Excellence Over Perfection: A Better Way to Grow and Succeed

Excellence over perfection is a mindset that invites growth, learning, and progress. While perfection focuses on getting everything exactly right, excellence encourages us to improve through experience, reflection, and persistence. This journey explores how shifting from perfection to excellence can unlock confidence, purpose, and meaningful success.

Defining Excellence vs. Perfection

Excellence is defined as an attempt to perform a task in the best way possible, whereas perfection is the definitive one hundred percent right way of doing anything.

Learning Through Continuous Improvement

In my early years in healthcare quality, I had the opportunity to study Dr Edward Deming’s findings on the benefits of continuous quality improvement. It was then that I realized that perfection is not the goal.

If we did everything perfectly every time, we would never learn a better way. There is variation in every process, every time we do anything.

The goal is to find the process that achieves the results you desire and attempt to duplicate it. Once you are getting the desired result consistently, ask yourself if there is a better way. Then adjust your process through trial and error until you are getting the desired results consistently again. 

Setting the Aim and Embracing Mistakes

In order to achieve the desired result, you must first ask yourself what the desired result is. Set your aim, then set out on your journey of trial and error.

Errors are necessary in order to achieve excellence.

If we beat ourselves up every time we make a mistake, we are discouraging ourselves and will be less likely to achieve the goal. That is the result of striving for perfection.

I think the blocker to my writing has been a fear of failure. Why is that? Well, I spent many years of my life thinking that I am not good enough. I was talking to someone yesterday about that. 

The Stories We Carry About Ourselves

Somewhere along the way, we begin to listen to the opinions of others and take them to heart.

For example, I have always thought that I could not draw a straight line, much less a beautiful painting. I think that somewhere in my childhood I was told that, and took it to heart.

My brother, Sammy, was an amazing artist. I remember when I was young finding sketches in his room of models wearing different types of clothes. Like a clothing designer would draw. He also had sketches of animals and people together. I asked him to teach me to draw.

To this day, I can still draw a dog sitting curled up next to a fireplace just like he taught me. Yet, I always believed it wasn’t very good.

A Lesson from Painting

A couple of years ago, I was invited to attend an art class in Eufaula. The teacher had us study a picture, draw a grid, and recreate it one square at a time.

I was given a pencil and told to hold my hand very lightly so I could erase my mistakes. The instructor was teaching techniques to achieve the desired results when working with watercolor.

I would paint my sketch and correct mistakes along the way. With painting, you can go over your mistakes and even incorporate them into a unique picture of your own.

When I did the sketch, I looked at it, erased and corrected until I thought it was good.

The instructor asked me what I thought of my sketch. I said I thought it was pretty good. He said, OK, now erase it so that you can barely see it then paint your painting on top. What? I thought.

I didn’t want to erase what I thought was my best effort ever to draw a bird. However, I did so and began to paint on top just as I had sketched. 

During breaks, I would walk around and look at the painting others were doing. They were beautiful and looked perfect to me. Every person there was talking about the mistakes they were making and talking about how their painting wasn’t good enough.

The instructor helped them incorporate those mistakes into something beautiful.

I found myself comparing my painting to theirs. However, I was so amazed that I was able to paint as well as I did, that I didn’t think mine wasn’t good enough. They were all experienced artist and I was taking the class for fun. 

Recognizing Your Worth

When I looked at the final painting, I was amazed.

I had painted a beautiful humming bird.

Even now, I look at that painting and remember:
I am capable
I am worthy.
I am good enough.

Faith, Purpose, and Growth

Philippians 1:9 And I pray this, that your love may abound even more and more in knowledge and every kind of insight.

I believe that my purpose in life is to inspire and empower others to live a purpose driven life of excellence.

I see evidence of this in the words others have shared with me, how something I said or did impacted their lives, even when I didn’t realize it at the time.

Choosing Excellence Over Perfection

I truly believe that by sharing my writing, I can inspire others to live their lives with the goal of achieving excellence—not perfection.

Today, I am making a commitment:

• to write daily
• to publish consistently
• to put my work out into the world in its imperfect state

And to enjoy the journey along the way.

I invite you to join me in choosing a joyful journey of life.

A Question to Reflect On

WHAT IS YOUR PURPOSE?