Designing your best life is a wonderful goal to shoot for, but many of us confuse that with having a perfect life. We get hung up on all the details, trying to make sure everything is just right. We tell ourselves it has to be the right time or the best circumstances before we’re ready to try something new or make a change.
We let perfectionism hold us back. If you feel you fall into this trap, keep listening and learn how you can design your best life without waiting for it to be perfect.
Perfectionism is a destructive compliment
It gets lots of credit for greatness in our society, but it can wreck people, even though we use the term like it’s a great compliment. In reality, perfectionism destroys much more than it creates.
Perfectionism is a cover-up, a way to avoid failure, a hopeless attempt to avoid rejection by performing at an impossibly flawless level all the time. Perfectionism binds people to unrealistic standards. It’s a guarantee of constant disappointment.
“Perfectionism is a self-destructive and addictive belief system that fuels this primary thought: If I look perfect, and do everything perfectly, I can avoid or minimize the painful feelings of shame, judgment, and blame.” ― Brené Brown, The Gifts of Imperfection
Let’s find Out If You Are a Perfectionist?
Do you think in absolute terms? Things are either great or terrible, black or white, happy or sad? Perfectionists tend to think in opposites, while others think along a continuum.
Does one small flaw in something you’re doing make you feel it’s worthless?
You can’t delegate because you just know others won’t do the job right?
You’re often late getting work in on time. Do you wait to turn in a project so you make it perfect?
Does your self-image and self-confidence depend on your accomplishments and what everybody thinks?
Do you recognize your errors and focus on those far more than your successes?
After a success, are feelings of accomplishment fleeting or not at all?
How’d you do? Did you answer yes to many of these?
First Let’s Consider What’s at Stake
When you get caught up in feeling like things have to be just right, take a minute to consider the stakes. Ask yourself the following questions:
What will I miss out on if I wait until things are perfect? What opportunities am I giving up? What’s it costing me to not pursue my dreams
Often, these simple reflections will be enough to push you toward going after your goal, rather than waiting for a better time.
Second, Know It’s Not All or Nothing
The all-or-nothing trap is one that is common. This is the belief that you have to have all the resources in place or know everything there is to know before taking on a task. This line of thinking is false. It’s simply a way of getting caught up in the cycle of perfectionism and remaining stuck in place. Start Taking baby steps and give it a try even if you don’t have everything in place. Often things come together on their own.
What baby step towards your dream can you take today?
Third, Change Your Self-Talk
If perfectionism is holding you back from designing your best life, chances are good that you’re probably sending yourself some negative messages. Listen to what your inner critic is saying to you the next time you decide that you shouldn’t do something and then see if you cannot turn that message around. If you hear yourself saying that you’ll never get the life of your dreams because you’re not good enough, try giving yourself some realistic reasons why you might just have what it takes and what actions you can take to get the life you want. Refuting negative self-talk can go a long way to stopping perfectionism in its tracks.
Here are some ideas for what to say to yourself: — Good enough really is good enough — Having fun is not a reward I have to earn — Asking for help is a good thing — I can not control everything so I can focus on what I can control — I accept myself just as I am
“Healthy striving is self-focused: “How can I improve?” Perfectionism is other-focused: “What will they think?” ― Brené Brown, The Gifts of Imperfection
Finally, Start Before You’re Ready
Try embracing imperfection and see what happens. The next time you want to do something different or step out of your comfort zone, but don’t think you’re ready, just go for it. Pay attention to how you feel and what it’s like to push past those feelings. Note the end result. Maybe things won’t turn out perfectly, but you may discover they end up being worthwhile anyway. Keep these steps in mind the next time your inner perfectionist tries to sabotage you and keep you from designing your best life. You may be surprised at the results.
When you are ready to transform the way you do things to live a more strategic life, it can be difficult to know where to start. That is why we are here to help. Below you will find the best things to do when it is time to start creating a strategic life plan.
It Starts with Your Dreams that Shapes Your Vision
First and foremost, you need to have an overall vision that you will use a strategy to create. Once you know what this vision is, you must spend time writing it down. The act of writing will make it seem more real and achievable to you, but it will also help your mind consider the things you must accomplish to achieve the vision.
Write Down Specifics to Create Your Personal Strategic Plan
Now that you have your vision written down, it’s time to make a list of the things that will be part of the strategy to achieve that vision. For example, if you wrote a vision of going on vacations more often, the things you might list in your strategic plan would be earning more money, saving money specifically for vacations, or saving your vacation time at work. These ideas will help to guide you into decision-making while you are working on living your strategic plan.
Check-In With Yourself and Learn From Mistakes
You aren’t expected to achieve your vision all at once and don’t be surprised if you make mistakes along the way. Just make sure that you are learning from your mistakes as you go. The best way to do this is by having regularly scheduled check-ins with yourself. What are you doing that’s working? What are you doing that’s not working? When you have these answers, it’s time to revisit your strategic plan and make adjustments. And if the vision itself changes, or becomes more specific, don’t be afraid to write down these changes as well! A strategic life plan needs to grow as you grow and develop your strategy to be more precise.
Overall, to create your personal a strategic life plan may seem like a daunting task, but it’s just putting what you want to achieve on paper. And once you have your vision written down, you can break it down to specifics and build your plan. Don’t be afraid to go back and edit and change your strategic plan as you grow and learn, as this is all part of the process of having a good strategic life plan that works for you!
Let’s talk about how you can Design your Lifestyle, Apple Style. Lifestyle design is a very broad topic and it’s easy to get overwhelmed with all the ideas and options for how to design your lifestyle. This podcast looks at what we can learn from Apple when it comes to lifestyle design.
Lifestyle Design – Apple Style
You probably have at least one Apple product in your home. Or if you don’t have one, you know someone who does. Apple has become shorthand for sustainable success and instant recognizability. So much so that song lyrics include phrases about iPods and iPhones. There’s a song that my kids loved and we’d play it in the car from their iPod. I thought the song said, “It’s like my eyeballs stuck on a plate.” so I would sing this phrase out loud. My kids loved correcting me no Mom, it says, “It’s like my iPod stuck on replay.”
Apple has a small but mighty line of products that do exceptionally well. They are focused and strategic in their product development and marketing. And their big not-so-secret weapon? They invent something and then keep refining it.
This approach to innovation and incremental change is something you can easily adapt to your own life.
1. Hit it with the Simple Stick
Ken Segall author of Insanely Simple the Obsession that Drives Apple’s Success shares in his book how people who worked at Apple would come out of meetings with Steve Jobs shaking their heads discouraged. When asked what happened, they said, “Steve hit us with the simple stick.” This meant that Steve had rejected their work and sent them back to the drawing board. As someone who has worked as a creative professional most of my life, I understand this completely.
So many times, I have thought or overthought a problem and delivered a solution to a client only to have them say, “Nah, I don’t like it.” On one occasion, I recall a client had said, “Just do whatever you think is right for us.” This was a new home in upscale development with a Southern Plantation feel about it. Our interior design team put together a beautiful Southern Plantation style presentation for this client and we bombed… The client said, “No no no, we thought you knew we wanted a more Tuscan Mediterranean feel like you did for so-and so”
Wow! We were we off track… We could have given them a rubber stamp of what we did for another client.
When Steve Jobs returned to Apple. He made a strategic decision to keep Apple’s focus tight. He simplified their product lines down to four computers.
How can you simplify your life right now by eliminating the elements that waste your time and resources?
Start by cutting down or cutting out TV and video games, which are both low-return uses of your time.Then think of how you can downsize your resources. Right now we are switching to a smaller car or 1 car, moving to a smaller house, de-cluttering, to not buying more stuff you don’t need.
How can you free up time by shopping online, buying in bulk, and batch cooking?
2. Ideate & Iterate
To Ideate means brainstorm and to iterate means incremental changes.
Any psychologist will tell you that small, incremental lifestyle changes are much more successful than the big sort that tries to change everything at once. Think of how successful most New Year’s resolutions are.
Make a commitment to a significant life change, like early retirement, semi retirement or taking mini vacations.
You can make a series of small changes, like switching from going out for coffee to brewing coffee at home. Add in complementary changes, like cutting down on takeout, downgrading your subscriptions and buying a smaller car. Small iterations compound over time and can make a massive impact on your life.
3 . Be Curious
One of Apple’s big successes is its research and development capacity. They are committed to not missing an opportunity to learn and grow and improve over time. Stay ahead of the pack by being curious, by always being open to learning and change, looking for new opportunities, tweaking your goals, and always staying committed to improvement.
4. Pinch & Zoom
The coolest feature on an iPad or iPhone is the Pinch & Zoom feature. Being able to zoom in and look at something closer is so amazing.
In my past life, I worked for an architecture firm where my boss left me a note on my desk to print out a floorplan at 1” = 1’ scale and put it on the conference table. I thought it was a mistake because we usually printed hotels at 1/8” = 1’ so I knew this would take lots of paper. I did what was asked and unrolled this on the conference room table. My boss came in and started looking over these drawings. He would lean down and put his eyes right next to the paper and then back up. I watched him a minute and asked if there was anything else he needed. He said, “you probably think this is little crazy don’t you”. I said, “Maybe a little but you’re the boss.” He said, “My eyes are getting so bad that this is how big I need to look at the drawings to catch mistakes.” He was zooming into the drawing.
5. Being Okay with Imperfection
One of Apple’s mottos is ‘just ship’ meaning that they don’t wait to get a product absolutely perfect before they launch it into the world. Being okay with imperfection doesn’t mean you just leave it there and turn out low-quality work. It means you keep hustling. You give it your best shot, get it out, and then make improvements. You keep moving, keep thinking, keep improving.
Podcast with Karon Thackston How to Make Money while Being Stuck at Home with Passive Income
If you are wondering How to Make Money while Being Stuck at Home you will love today’s podcast. I am speaking to Karon Thackston who shares about the way she has made an excellent income working from home doing affiliate marketing.
Karon shares how she left the corporate world and started her own business back in 1999 doing copywriting. She later add affiliate marketing to her income streams.
Karon shares that having this passive income really saved the day for her during a difficult time for her and her family.
During this challenging time, you can learn a new way of How to Make Money while Being Stuck at Home. This method can work for people at any age or education level. It doesn’t require a website although it is helpful and you can do this from anywhere.
Karon has a course you can take called the Passive Income Jumpstart to help you get started right away making passive income.
