Are you a perfectionist? Do you demand perfection from yourself, from the rest of the world, or both?
Perfectionism is good. It drives you to give your best, to constantly aim bigger, better, higher… But the perfectionist is inevitably destined for frustration.
We are flawed beings living in an imperfect universe. Physicists believe the universe itself exists only due to an imbalance of matter and antimatter following the big bang, known as baryon asymmetry.
Despite giving your best efforts, and despite various successes, you will inevitably fail at times. Don’t beat yourself up about this. We can learn more from failure than an untroubled route to success. The key is to seize the opportunities presented by your shortcomings.
Success and failure are fluid concepts. The rich man in his castle and the beggar on the street are both headed for the same destination, and the journey is very short.
Though superficially judged in material terms, success cannot be measured in terms of wealth. In the bigger picture possessions and status are meaningless. Indeed the harder (less “successful”) road usually delivers the greater lessons.
As society “progresses” so we become more demanding of perfection and less patient and tolerant with others. But in a flawed universe, however well we personally do, external circumstances still go wrong – your car breaks, your bank screws up etc. This stuff is both frustrating and inevitable. But the more frustrated we get the more we damage ourselves.
Instead take a deep breath and a cool head. Make allowance for imperfection, and when it happens assess i) how it can be resolved, ii) what lessons to take on board to help prevent its specific recurrence.
Perfection may be considered an ideal, but ultimately unattainable, goal. We give our best efforts to reach perfection and in so doing attain the best we are personally capable of achieving, but inevitably it will be less than perfect. This matters not since the goal of this finite lifetime is the acquisition of understanding. Any experience, regardless of how it’s perceived at the time, that increases understanding is a positive one.
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