I put pressure on myself to make every day, and every aspect of my time perfect.
Talk about setting yourself up for failure!
Or can I live up to this big and scary expectation?
Every day, I want to read, meditate, stretch, exercise, workout, get time outdoors, play a sport, run my company, study the market, start a new business idea, paint, work on my business and the future of it, talk to my family, record a podcast, write a blog, drink enough water, make all my meals from scratch (eat them peacefully without distractions), study something, relax to some music and spend ample time with friends and family, doing nothing but being present and laughing. Oh and sleep 8+ hours.
With peak awareness, I want to do all those things at the highest level.
Well. We all have 24 hours in a day and that is just too much for one day. Likely, those things won't happen unless you schedule them out perfectly and have no mishaps in your schedule. But if something doesn't go perfectly… boom your perfect day is ruined.
So, in this quest to build towards this perfect version of myself and do all of those things above; as well as be content with myself, by not judging myself, I thought about how to have a perfect day. And days turn to weeks and weeks make up your years and life!
Now before I dive into this, I want to digress for a second and talk about the dichotomy that goes on in my head. You always hear that perfect is this elusive ideal state we can never attain. But you also hear, “practice makes perfect” and that you should shoot for the stars.
For me, goal setting is about the journey. Not the goal. So hell yeah, I want to be perfect and I am going to have perfect days that lead me to be perfect.
This might be a good time to talk about what perfection is. The definition.
Let me google it real quick…
This is the first time I am seeing this definition and I love it.
Let’s break it down.
“The condition, state, or quality…” So from the start, it is talking about a point in time, versus some permanent ideal.
“... of being free or as free as possible from all flaws or defects.”
This is the key to me.
What do you see here? Think about my perfect day.
Do I need to complete everything on my list to be free or as free as possible from “flaws and defects?”
Absolutely not.
I just need my day to be free from flaws and defects. I can literally just hike and walk one day (say when I am backpacking) and have a perfect day.
A “perfect” day does not have to include everything you could possibly try to do in one. You just need to trim the fat off your day.
A copywriter who used to work for me once told me that the perfect way to explain something is not when you have added everything you can possibly add into your writing, but when there is nothing left to take away.
Dan Millman, in a podcast with me, told me “hard writing makes easy reading” and I think this is what he was referring to.
With this definition, we can definitely strive to be perfect.
Perfect is not being the best at everything in every moment, but it is not wasting time, being mindless, or spending time/energy/money on something that does not align with your deepest, pre-meditated values.
And check those values regularly and often.
Then create your life around them.