Besides being a popular Spin Doctor’s song from the 90s, Little Miss Can’t Be Wrong has often been me. 

Being right feels good. The harder the challenge, the more I want to be right. However, this gets messy when I’m locked up in perfection and being the best. 

Pressure is often self-induced and the best way to release it is to decide differently for yourself. Your worth is not connected to the results you produce. 

If perfection and being the best hold you back from taking action, here are three things I’ve found to help me move past them. 

Call it done

Have you ever heard the quote, “Done is better than perfect”? You work and work and work and it’s simply not as good as you want it to be? At some point, you need to call it done. Set a time for yourself to be done and walk away. There’s room for growth and learning and the next time you do this, it will be better. Let it be what it is today.

Ask for help

The best way we learn is from other people. That book you read, someone wrote it. That video you watched, someone created it. When you don’t ask for help, you spin your wheels and second-guess if you have the right information. Chances are, someone else has done it before. If you don’t have access to them directly, because they’re famous or dead, study their content. 

Be ok with not knowing the answer right away

Sometimes saying “I don’t know” is the scariest thing to say. You want to be credible, like you know what you’re doing, but you need more time to figure it out. If you don’t want to say you don’t know, say you need some time to answer and will get back to the person by a certain date and time. It has been said that our brain is loaded daily with 34 GB of information. This means you may have many times where you need to pause and retrieve an answer later. This is ok. 

Perfection and being the best is paralyzing to my development. As a result, I learned to ask myself what I can let go of and approach with wonder and curiosity instead.