You may have heard that it’s all about being perfect. If you went to a traditional school they have probably taught you that you need to be perfect. That’s basically how the school system is built, around perfection. They punish you for mistakes, you are not allowed to make mistakes. This starts to create an imaginary wall in children. A wall that stops people from trying new things because they can fail, and that is wrong. In this article I will show you why perfection is the enemy of progress and how can you turn this in your favor.
Childhood beginnings
Like I said it all starts at a young age. Children have a blank disk. They are born at level 0, and with emotions, experiences, lessons, and mentors they start to fill their disks. Now the problem is 99% of children go to a traditional school, in which they taught them that mistakes are evil wrong and should be avoided at all costs. To make this even worse parents reassure them that this is the way of living by punishing at home.
Most children stop trying and learning new things. It is said that the character of a person is built from years 1-7. Now if they are built around perfection and fear of trying, you will have nice citizens, but not creators or leaders. There is another factor here, friends. Now people are terrified of not belonging and missing out. So children want so desperately to fit in their schools. If they fail and arent good at a certain sport or subject, they will make fun of them. These will stop children from trying.
How life should be
This story I just told you isn’t for the 1% of children. There is a small percentage of children that due to mistakes, life’s circumstances or struggles are raised differently. As a result, these children end up conquering the world. These children are taught that you don’t die if you fail, that if they don’t learn to stand up they will die. Circumstances have been so taught for them that they need to stand up, or they die. These few children are born with a sparkle of curiosity, that pushes them to try new things. if they stay in the ordinary they feel like they are betraying themselves. This curiosity is a cousin of failure because they fail and fail until things fall into their place.
What progress really is
Progress means forward or onward movement toward a destination. The process of improving or developing something over a period of time.
This means that you keep going until something is improved, that you follow a certain formula in which failure is accepted until you figure out the perfect result. Now people who don’t know how to progress die.
Why do people who don’t know how to progress die?
Let’s make something clear, there is no such thing as perfect. People give the meaning of perfection to something that the vast majority of humans accept. So perfect means accepted by certain criteria. What if that criterion is wrong? The world used to accept the fact that the earth was plane, not round. Or they would accept that there wasn’t a cure for diseases. Or that humans could never fly, or that light wasn’t possible. There was a ¨perfect¨world before these inventions were discovered and people were okay with it.
Keep in mind that when something is perfect it means you reached the finish line. It means you stop there. So you stop failing and trying because you reach the point you wanted. That is the worst thing that can be done.
When something stays static, it starts to decompose. It starts to die. The world is made of evolution, everything that exists on this planet has a way of evolving. In order to evolve, it must die. Death means a change of form. It means to change a cycle to start a new one.
Now we as humans came to this earth to evolve. To improve and grow. If you were meant to find perfection you wouldn’t be here.
Why perfection is the enemy of progress?
First of all my definition of perfection is mediocrity. People want to feel like something is perfect so that they can stop trying and there are many reasons why they do this.
First. It’s called comfort.
Most people want the easy path, this means comfort. If I saw that perfect to me means this result I will stop there. I don’t care if it can be better, I don’t care if I could be richer, I don’t care anything, I like this state of my life, so this is perfect to me. perfect you could say is subjective depending on the eyes of the person and what they really want to see.
Second, it is death.
Perfection is death. Since you stop progressing at something you start to die, why? Because the rest of people won’t stop just because you do, they will replace you or your good. You and your good, will be obsolete and die. Let’s say Kodak, they thought they were perfect, they died. Blockbuster stopped trying and died too. Artists, creators, owners, athletes, have died because they stopped at their definition of perfection, and someone who wanted more replaced them.
Third, it repeats.
Learn this lesson. When something is not learned, it is repeated. What does this mean? You are here on this planet to learn specific lessons. Like love, money, or relationships there are many things you can learn. If you stop progressing and learning those lessons they will keep repeating. This is why you probably know a lot of people who have lived their entire lives in a certain negative condition and didn’t improve.
What’s next for you?
Raise your kids differently. Tell them that failure means progress, and you don’t die from it. Learn to keep moving. Never stay still, that’s the enemy of progress. Analyze your life and how you are dying in certain areas.
Give the word progress your own definition and don’t let society define your level of success.
