Perfect At Work
I’ve coached and mentored many women, and we are often driven by perfectionism. We take on a project and nothing short of 100% will do. I’ve worked alongside male colleagues my whole career, and I’ve observed that most men don’t shoot for 100%. They figure that, say, 70% is not only good enough, it’s better than 100%, because they can then move on to the next idea, project, initiative. We women often stay in the muck of a project, overthinking it. We’re over in the corner grabbing paper bags to breathe into, while others around us calmly walk into their next meeting with a great new idea. It’s one reason I included Composure as a chapter in my first book for women, New Rules of the Game.
In some fields you do need 100% results, such as medicine and Olympic athletics. Aspiring Olympians seek perfect scores to get a gold medal. Yet an Olympian’s mindset can cause discomfort for others. In his 2019 piece in Atlantic Magazine, Arthur C. Brooks asked Dominique Dawes, former Olympic gold medal gymnast, how normal life felt after competing at the highest levels. She responded that living her life with an Olympic mindset only made those around her miserable.
When we can whisper It’s good enough, we come to peace with ourselves. In that place we can form healthy, joy-filled bonds with others.
Perfectly in Control
A lie: You can be perfect, if you’re perfectly in control. Truth: Our lives are dependent on a play of powers we can influence, but never fully control. Yet our egos desperately want to believe all we need is willpower.
And just when we’re spinning every plate with ease and grace, cock-sure and smug, we drop all the plates.
When I was in my late twenties, my employer HBO moved me from Dallas to Chicago. I figured I’d just pack things up in my little blue Rambler and make my way across the plains.
I stopped for the night near St. Louis, and the next morning as I walked out of the motel, I couldn’t find my car. There had been a snowstorm and it was buried under a foot of snow. It was still blizzarding but after brushing the heavy snow off, I took off for the freeway. There was zero visibility, but I wasn’t going to let Mother Nature defeat me.
I saw signs (barely) for the freeway. As I got closer, there were these pesky orange cones blocking the entrance, but I had to be in Chicago the next day, so there I went! I was maneuvering around the cones when suddenly a cop came running toward me, almost jumping on my front hood screaming: “Stop! This freeway is closed due to snow! Don’t you see the cones?”
I pulled over, defeated and called my new boss to say I was stuck in St. Louis. “Of course we don’t expect you here tomorrow. We’re having a blizzard,” he calmly replied.
Pushing, grasping, snow plowing through a closed freeway—these are the enemies of joy.
Perfect for Others
When I left my corporate work, I began writing books and travelling to speak about them. This new career, I reasoned, required a website. Going through the process of creating one, however was nerve-wracking. Are the colors right? How does that photo look? Does it make me look too old? Does calling myself an ‘Executive’ sound pompous and unrelatable? Does ‘Meet Susan,’ one of the buttons atop the site, sound like some Wizard of Oz character behind the curtain?
There it was—that place of overthink, making myself crazy because it had to be perfect.
For whom? For everyone else.
If you approved of me as an author, I could show up authentically as one.
You see how backwards that is?
Trying to be perfect for others, whatever our career or life circumstances, obscures our true self. It’s disrespectful to the gifts we are born with, and what we can offer to the world. Now I have fun when I work with my friend Antonella on website revisions. She reminds me I am many good things: A leader, a sober activist, a cheerleader for women, a teacher, and I need to honor all of them on the site.
Thich Nhat Hanh wrote: “To be beautiful means to be yourself.” It means to be in possession of your heart, identity and integrity.
Perfectly Imperfect
When we stop chasing perfection the blinders fall off and we see, truly see each other. Our shared humanness. Our kinship.
I gave a commencement address a few years back. There were over 5,000 people in the audience: students, families, faculty.
I wanted to avoid the clichés that fill such speeches and bore everyone senseless, so I just told them the truth. A truth that could be told in three words and says more about our solidarity that any other. I told them to ask for help. Be humble and human and ask for help as you go through life. It’s not weakness, it’s hugely courageous.
I then told a story that got their attention—that at the height of my career, I struggled with substance misuse. After decades of success, I had finally pushed up against something bigger than me. Asking for help was the bravest thing I’d ever done, and it completely transformed my life into something newly beautiful. Later, a few parents in the audience thanked me for my candor. Others likely questioned the University’s choice of speaker.
In East of Eden John Steinbeck’s character Lee says: “And now that you don’t have to be perfect, you can be good.”
Good means good enough. Not perfect because none of us are.
It means liberation to own your life, with your soul shining bright.
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