Finding the optimal rather than perfection

Perfection might have the feel of having immediacy for some people. They think they should find perfection right away. This might be the case but it might not. Picture the baseball player walking into the batting cage. It would be expected that they would need some warm-up swings. If they complained to the fellow players about not hitting a home run in their first swing they would often say you just need to warm up. It’s obvious within the sport that this warm-up is needed in many or most cases. But in other situations we expect perfection right away and it isn’t as obvious that we aren’t being realistic about the similar need to warm up. There might still be an area of near perfection that we can find. This might be similar to an area of excitement. For example, just seeing certain person of the opposite sex brings someone into an area of excitement, this could also be symbolic of an area of near perfection to this individual. Even though overall their relationships with the opposite sex have been lacking, there still remains an area of excitement for them, or an area of near perfection that they can even see. If we do see that area of excitement, we can be hopeful about that and this is an area we could potentially prize as near perfect if we can get to it. I can look for links within these possible areas of perfection. I find just looking at this particular woman an area of excitement. Then I talk to her, and find her exciting to talk to. There is a link right there.

Sometimes the evidence at hand is secondary and not primary. I would consider myself a Met fan in that I live closer to the stadium and I can walk or run the 13 miles home which gives me practice towards running the marathon. I like the Yankees, but I would say to friends I am a Met fan. Recently the Yankees went on a excellent run, winning 9 of 10 games and there season seems to have recaptured in 2007. But since they have lost 3 in a row and I suddenly felt in not as good a mood. This mood change is revealing as secondary evidence that indeed I am a Yankee fan as well as a Met fan. This sideline view of my reaction to the recent three game slide of the Yankees reveals some truths that I am not otherwise blatantly admitting.

Links can be links to the contrary position, which oppose perfection. I have been working in the software industry and things have gone sour for me and I am no longer interested in the field. I was never interested in the steel industry so I can link my current disinterest in the software industry with my disinterest in the steel industry which I have never even considered working in and then I can find it easier to put the software industry out to pasture as I link my areas of disinterest together.

What some people see as their flaws and imperfections, are actually characteristics that they would want back if they were taken away and they might even cherish these traits in the final review.

I was getting a haircut and the person cutting the hair, Rocky, was talking about the stock market and how some of the people that play the market are obsessed with checking the changes in the market and individual stocks during the days. Rocky said that he cuts the hair, checks it once and he is finished contrasting to those who are constantly checking their stocks. I told him of an article in the business paper about a podiatrist who spent so much of his working day checking on his stocks during the dot.com boom he only saw half of his normal visitors for his practice that year because he got so distracted by his stock prices. This relates to the idea of perfection. Even if we get it, when can we let go on it and just check it over and reach a conclusion on our efforts. Can I just paint a perfect picture and leave it at that? Or do I keep on painting the Mona Lisa forever? That leaning tower of Piazza that is still leaning. Things will tend to tilt towards perfection or imperfection. It might be more useful to look at perfection as a tendency rather than something that can actualize or be an actuality in many or most cases. There will be tendencies or movements away or towards perfection. You can actualize certain things but don't idealize too far and to long on what is not actualizing to the extent that you lose chances to center on other good things. Make believe that the sun is perfection and the earth moves towards or way from the perfect sun.

In actuality however, for the people on the earth distance of the earth from the sun might be close to perfect in terms of climate. If it were a few million miles closer, it might be much to hot for the earth’s inhabitants. Ironically, the earth might be in the best position or perfect position in relation to the sun as it is now. If the earth was a few million miles closer to the sun, the ocean would be boiling and the surfing conditions wouldn’t be any good. One of the things to consider in relation to perfection is the idea of defining what you are doing. If you are fishing with the seals near the North Pole, why worry about being the perfect leader of a corporation. If I am playing baseball, why I am concerning myself with the idea of being the perfect goaltender in the NHL? Define what you are doing.

The girl says, I’m going to get in tiptop shape for the summer and I’ll wear a bikini at the beach. She gets into tiptop shape, goes to a desolate beach and there is no one to see her. Implicit in her motivations for getting in tip top shape or close to perfect shape was that she would go to the beach and have an audience. She didn’t position herself correctly in relation to her prior motivations.

We see that while we seek perfection we must also position ourselves in relation to these motivations. This girl got into close to perfect shape but no one was there at the beach to observe her and she wanted an audience for her hard earned efforts towards getting in the best shape possible.

Then how do we position the factors? Look at all the factors you might have. You select a factor and work it to near perfection. Another factor you could have put in place or positioned yourself with was ignored. You might have pressed the wrong buttons or you needed to push the right factors and right buttons. You might have gotten perfection with the factor you choose but you didn’t pick the best factor or you ignored other areas that you keep intending to possibly revisit later only after some things get worked out by you. For example, say your primary motivation is to make money in this situation. You work close to perfectly for this company for a year. After this year is up, you say you made 100 thousand dollars. But actually, if you push another button, such as being an actor or professional baseball player, both of which you were very capable of doing, the salary for either would have been 1 million dollars. So you actually paid 900,000 dollars for your choice. The one million you should have made minus the 100,000 you did make.

Another issue is that I have mixed motives; I have some more perfect motives and some that I consider selfish. To decipher your motivations you can look at the positions you ultimately want. I look inward and I find that my motivations towards women are from a playboy mentality. I hesitate in this area because I realize I have mixed motivations that I can’t neatly unravel. But then I find myself on a trip abroad to a scenic location and realize I wished I had positioned this trip to where I had a traveling companion who was female to keep me company and share the enjoyment of the good scenery with. Within my possible positioning that might be had, I can see that there are other motivations at play that deal with wanted perfection. To have the perfect trip, I really do feel I need the companionship of women. Despite my mixed motivations that I have about women because I tend to objectify into being a playboy, from this position I realize that I can decipher other motivations that are at work or could become operative as well.

Another example is I want to write the perfect novel. I think this is the perfect situation. I also want this to be a best seller for the purposes of making me rich. I call this an imperfect motivation. Do I let this imperfect motivation cancel all my efforts or at least let it cast a shadow on what I want to do. I look at these motivations, some are more perfect and some are less perfect. Whatever motivations are leading me along, it is the realities that might be found that ultimately may matter. Whatever is motivating me, whether it be along the lines of perfection or not, more so it is the realities that can be obtained or reached that are going to matter most to me. Ideas of perfection might be useful, but it is the realities that I need or want and that are going to be the difference makers for me. First and foremost, you want to get in touch with the real, get realistic and realistic might mean finding niches and situations that are very unfamiliar, but ironically are more about being real than what is more familiar to you now. But separate from this, where do I want to position myself. Like the girl who got in tip top shape for mixed motives, one of which was to show off at the beach, I still need to consider where I want to position myself. She went to the desolate beach and never properly positioned herself for the audience she hoped for. If she had positioned herself for the crowded beach, she could have reviewed her original motivations of having an audience then in relation to the actual hoped for position and then she could have gotten a more valid view of how mixed her motivations were and whether some of them in fact had links to wanted perfections. I see my motives are mixed, but I still want to position myself as well as possible despite the uncertainties of having mixed motivations that aren’t fully separated out. I may want the situation to meet with several motivations. As I consider how to best position myself, should I let what I feel is imperfect cancel out all perfection, or in fact everything else. I have a better chance of catching the perfect wave if I’m actually at the beach and being in position by the water waiting with my surfboard rather than at home on the couch. So often I have to position myself close to the situation I want to break into anything that might be near perfection. Patience is important but I might be waiting so long that I’ll fall asleep on the watch and perfection will sail right by. I need to position myself for the gold, if that’s what I want.

Then say for example you are trying to work a situation perfectly and it is sliding in the other direction. You are paying a price that is only getting higher. Your continuing efforts are being cancelled out. If your goal is perfection, it might only get worse and you will be in fact further from perfection and pay a heavier price as time goes on. Forge ahead in something you are not enjoying and you will probably just get more of the same. It might be better to first and foremost find the bail out position as the price you pay to do that will be worth it.

Another case might be that you are in a good situation, you are working it close to perfectly, but other things and other pursuits that you value are sliding in the other direction. Your pursuit of perfection in this one area even though it is going very well seems to have the cost of not properly attending to other interests, which are also important to you right now. You could set your lights with a wider beam. You had chosen to focus a certain way, but realize the way you are focusing is at least in part a product of your choosing.

Perfection also relates to likes and dislikes. When we refer to likes and dislikes, we can go over some of the particulars. I like the design of the boat, I like the speed of the boat, I like the viewing panel of the boat. We can refer to the particulars especially if we can’t seem to get a handle of the global scene of what we are dealing with. Those splendid corals of the sea have a particular fancy for me.

The particulars could also be negative in terms of my likes. How is this going to be a perfect job when I don’t even like a file, this file or any file that I’m dealing with?

In fact, I might be lucky if I can bring any positive frame to a given situation. The situation or circumstance has negative elements, connotations, or even outright chaos. The question is how can there be a positive frame to this, never mind even thinking of a perfect frame.

You could win, win, win, and win. But if you don’t mind what season you are in, you might not capture the new era. And you lose out that way. A company can finally capture that market that has now faded in nostalgia.

Perfection identifies or helps identify a path I wish to take. The concept of perfection works as an identifier. It can be associated with exactness. If I get perfection, I am getting exactly what I want. However, if perfection means exactness to me, I put additional pressure on myself to find exactness in situations and circumstances. The exactness I want or expect might not appear and then I am lost. That search for exactness leaves me feeling lost, like I am looking for a needle in a haystack and yet again I’m dealing with what has formed into yet another fixation.

Who’s driving, you or perfection? Perfection might be outright driving for you or in might be a backseat driver telling you what to do. In the meantime you are trying to drive through outright chaos and perfectionist idealisms are yapping away at you. Then you feel you can’t stop for something the is tainted or even touched with imperfection but might serve your purpose in some agreeable way. Think of the surfer is relatively rough seas, really how is the surfer going to know where and when the waves are going to break? There is a relative chaos to the situation that must be accepted and you just don’t know how things will break. Putting in preconditions that are at the least not fine tuned to anything that is readable to the situation isn’t going to help reduce the chaos anyway and it might cause you to miss opportunities that might have been earmarked for you in particular. Throw everything out the window that keeps you off the alert of what are real chances according to what you really want.

The search for perfection can end up being fueled by desperation. I am looking for a woman with a perfect head of hair, and everyone I am meeting has at least one strand out of place. If I lowered my expectations to someone with a very good hairstyle and maybe a strand or two out of place, I might feel less desperate about my search.

Another pitfall to a blanketing search for perfection is not having a watchful eye towards what is important, what is more important and what is most important. For example, you read a long article in the newspaper or an informative article or book on a given subject. At times, you might want to extract what is most important and then worry about a perfect read as a secondary factor. The same is true in a given situation, you are in a work situation and the more important thing might not be the job in front of you at this very second but the person in front of you who could form into a great long term contact on several levels. What I what to extract from the surrounding circumstances of the moment is also quite important. I think everything is going to have to have a full read or forget it. I might only be able to get a partial read and because of this being only a partial read, I have the excuse of not having a full read, when the partial read is outside of perfection and therefore unacceptable to the idea of the full read or perfect read. Someone hands me a 1000 page book for the train ride on the way home, and I would really like to finish the book on the way home, but I can’t do it, I just don’t have enough time for the full read. I could just get a partial read of say 40 pages and I have to accept those parameters give or take for the train ride home in relation to reading this book. A full read is just not possible. So then, I say I’ll do nothing and not read the book at all, and I have fallen into another trap called all or nothing. By focusing on overall perfection, you might be doing it at the expense of the hierarchy of what is going to be more important for you. You could compromise the ability to extract what’s most important for the given scenario by totally focusing on wanted perfection.

What we want to do is maybe look for the mark of perfection but no matter what don’t put that mark on ourselves. Try to paint the car a perfect red and leave the mark of perfection on the object of the car but don’t mark yourself as the perfect painter of cars, in other worlds, don’t personify perfection in relation to a task that you would prefer to do rather perfectly. A mark now boomeranging with ourselves becomes a burden that is like that pair of clothes we can’t change or a hat we have to keep wearing. Be a task master but don’t personify it to you. So whatever you are trying to do perfectly don’t mark yourself as someone who is perfect in doing this. You can travel lighter and switch modes easier if you don’t have to live up to some perfectionist standard that you have marked yourself as having and while you can try to do this perfectly, never say you are the perfect doer of this.

Why does perfection always seem to play the part of the heavy? Maybe perfection is found also in the lighter approach or on the lighter side of things if we are going to equivocate on perfection.

One of the ways of checking of what might have been perfect is looking back with the retrospective view. I have the benefit of looking back and referring to my memory. What was most memorable for me in the past and what relationship do these memories have with the idea of perfection? Maybe what was most memorable for you was a moment. Or it might involve a trip with great scenery and in the meantime you did your job almost perfectly all year and it for some reason doesn’t seem that memorable for you. It may be that something I felt I did close to perfectly was most memorable but it my also be that something else that didn’t involve the pursuit of perfection was most memorable.

Within the pursuit of perfection, I can also see if I am being reasonable. The idea of perfection may or may be reasonable. If I am not the perfect person, then why am I looking for perfect people? I could ask, is this wanted perfection reasonable to even my interests? I take my interests, put them on a platform and see them as viable interests whether they involve actual perfection or not. I am first deriving from interests rather than anything else and if interests take me to the idea of perfection, I still don't want an or any idea about my interests to ultimately usurp my interests or take over for my interests as these interests is what I am deriving off of in the first place. The perfection I strive towards might not be that enduring even if I can get close to it. It might not be sustainable in any case. It might appear briefly only to leave again. I can adjust my view of myself to see what actually gets me going. I might view myself as a very good and almost perfect golfer or a very good and not so perfect golfer but which view is actually going to get me on the golf course in the first place? Sometimes viewing yourself as an imperfect golfer might seem a bit lighter to the situation and you might be more likely to play the game than if you view yourself as someone who should be putting up professional numbers but your not even close to that so you don’t bother at all with the game. Try to obtain a more reasonable view of the situation. Often the more reasonable view gets you to more obtainable approaches and outlooks. I am looking to be in any way reasonable if I try to pitch a perfect game against the Yankees or any team in the major leagues when there have been less than 20 games in the history of major league baseball that have been pitched perfectly. Be reasonable to what is involved in the given situation, don't say I want to enjoy a swim but I don't want to get wet while doing it.

Then perfection might seem to require an absolute focus. This hard focus may not always run in tandem with some other ideas that might be helpful. A soft focus might be better.

If I am having trouble in my pursuits, I might want to introduce variety into the situation. I could say no matter what I will induce variety in my schedule as in the long run I will need this. If things aren’t going well, the tendency might be to compromise variety and double up on specific efforts that I know I can concentrate on, but that concentration doesn’t always save the day. But what happens is I might forego some things that get pushed out of the picture until I obtain wanted perfection. I will not play golf until I get that good job. I might find that good job years later, I haven’t played golf in years where if I had stuck with the variety idea under all circumstances, I could justify going golfing occasionally as something different and a valid variation from my routine and my singular walk towards perfection in a given area.

Another difficulty I might encounter is that if I make a mistake, a significant blunder in my pursuits, if I had been expecting perfection I might just stop right there. If I think I’m a perfect golfer and I double bogey the first hole, I might give up right there and walk off the course. I might be so bothered by the mistake that I focus on the mistake at the expense of continuing. The mistake is so counter to perfection, that I get discouraged and stop right there. The challenge might then be to keep perfection as an idea or ideal, but if I am finding real obstacles, I need to adjust my thinking so I can find a way to keep going despite my failures or shortfalls around me or that I encounter within myself or if I do find I am able to readjust my thinking for whatever good reasons. My own hesitations for whatever reasons are obstacles in and of themselves. I may keep hesitating and just change the reason for the hesitation or I get so used to the hesitation process that I just don't know any other way. Here, I don't want to introduce ideas of perfection to get me out of hesitating. More than likely, I need to loosen the reigns, allow for some mistakes as long as they aren't to costly in terms of consequences and accept my own inabilities to go forward as a problem where I may need to help myself with gradual changes in my approaches and outlooks rather than leaps forward into the perfect. While it is not impossible that I make the leap forward into the perfect, because it is becoming improbable, I can adjust to the mistakes and involve that adjustment into an approach that let’s me go on and forward if I still want to do that. Even if I feel the need to stop and beat myself up for what went wrong, can I recover from the beating enough to where I can go into an adjustment that lets me not make this or that a permanent stop. Self chastisement does happen but you don't have to make that a never ending process as well as you even try to do that perfectly or keep at it until you get better at that as well.

Sometimes people in the pursuit of perfection either want it all or the gold or they say they will or might as well finish last. An example of that was in the Olympic ski jumps which involved flips this past winter Olympics. The American skier was winning after the first round but a competitor did some never done before twists in the competition. He had one of the 3 or 4 highest scores ever in the second round. The American went last and tried for an equivalent jump in terms of difficulty. He said he would either go for the gold or finish last and he ended up finishing last. He could have had the mindset of just trying for the Bronze and Silver and just tried to land a very good jump but his choice was at the far ends of the presenting spectrum.

What happens is that sometimes we tend to look for perfection and if we don’t find it we place ourselves in last place or place ourselves out of contention. But even with the imperfection, we are often unrealistic in placing ourselves last. Just because we aren’t first, doesn’t mean we are last. If I don’t win the gold, it doesn’t mean I’m still not very good. The spectrum is just that a spectrum that needs to be considered widely at times, and just because I’m short against some very real standards, doesn’t also mean I’m rather close or nearby rather than in the far distance. If I’m in the far distance of what I am attempting then I don’t need to expect much because it is an attempt from faraway from what is normally possible for me. I don’t put the same expectations against myself that I would if I was nearer to this.

I’m prejudiced toward vanilla ice cream. That doesn’t make it the perfect ice cream. Your prejudices don’t necessarily equate to perfection.

Perfection could represent a range. A perfect weight for you could be 180 pounds or a perfect weight could range from 175 to 185 pounds. A weight in that range will tip the scales for you into perfection. If you go into that range you have converged into perfection, if your weight goes outside of that range you have diverged from perfection. What you want is a more malleable concept or idea of perfection if we are going to work with perfection at all, meaning that you can range into certain areas, and it is a range that you are looking for. Optimal is the best or best I can do, which may not be perfect. Optimal and perfection might be interchangeable, but not necessarily or totally. Optimal tends to be situational. In any situation there can be the optimal, while in some situations I can’t get perfection no matter what.

In many situations, there is nothing beyond optimal. For example, I am on a sailing expedition along the coast. Suddenly something happens that sinks the boat; I give a quick distress signal, before I’m overboard. The optimal thing I can do is either wait for a hoped for rescue or swim to the shore. I am not going to get a perfect afternoon sailing now. Imperfection has been introduced into the situation. The best I can do is safely get to the shore now. There is nothing left anymore for me in this situation beyond the optimal. I seek to adjust to perfection only if I can actually do so. Perfection might not be present. I can have the optimal outlook for a situation. If I’m dating, I could look for the optimal person rather than the perfect person. After all, I’m not perfect myself. By saying optimal, I am giving myself different symbolism. Being an optimist gives me more options. Being optimistic ironically could involve lowering my sights to include more of the possibilities. What I am aiming for can be adjusted to less than or some other potentially accurate guess on what could be closer to perfect.

I can expand my roster of opportunities. If I can handle imperfection, I might have more opportunities to look at and consider and options to consider if I can allow for possibly choosing into the less than perfect. Every single pointer might not be within the concept of perfection. You might be pointing towards doing something that is less than perfect. I can still proceed regardless of what the pointers are saying. I can try for the necessary adjustments to the changes, which are often in front of me before I brush them aside sometimes making believe that they were never there in the first place. I might find myself on a somewhat different trend line. Can I bring perfection into sight rather than maintaining my shy away positions? I think by expecting the perfect, I’ll find it but expectations can’t always see into or sail into perfection's waters either. What I expect isn’t telling either. They say expect the unexpected and even if you don’t feel like going that far, you can be at least aware of and keep in consideration what is coming through that is indeed unexpected.

You want to enjoy where you are now, even if it’s less than perfect. Your in this stretch of coast, you might as well enjoy it as this is the boat I’m in, this is the coastline I’m on and I will start to enjoy some of it. You want to use what you have which might not reach towards perfections mandates. I can’t always have everything or the perfection I wanted or in the way I wanted it. Perfection can be a controlling concept. I want the control of perfection in this situation. If it’s perfect, I think it means it presents some sort of handle. But what does getting a handle on things have to do with perfection in many cases?

Imperfection can exist side by side with perfection thereby giving you more options. I might be filtering my course through a belief system that demands something like perfection therefore I might not believe and see some real options or opportunities that might bring me some happiness yet don’t outright contradict my belief system however pollinated it is with perfections. I had been controlling for perfection only. I can make some of my beliefs accessible to imperfection and free up some of my thinking. I can have freeing beliefs that don’t enslave me to perfection and maybe even keep my perfectionist beliefs but also give credence to beliefs that don’t quite meet with perfection as I understand it to be. This gives me more of a chance to work with partial views because ironically even if the situation is perfect I might not always see it that way. It doesn’t have to be all or nothing, either a perfect view or no view. I don’t have to be held to one section of coast that I perceive as perfect. I can rearrange my ideals and beliefs to encompass more than just the perfection I seek. I don’t have to be bound to perfection only in my overall set of beliefs and the boundaries I have formed around the beliefs. Otherwise, perfection could have the effect of isolating me from some of my real interests that I can’t quite quality as perfect but indeed they do qualify as real.

I can section off my attempts at perfection. I will keep this section of the beach for perfection but I will also allow myself to go to other sections of the beach where I can be imperfect. I can get A in school but only B’s in my personal readings as I don’t need to follow strict standards in everything I’m doing.

I can give myself partial credit as well. My goal is a 10 mile hike and I only hike 8 miles, falling short of my goal and now I’m imperfect in meeting my goals. I can still give myself partial credit for the 8 miles I did walk. And then I could even change my original goal in freedom to 8 miles and then I have full credit for the 8 miles or say I walked 8 miles into my goal and therefore I did venture into even though I didn’t fully venture into my goals rather than the usual veering away from goals. There are some scenarios where I just want to get out of the situation. The key is just to get away. I do need to escape from this situation outright. There and then I might disagree with something at it foundations. Or I could never agree to this in principle. Then why set myself up to pursue this perfectly, to go all out, when I don’t even agree to this to start with? Maybe as I search, my starting points could be what could ever be agreeable to me. I could be the arguer of the perfect case for the wrong side as a lawyer. Which side is perfection on anyway? But the ability to argue swiftly is also a positive trait if I am arguing. So what is a positive trait depending on the if of what I am doing?

But then we argue with ourselves. Maybe argue with yourself taking the other point of view, seeing all sides even that once long away sighted optimistic side which seems so distant.

The keynote speaker for perfection may not have hit every note so I can’t follow or even get every good lead out there. Our loyalty for perfection is beyond what perfection has done for us as you can ask, what has this pursuit, this tradition, this corporation, this foundation, this educational pursuit ever done for me? When have you gotten that chance to dance with perfection anyway?

Looking at things through the view of the perfectionist is like looking into scope of a small lens, it might be like peering through a keyhole, when there is a whole world wide window to view things through, a panoramic view or a last another view. And this panoramic view works both ways, how much wider and higher is this window of reality which we are going to let in from the outside or look at from the inside. A friend of mine said, now that he is older the window of girls he will look at is wide and high, then when he was 20 he only would have the shallow view or narrow view of looking for a certain model type. His idea of perfection might have been wrong even then, to his own loss then. The view of perfection as the standard might not be the for what it is the reachable realm, the finding of an actual available viewpoint, and the only existing approaches that will get us started or begin to get us going. I can scan the imperfect field perfectly with my naked eyes, by the way I notice a slight imperfection in your walk. If for example, I am in need of some nourishment such as a meal, what is the available viewpoint? Is the viewpoint that I fast the next two days really available to me? There are only so many truly available viewpoints in the moment. I am wading in shallow seas and I see a tidal wave approaching. What is the available viewpoint? I can stand where I am and get that view, but it realistically is not available as a life affirming viewpoint.

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