Recently I had a conversation with a friend about perfectionism and how limiting it can be. We we’re discussing how we often held back on doing things because we were waiting on them being perfect or for it to be the perfect time.

This made me think back to all the times I’ve stopped myself doing something because of the illusion of perfection. It made me sad to realise how much I’d been limiting myself over the years.

Perfectionism has reared its head again quite recently with me opening up my life through social media and running my business. I catch myself over analysing things and holding off posting because I’m worried that it’s not good enough.

Now I want to tell you a little about my history. My first primary school had a total of 40 kids, kindy to year 6. That was it. Kindergarten to year 3 in one classroom and year 4 to 6 in the other. Socially the school was great but I really struggled there academically.
I’m a visual learner and with the class situation as it was I wasn’t given the attention I needed to flourish. Often the teacher would just tell us to do the worksheets in our textbook. The problem was I couldn’t read, so I couldn’t do the work and just slipped further and further behind.

At one point I remember being tested and having them tell me I was in the bottom 10% of the state. I didn’t really understand what it meant other than I had to go to remedial school.

Why am I sharing this? Well I may have come a long way when it comes to my ‘academic abilities’ but I still have deep seeded insecurities about words and writing. Even with the wonderful invention of auto correct I still worry that I will accidentally spell something wrong. I worry that I’ll put something in the wrong context or that what I’m trying to say won’t come out right.

I’ve spent too many hours, days and weeks agonising over the smallest details waiting for something to be perfect. Add my fear of writing in with my perfectionist traits, the result is paralysis. Complete inaction. I had all these great ideas but I just couldn’t get them onto paper let alone be brave enough to share with anyone.

But I’ve started to realised something, that if I waited for the right time, waited until the content was tweaked to perfection, then I’d be waiting forever. I would never get anything done. I certainly would never have started this business and opened myself up via Facebook, Instagram and my blog the way I have.

My mission is to help busy women organise their homes. I don’t have to be perfect to do this. In fact I think it’s better that I’m not. I am all about real life organising that allow homes to be organised but lived it.

So as I now say to my clients: forget perfect, just get on with it!