“Remember, there is no road. The road is made by walking.”
~ St. Elizabeth Seton
Do you ever have a project to do and you don’t even know where to begin?
Sometimes the overwhelm of all the pieces and parts you need to make your project complete stops you in your tracks. Sometimes this is so powerful it leads to inaction and your project remains on your To Do List or your Annual Goals at work quarter after quarter, or year after year.
So there’s that. Overwhelm.
Sort of like I felt when I thought about how to bring developmental care to our unit years ago. Or how to add different disciplines to our existing neonatal therapy team. Or how to begin NANT.
But there’s something besides overwhelm. Something harder to pin down. This Monster seems to feed Overwhelm breakfast, lunch and dinner.
The Monster called Perfectionism.
The idea that you must have it ALL FIGURED OUT before you even begin. For example, you want to improve the developmental care practice in your unit. You do a little research and learn there are multiple ways to achieve this. You don’t know which way is best. You don’t know how much it will cost. You aren’t even sure if the NICU would support sending staff out for education or bringing education to them.
You hear that you’d have to find a funding source either way. Ugh.
How are you going to do all this while seeing the 10-20 patients on your schedule today? During your 17 minute lunch? ☺
I so get this.
Some of it is reality. And some of it is thinking that you must have all of those questions answered before you even begin. The perfect plan. That’s the sneakiness of perfectionism. It wears many disguises so you don’t recognize it in a new situation.
This is the #1 most effective way I know to slay the Monster called Perfectionism:
Move.
Take action. Even small baby-step action. Imperfect action. Step-into-a- new- territory action.
Write the email. Ask one question. Attend a Mentoring Call. Ask another NANT member. Schedule the meeting. Survey the staff. Form the research question. Submit the poster.
You don’t have to have it all figured out. No one who creates new things ever does. Do you think Steve Jobs worried about how to package the iPod when he was still working from his garage?
Your Monster called Perfectionism doesn’t know what to do with motion. It freaks out.
Let it.
Tell it you’ll be back later – you have things to accomplish.
The road is made by walking.
