Freedom from the Pursuit of Perfect

I want to give you permission to be imperfect today.

Not permission to be unprepared or uncommitted or careless. Permission to compete without the demand that every rep, every play, every decision be flawless. Because that demand is producing something that is costing your performance: anxiety, hesitation, and the inability to move past mistakes.

Read this passage slowly.

Let that sit for a second before you move.

Set free for freedom. Not freed to do nothing — freed from the burden that was making the work impossible. The yoke of slavery Paul is describing has a direct competitive analog: the demand for perfect performance that turns competition into an anxious, self-monitoring exercise rather than a free, fully-engaged one.

Perfect is not available in competition. Not to any athlete who has ever played. The best performances in the history of every sport contain errors. The athletes we consider the greatest made mistakes in their most iconic games. Perfection was never the standard, even when it looked like it was.

The standard that is available is this: did I give everything I had, compete as fully as I was capable of, make the best available decisions in real time, and recover quickly from the errors that are an inevitable part of high-level competition?

That standard is achievable. And pursuing it produces the free, fully-engaged competitive state that perfect-seeking never can. Because when perfect is the standard, every mistake is a catastrophe. When excellence is the standard, every mistake is information.

You are free to compete imperfectly. That freedom is exactly what excellent competition requires.

Imagining a freer competitive state. The best answers describe specific behavioral or mental changes.