perfectionism

Perfection is a lie, and lying to others is explicable but lying to oneself is the highest form of deceit.

Never let the principle of what you believe in become more important than the person.

Embrace being perfectly imperfect. Learn from your mistakes and forgive yourself, you__l be happier.

Our whole lives, it was like we were always trying so hard to be perfect - for our families and our friends, for each other - when the funny thing was, we didn't have to. In the end, we were better than that.

I picture the vast realm of the sciences as an immense landscape scattered with patches of dark and light. The goal towards which we must work is either to extend the boundaries of the patches of light, or to increase their number. One of these tasks falls to the creative genius; the other requires a sort of sagacity combined with perfectionism.

When we relate to ourselves with loving kindness, perfectionism naturally drops away.

Even if you have achieved everything, there is Perfection, still left to be achieved.

The most dangerous way we sabotage ourselves is by waiting for the perfect moment to begin. Nothing works perfectly the first time, or the first fifty times. Everything has a learning curve. The beginning is just that - a beginning. Surrender your desire to do it flawlessly on the first try. It's not possible. Learn to learn. Learn to fail. Learn to learn from failing. And begin today. Begin now. Stop waiting.

To be a learner, you've got to be willing to be a fool.

What if you wake up some day, and you__e 65_ and you were just so strung out on perfectionism and people-pleasing that you forgot to have a big juicy creative life?

Oh my God, what if you wake up some day, and you__e 65, or 75, and you never got your memoir or novel written; or you didn__ go swimming in warm pools and oceans all those years because your thighs were jiggly and you had a nice big comfortable tummy; or you were just so strung out on perfectionism and people-pleasing that you forgot to have a big juicy creative life, of imagination and radical silliness and staring off into space like when you were a kid? It__ going to break your heart. Don__ let this happen.

Q: When is the perfect time? A: Who can say, but probably somewhere between haste and delay - and it's usually most wise to start today.

The most successful are not the most perfect, but the imperfect who dare to believe that they can despite the damning verdict.

You know, the whole thing about perfectionism. The perfectionism is very dangerous. Because of course if your fidelity to perfectionism is too high, you never do anything. Because doing anything results in...it's actually kind of tragic because you sacrifice how gorgeous and perfect it is in your head for what it really is. And there were a couple of years where I really struggled with that.

Slow down. Calm down. Don't worry. Don't hurry. Trust the process.

Relax your expectations, in fact, purposely lower them so low that you feel excitedly naughty about showing up to perform your work with reckless abandon. If that__ hard, open to doing it that way just 5%. Deliberately perform below your skill-level to get started and to see what ideas fall out of a relaxed approach. And in that choice you will create an world of joy within yourself, you__l truly be an artist of being alive.

The unfolding over time of a great idea is like the growth of a fractal crystal, allowing details and refinements to multiply endlessly _ but only in ever-increasing scale.

It starts by forgetting about perfect. We don__ have time for perfect. In any event, perfection is unachievable: It__ a myth and a trap and a hamster wheel that will run you to death. The writer Rebecca Solnit puts it well: __o many of us believe in perfection, which ruins everything else, because the perfect is not only the enemy of the good; it__ also the enemy of the realistic, the possible, and the fun... The most evil trick about perfectionism, though, is that it disguises itself as a virtue.