© Elliot Essman 2005. All rights reserved.

These pages contain the complete 2005 revised text of Building Yourself, public speaking trainer Elliot Essman's guide to living the successful life.

Elliot Essman Public Speaking Training
Building Yourself Table of Contents
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• Perfection—An imaginary state distinguished from the actual by an element known as excellence. Ambrose Bierce (1842–1914)

Remember the law of numbers. It applies here, as always. It means that you don't have to be afraid of failing because your work is less than perfect (that is, because you're human). It means that you'll always have another chance. It also means that if you keep at it, you'll come up with fabulous ideas and projects. The law of numbers also means you don't have to make every sale. You're allowed to be human and to stumble.

If you don't keep working on your career, because you must be a John D. Rockefeller, Pablo Picasso or Fyodor Dostoyevsky or nothing at all, your creative fields will be barren. If John D., Pablo or Fyodor had tried the same, they would not have produced anything either. They just went out and did. Each made a mistake or two down the line. But they sweated, asked, sold and got somewhere. That's also your mission in life.

One of the most insidious effects of perfectionism is the way it can narrow a person's mindset. You can and must remain flexible. You should be prepared to turn from one opportunity to another as certain opportunities arise and others shrink. Because perfect plans and perfect opportunities arise so rarely, your thinking will hem you in. Perseverance is important, but perseverance combined with perfectionism can be tantamount to banging your head against a wall. Intelli­gent, properly directed perseverance is what counts.

Perfectionism is at best a mistake. We all fall prey to it at some point, especially while we're young and eager. With a little perspective, it's curable. At worst, however, perfectionists have serious psychological problems. These people have the idea that if they cover every base, if they plan exhaustively and leave no stone unturned, they can guard themselves from failure, which they dread.

It's sad, but the opposite is true. Perfectionism almost always guarantees failure. The only true protection against failure is to refuse to acknowledge that it exists in the first place. If we're willing to stumble from time to time on the way to excellence, we can dissolve failure and render it a meaningless abstraction. Because we don't demand perfection, we're free to express our creativity to the maximum level.