that you will have invested money in your new venture. You will want to make sure your money works for you in establishing your own business.
It makes sense to want to produce the best work possible, yet you should always be aware of when to stop. This is the essential difference between the person who achieves success and the person who does not.
Lets say, for example, that you are in the business of making furniture. In that case, you could have a checklist of all the points and stages which need to be fulfilled and completed before the item of furniture can be considered finished.
Once you have ticked off every item, the work is finished. Full stop. No arguing. You have to be firm with yourself.
The person who is always obsessed with trying to attain that unattainable point of perfection will continue with every job they work on, thinking that if they could spend just a little bit longer on this part or that part, they would improve the work still further. Rejection and failure lead to fewer results, fewer earnings, and missed deadlines spelling disaster for the business in question.
By breaking down a job into manageable portions, you can help to avoid what may otherwise be a daunting task. When you tackle a large project in several bite sized portions, you will be much less likely to slip into the role of the perfectionist.
This method of tackling the onset of perfectionism will also build your confidence, no matter whether your business has just started out, or has been up and running for several years. When you are able to satisfy your customers with a job well done, you will be able to say to yourself, Hey, I did a good job there. I know Im capable of doing that again. Maybe I will try branching out into another area to see how I do
And you will be setting more goals for yourself, broken down into stages, to keep your creativity and enthusiasm fresh without veering towards perfectionism in everything you do.
The successful person has more confidence in their own ability to get the job done adequately. The perfectionist, with their need to get everything done just right (and with their eye on the perfect end product, rather than breaking the job down into realistic and manageable stages), never finishes the job at all.
So what happens when things do go wrong?
Well, it doesnt mean you are a failure. We all make errors now and then and yes, sometimes they are whoppers. It can be easy to become lax in your work if you have had a good streak of success. And to prove it can happen to the best of us, I shall admit to a personal catastrophe which taught me a well earned lesson.
A few years ago, I was enjoying a particularly good run of acceptances in my work. I was breaking into many new markets and making connections which I was sure I could capitalise on, if I worked at it.
Still happy with my successes, I set about writing an article for a market which I had been contributing successfully to for quite some time. I dashed something off and sent it out the next day, still wallowing in my run of successes. It was one of those days where nothing can go wrong, no matter what you do.
But it did. My effort was (deservedly) returned with a rejection slip, and I realised how easy it can be to let your efforts slide.
Fortunately, I learned my lesson from this error. This is another important difference between the perfectionist and the person who simply wants to do their best.
The way to avoid looking on every error as a major disaster is to analyse what went wrong, and why it happened. Once you know the answers to these questions, you will be able to make sure the errors never occur again.
In this way it is possible to turn every bad event into a positive one, by discovering what can be learned from it in order to do better in the future.
There comes a time when you have to finish a piece and move on to something new. If you are one of those people who find this hard to do, you could be asking too much of yourself. Know when to let go, and your success rate will improve.
If you recognise yourself as a perfectionist, write the following proverb on a piece of paper and tack it above your desk: Nothing ventured, nothing gained.
It worked for me, and it can work for you too.
About the author:
Allison Whitehead has written and published many articles on positive thinking, goal setting, and personal improvement issues. Her latest book, The 5 Secrets of Successful Goal Setting, is now available. Download your FREE PDF preview from www.lulu.com/content/301705
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