Monday, August 25, 2014

August 25, 2014 Focus Point

Success is not Perfection but Persistence

"Perfection is not attainable, but if we chase perfection we can catch excellence." ~Vince Lombardi

"Success is the result of hard work, learning from failure, loyalty, and persistence." ~Colin Powell

"Strive for continuous improvement, instead of perfection." ~Kim Collins

Society may tell us that if we are not perfect we are not good enough. Have you ever heard the following? "You will never make it." Or "You don't have what it takes." Progress in life is not a matter of doing something perfectly, it is a matter of doing something consistently and with persistence and not giving up even if the results of our first attempts are not what we hope it to be eventually. I love the following statement. "That which we persist in doing becomes easier, not because the nature of the thing has changed, but because our ability to do it has increased." Often people can overwhelm themselves by feeling responsibility for circumstances out of their control. Investing our attention in something out of our control always ends up in a disappointed defeat.

Effective people I believe focus on things they can control and work for improvement, but do not force themselves into an unrealistic doom of perfection. They do not take the desire for improvement over time and turn it into an obsession to be perfect now, because they know that this type of insanity would drive them to feel worse about themselves and actually lower self image. The problem with perfection is that if a person never attains it they are then left feeling deflated, or defeated, and as if they cannot accomplish their goals. This week let's think about persistence and excellence, and forget about any expectations of the impossible weight of perfection.

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