Are You Pursuing Excellence Or Perfection?

Lifters frequently confuse excellence with perfection.

Excellence is:

• Having a process for success

• Giving your best effort from start to finish

• Living in the moment

• Learning what works (and what doesn't work)

• And ultimately, accepting that the results take care of themselves

Perfectionism is:

• Creating an unattainable standard

• Giving an effort based on how likely you are to achieve that standard (i.e., it's conditional)

• Worrying about the outcome

• Taking failures and setbacks personally

• Beating yourself up when things don't go, well, perfectly

That's rough.

Pursuing excellence over perfectionism is not only more likely to lead to success, but it's also far more enjoyable.

There's less pressure and less needless stress.

This leads to better results, in and out of the gym, more personal growth, and more consistency in your performances.

For the perfectionist, switching to an excellence-oriented mindset (also known as process-oriented) can be difficult.

Ultimately, perfectionism is about total control.

Learning how to engage with an excellence-oriented mindset requires that you relinquish some of that perceived control in order to perform at a higher level.

But look, we all want that perfect outcome.

We train for it. We visualize it. We think about it before we drift off to sleep.

But perfectionism, if one thing, is unforgiving. It doesn't allow for mistakes to be made that you need to grow. For our failures are practice to learn from what didn't go right. To develop resiliency in the face of adversity.

Excellence means you are willing to encounter and overcome mistakes in your pursuit of that "perfect" outcome.

You're on your way, learn to ride the wave.