Worldwide Success

Many people approach success from the mindset that you need to be perfect in order to be successful.  Some think that you must perfect your product or service before you make it available in the marketplace.  Others have low self-esteem and don’t believe they can be successful because they have imperfections, and when they look at successful people all they see is a level of perfection that they think they can never achieve.  Nothing could be further from the truth.  In this article we will explore the idea that you don’t have to be perfect in order to be successful.  In fact, you must be imperfect many times in order to find your perfect moment and reach success.

The blog Escape from Cubic Nation posted an excellent article recently titled Perfectionists are Losers.  Ok, perhaps people shouldn’t be labeling others losers, unless they are talking about the folks in the popular show The Biggest Loser!  Regardless of any uneasiness that you may feel about of the title, the concepts highlighted in the article are right on.  Here is how Pam interpreted what her good friend Ramit Setti from Iwillteachyoutoberich.com was trying to say when he bluntly spilled out the “Perfectionists are Losers” statement that became the inspiration for the title of her post:

“When you sit back and wait until you are perfectly prepared for an opportunity, it passes you by.  What highly productive and successful people do is spend as little time as possible at the edge of opportunities, agonizing whether or not to move forward.

Instead, they jump in with both feet and sink or swim quickly.  After lots of real-world experience, they fine tune their understanding of the types of opportunities that will most likely be a success and the kinds of situations that will best utilize their talents.”

Pam then goes on to explain the concept of bracketing.  The concept is that you have to try things many times in order to get a few excellent results.  In the photography world, where the analogy came from, it means taking the same shot many times with different camera settings.  The results are that you will have many bad shots, some so-so shots, a few OK shots, and hopefully one really good shot.  But you would never get to the one really good shot if you hadn’t taken many shots, regularly changing the parameters that impact the output.

The example that she provides from the book Bird by Bird, should be familiar to bloggers.  How many bad or so-so posts does it take to get that one gem that makes up the majority of your traffic?  I can tell you from experience that the top 10 posts on this blog represent the great majority of all the traffic that the site gets every month.  This did not happen by accident.  It took many hours of hard work, failed attempts, and disappointing results to write the few inspired, best-in-class posts that became the cornerstone of what this site is all about.  Read The Seven Traits of Highly Effective Teams, and you will know exactly what I mean by an inspired, best-in-class post.

But the point is, if I were to keep from posting until I hit a home run like The Seven Traits of Highly Effective Teams, I would have so few posts that no one would ever come visit this site, which would make it a mute point.

I love Pam’s second tip of “fail fast and move on”.  The key here is to know when to quit and move on.  This is easier said than done.  You may even think it runs counter to another very important success principle called persistence.  But these two very important concepts can co-exist.  What is critical is to seek the truth from deep inside yourself.  If you truly believe in what you are doing, and you are seeing some progress, albeit not as good as you would like to see, then persistence may be the right call.  But if you have been banging your head against the wall, and no matter what you do, you do not seem to make progress, or achieve success, then it may be time to move one.  Only you can make this call.

“Hang out in the barber shop and sooner or later you will be getting a hair cut.”  I love it.  This is perhaps one of the most fundamental principles of success.  The crowd that you hang around with will have a huge influence on your life.  So if you want to be successful, here is one of the most important and effective things that you can do:  hang around successful people.  If you have people in your life that are a negative influence in your ability to reach success, give them a helping hand if you can, but don’t let them bring you down with them.

Don’t let perfection get in your way of success.  Experiment often.  Learn from failures.  Move on to the next opportunity.  These are invaluable success lessons.

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