Strive for Excellence, NOT Perfection

Most people want to be the best they can be and this desire can perhaps be described as a striving for excellence. Striving for excellence asks us to strive towards being the best we can be in the course of our work. One may ask however, “does striving for excellence mean that I must try to be perfect?”

The answer is no, striving for excellence and striving for perfection are very different. Striving for excellence can inspire and motivate people, but striving for perfection can demoralise people. But what is the difference between striving for excellence and striving to be perfect.

To strive for excellence asks us to try and surpass ourselves. Excellence is the quality of being outstanding or very good but striving for excellence is about understanding where you are and how you can become a little bit better. Striving for perfection however means striving for something that cannot get any better because something that is perfect cannot possibly have anything wrong with it. Striving for perfection then means striving for something that is almost impossible to achieve.

There is always room for improvement, even when doing something excellently, but if we strive for perfection we will fail to see what is good about what we are doing but instead only see the ways in which we are failing to be perfect. When striving for excellence we can appreciate what we have done well and also see where we can improve.

An important part of improving is recognizing what you are already doing well so you can build on it. When you are striving for excellence your focus is on things that you already doing well, but with a mind to how you can do them better or how you can add to the things that you are doing well. If you want to provide excellent customer service or be an excellent boss, you need to look at what you are already doing that works really well and work out what you can do next, now, today, to make it that little bit better. Excellence is a daily, never ending journey.

Perfection is the pot at the end of the rainbow, always somewhere far ahead and out of sight. Striving for excellence is short term, it is about the little things you can do now and how these build on what we already have. Striving for perfection is long term, it is about the one big thing with so much that you are not getting right. Because of this, striving for perfection can be demoralising because you are not gradually building on something good and hence do not experience yourself as making any progress.

The most important thing to keep in mind is that it is the journey that matters and not the destination. Striving for perfection makes the destination the important thing. Striving for excellence makes the journey the important thing. Striving for excellence is about enjoying the process of improving yourself and getting better bit by bit. Striving for perfection means beating yourself up because you are not there yet. But you will never be there, you can only get incrementally better. So just enjoy the journey of self improvement.