Golden Rule #5
Strive for excellence not perfection.
Somehow this was a lesson I learnt early on in life, much to the confusion of those around me. I realized on my own that by “settling” for something lower than perfection I was in fact able to get much more done. This is not the same thing as doing just enough to get by, however - I was still pretty interested in excelling. But somewhere along the line I decided that my definition of excelling meant working to my standard and not someone else’s.
As a competitive swimmer, my goal was always to better my times. A medal was a bonus but not the most important thing to me. My best and most memorable race had me swimming in a heat by myself (some administrative error where they didn’t realize till just before the race that the other swimmers had not turned up). So there I was with 400M to swim with no way of knowing how fast the swimmers in the next heat would be. All I could do was swim my best swim. And I did. I came out of the pool having swum a better time than I had ever done for that length swim. Did I get a medal? No. But I felt great about my time.
Perfection is an ideal drilled into people’s heads by cliches like “practice makes perfect”. The truth is, practice makes better. The more you do most things, the better you become but you may never reach perfect. In fact, for many it is this insurmountable obstacle of Perfect that keeps them from trying because they know they won’t reach it.
This rule goes hand in hand with Golden Rule #2, because your life may never be perfect but you can make it as good as you can by continually improving.
