How to Be an Imperfectionist: The New Way to Self-Acceptance, Fearless Living, and Freedom from Perfectionism

by Stephen Guise

Perfectionism makes you stay home, not take chances, and procrastinate on projects; it makes you think your life is worse than it is; it keeps you from being yourself; it stresses you out; it tells you that good is bad; and it ignores the natural way in which things work.

The road to excellence begins unimpressively. I think we all know this, but I don’t think we realize how much we subconsciously avoid this rocky path through self-handicapping, which attempts to simulate a smooth upward path. No such path exists. We try to come up with an excuse for every stumble instead of simply accepting that we stumble sometimes and can get back up.

The main point here is that action itself is the best starting point for more action, while trying to think your way into more motivation is an unreliable and ineffective way to create forward momentum.

When you treat how you feel as the deciding factor of what you do, you will be a slave to it. You will try so many motivational techniques, but in the end, your results will be as unreliable as your feelings.

People who have successfully changed their lives have figured out that when you start doing something, your emotions follow suit. Never forget this: It’s easier to change your mind and emotions by taking action than it is to change your actions by trying to think and feel differently.

At its core, imperfectionism is pursuing and doing good things in life without so much as hoping for (let alone expecting) perfection. It’s prioritizing doing over doing well. This doesn’t rule out doing things well; it only takes away the crippling fear of not doing well.

The primary benefits of becoming an imperfectionist are reduced stress and greater results by taking positive action in more situations. The more fearless, confident, and free a person is, the more they embrace imperfection in their life.

In general, the idea behind imperfectionism is to not care so much about conditions or results, and care more about what you can do right now to move forward with your identity and your life.

Having low or no expectations for individual events gives you confidence because problems and mistakes won’t shock you. When something goes wrong, you’ll be relying on your steady, generally high confidence, rather than being like a leaf in the wind, able to be taken off course at the slightest breeze of imperfection.

Whatever you want to do more of in life—exercise, write, read, swim, dance, sing, laugh, and so on—lower the bar for doing it. If you are willing to do it in the sewer, you will never fail to do it again.

The key to building powerful confidence is to decide specifically what you can be confident about right now, and build from there.

Don’t seek approval from others or you’ll never have approval from yourself.

“Mistakes are a part of being human. Appreciate your mistakes for what they are: precious life lessons that can only be learned the hard way. Unless it's a fatal mistake, which, at least, others can learn from.” ~ Al Franken

Winning isn’t the result of tripping in the middle of a race, of course, but it is very often the result of persevering through mistakes.

Procrastination is not caused by laziness but by a combination of fear and overcomplicated objectives, which come from a perfectionistic mindset.