“Perfect is good. But finished is better!” ~ quote on a plaque in a local quilt store bathroom

When I was in graduate school for counseling at least a million years ago I had to write a great number of papers for all the different classes I was attending.

And I came up with a motto which helped me to survive the intensity and demands of that program which was ” The only good paper is a done paper.”

Without that attitude I could have very easily made myself completely crazy with worrying and efforting and striving to make each one of my assignments perfect. But the bottom line was that I just didn’t have the time to be perfect. I was in high production mode. And if I wanted to graduate I had to keep churning these papers out.

So I wrote each paper as well as I could given those time constraints, handed it in and never looked back. Because I always had another one waiting to be completed.

It was great training in what Seth Godin calls “shipping” or simply getting things done, finished, accomplished and out the door.

And because I WAS in such a furious production mode my writing did improve over time. Simply by constantly writing.

I quickly learned that fretting over each and every detail was not going to get me through graduate school. Writing relentlessly did.

I have carried this bit of hard earned wisdom into the rest of my life and particularly into my business life where I am STILL in high production mode although now it’s blog posts , newsletters and workshops that am continually creating and completing.

But the lesson came up for me again just recently because I was trying something new and  scary and unfamiliar to me . Which of course, always brings those perfectionistic tendencies out from whatever rocks they are hiding under.

I had a project I was intent on completing, which was to create my very first video workshop called Generosity And The Creative Spirit, that was going to be part of my dear friend Goddess Leonie’s free Worlds Biggest Summit.

Since during that time I was out in the Southwest teaching and surrounded by my beloved  high desert, red rock landscape, I thought it would just be the coolest thing ever to have those colorful mountains be the backdrop for my video presentation.

During the first part of my trip I was in one of my favorite places in the world, Sedona, AZ where my hubby, (who was acting as my videographer) and I found what looked like a great spot to film me in.

But it turned out that the place we chose for filming was too close to the road, directly underneath the flight path to the nearest airport as WELL as being right in the middle of a bike trail.

So when I wasn’t dodging cyclists barreling down the hill at 50 miles an hour I was going hoarse trying to shout over the incredibly noisy single engine planes that were flying by overhead with the added background noise of large trucks clanking loudly on the asphalt.

When that didn’t work out, we decided to wait until we got to the Ghost Ranch Conference Center in New Mexico where I would be teaching and do our filming in the equally stunning red rock landscape there.

But even though New Mexico has been in a drought for the past couple of years it ended up pouring down rain as soon as we got there.

The one sunny day I had free from teaching we went to a gorgeous spot we had chosen for filming but the wind came up so intensely that I was totally distracted by my hair flying around my head and again, not being able to be heard because the wild desert breezes kept whipping the words right out of my mouth.

By now we didn’t have much time left to do the video. So we found a spot inside a building on the property that was empty and available.

At this point my cute haircut ( that I had gotten a couple of weeks earlier in anticipation of this shoot) had grown out and my hair was all stringy and dried out from the wind. I was worn out from teaching and my clothes were totally wrinkled. I had had a fantasy that I was going to lose a few pounds before I made my video debut but instead my tummy was all poochy from too many Ghost Ranch chocolate pudding deserts.

But I remembered my lesson from my graduate school days and told myself that the only good video was a done video.

We filmed the video in an echoey room where the light was constantly changing and the only red rocks were the ones that I alone could see out the window behind me. I was frustrated, exhausted and by this point decidedly cranky.

But once the camera started rolling I remembered why I was really there and it didn’t have anything to do with all those perfect staging fantasies.

My heart opened, the words came out and I delivered my message about generosity and creativity that I had so lovingly crafted as a gift for the summit. And I even had fun doing it!

By going through this process I learned, once again, a few things about the dance of creativity and perfectionism.

I remembered that when you are creating something It’s important to do the best that you can. But doing the best that you can is not the same as perfectionism. Doing the best that you can is always achievable and doable.

Perfection, on the other hand, believes in and demands the impossible. Perfectionism assumes that your best is just not good enough and that there is something more that can be accomplished that is somehow better than your best.

Perfection is ultimately a fantasy. It’s an idea that you have in your mind that may or may not be possible given whatever realities you find yourself bumping up against on the road to creating something.

The other thing I learned from doing this video badly was that the fantasy of perfectionism is actually pretty boring.

Perfection is static. Once you’ve achieved perfection there’s nowhere else to go.  It’s done. Complete. The end of the road. It’s dead and you can no longer learn from it. Perfection is like embalming fluid for the soul.

When something is not perfect, you learn from it. You grow. Because you actually did it you can now go on to do it better. And better. And better.

And finally, perfection is ultimately not very satisfying because it’s simply not real. One of the biggest gnarly, dangers that you encounter around perfectionism is the unwillingness to actually make something.

You can get completely caught up in the gorgeous fantasy of how this thing could be which leads to you becoming justifiably terrified that it won’t ever turn out the way you want it to.

Which it won’t. Because it can’t. Because it’s just not possible. ( See above.)

So you never do anything at all.

When you create something, whether it’s a first time video with less than stellar production values or a school paper slammed out on a tight schedule, there is always that deep feeling of satisfaction that comes from having birthed something into the world. Even if your new baby is a little cross-eyed and looks like your great uncle Harry, you still love it because it’s yours.

And you can’t really help but secretly love the part of you that was courageous enough and bold enough to make this thing knowing that it WASN’T going to be perfect.

But you had the heart and spirit and willingness to do it anyway.

Which, dearhearts, is really and truly the only thing that ever matters in the end.