In That Moment

I wonder if any of my readers might know the author of this quote…

“It is better to have done something imperfectly than done nothing flawlessly.”

I like it. And in my attempts to find the author I came across another quote not dissimilar by John Steinbeck…

“And now you don’t have to be perfect, you can be good.”

What is wrong with imperfections? What is wrong with good? Or sometimes even  adequate?

Blimey! If I could leave the gym feeling that I had done an adequate workout for most of my visits then I would have been making excellent progress!

But perfection? Even if I attempted to aim for that then I know that I would be disappointed. Disappointment leaves us demoralised. Being demoralised means that we give up. When we give up, we achieve nothing.

I have begun to embrace my imperfections. Maybe it’s an age thing, I dunno. I aim to do a ‘good’ job at everything I do. I have sometimes got anxious about not getting it spot on and it leaves me feeling rubbish. Inadequate. But when I aim for ‘good’, there’s a weight of responsibility lifted from my shoulders. It’s almost as if I can just begin to enjoy the task in hand rather than pretend to be super human.

I do my best at that moment in time.

And this helps me to understand other people’s efforts too. I used to get frustrated when my son could play a ‘player of the match’ performance one week and the next he didn’t turn up. This, as I now realise, can be for a whole number of reasons. Just like a client in a training session. We will not always achieve a personal best, a player of the match performance, score a worldy or be at our optimum 24/7. We are not robots.

But what I appreciate about my kids, employees, clients and of myself is that we just turn up and give it a go. To do our best in that moment.

Sometimes we feel like crap, right? We’re not always on tip top form. But it would be better to have done something imperfectly than to do nothing flawlessly.

Have a think about that the next time you’ve got a job or a task that you face. Just do it and do your best

In

That

Moment