Have you ever met an intelligent person who wasn’t afraid of imperfection?

It’s likely we’ve developed the need to be perfect from someone important in our lives, like a teacher, parent, or someone we’ve looked up to.

I have vivid memories of watching my dad struggle to be perfect, while also struggling to overcome the debilitating effects of an acute auto-immune disease and redundancy.

While I have no doubt his example helped me through my own major stroke and subsequent redundancy in 2009, I also think it led to an innate desire to seek perfection in everything I do.

When I started my business, I struggled with this, and looking back I realised it stopped me from growing quickly and made it sooooooo much harder.

Why?

Because I felt that it wasn’t good enough.

It wasn’t ‘perfect'.

And looking back, I could have easily made an additional six figures just from the time I failed to take action, to seek the advice and tools I needed, and get the staff to free me up to focus on my long-term goals.

So instead of engaging with creative thinking, planning, and working ON my business I was stuck in the weeds working IN my business, and the thought of ‘will this will work?’ quickly became ‘what if I fail?’

There are so many ways to tackle perfectionism and if you are suffering from this now then I want you to know that you are not alone.

Here’s how to deal with it:

Understand that most growth happens outside of your comfort zone

Once you accept this you will start to ignore your doubts and finally take steps towards your goals no matter how uncomfortable it makes you.

I talk about this in episode 21 of my podcast, The Business of Glamping and Unique Holiday Rentals.

In this episode, I share lessons learnt about the key to success in the glamping industry.

Fear, mindset, and self-doubt have a lot to do with it and I explore how we can take back control from these negative emotions.

You can listen to that episode directly on Inspired Camping here:

Episode 21 on Inspired Camping

or on your usual podcast platform, including: 

YouTube, Spotify, Apple, Google, Libsyn, Stitcher and Podbean.

There are consequences to letting perfectionism take hold of you.

Every day that passes is another day you don’t start your new lifestyle business, launch your website, share that post on social media, start your marketing to get more guests and put yourself out there.

Perfectionism is not an excuse for putting the brakes on.

While it's important to have a critical eye to go over your endeavours, self-doubt and fear are not the right reasons for not following your dreams or trying something new.

So I challenge you to listen to this episode and then instead of striving for perfection, strive to reach good enough and don’t stress the details too much.

The only way you will make progress is to take action and I’d love to see your dreams happen for you, and the only way to do that is to just get started.

Remember, it’s a simple equation.

Knowledge + Action = Results

Good luck and get in touch if you need a little extra help!

Sarah Riley

Inspired Courses