Striving for perfection can make you stop before you even start.

Everyone has these moments: when the voice inside your head tells you that you are not good enough, or that your efforts will be wasted because you can never achieve what you want in life.

Stop listening to that voice!

1. Your voice tells you not to take risks

That voice cares about your ego, which is why it is so persistent. It doesn’t want you to experience failure or setbacks, so it tells you not to even try to achieve your goals. It wants you to experience life in the safest ways, so to cushion the blows, and to make a harsh reality gentler, it talks you out of taking risks.

Sure, it protects you from failure. But not even trying is failure itself. So stop trying to be perfect!

2. We are all flawed

We all have ideals. We all want to be perfect. But that’s not reality. The truth is, we are all flawed. There are things about ourselves that we wish we can improve on or change all together.

I sat on this idea to start a blog, my own business, for about two years. Two years! That’s 730 days that I spent mulling over these ideas without doing anything that would get me closer to achieving my goals. There are lots of ways that that time could have been spent more productively, such as posting weekly or biweekly blogs, building my website and my community, and sharpening my writing skills. But self-doubt and fears of failure took up most of my time.

This paralysis by fear is something that many of you have experienced.

3. Fear is a challenge we all face

Starting this blog was a challenge in itself. Like undertaking any new project, my mind was already focused on failure before I even gave it a chance to live and breathe. There were a lot of fears, a lot of doubts, that got in the way of starting, such as, “I don’t have anything interesting to say,” or “It’s too much work,” and “No one will pay attention to what I write.” These were all valid points.

These were all challenges that many have faced before me. But for every objection that I raised, there were also so many rebuttals. For example, “this could work”. Or, “once I get started, and find my community, I will have lots to say”. Or, “People could find what I had to say to be both interesting, useful, and relatable.”

Beset by fears, I almost talked myself out of even starting. There were times when I asked myself, “Why am I even doing this?” I lost my sense of purpose. I lost sight of all the good things that could come out of starting a blog. Success with what I wanted to achieve felt impossible.

4. We are too comfortable doing nothing rather than do something

All those negative thoughts run through your mind, and they could all be right. By the end of all of your attempts, you can still feel like a failure. But what about all of those other chances where you could’ve been successful? These are equally possible but we tend to overlook these possibilities in favour of the doom and gloom because it’s more comfortable. We talk ourselves out of trying, because it takes such little effort to do nothing in comparison to doing something. Stop listening to negative thoughts and trying to be perfect!

5. Change your mindset about perfectionism

To stop perfectionism from holding you back, you must change your mindset. The path to success begins with the right attitude. Here are four mindset shifts that can set you in the right direction:

1. Failure is an expected part of the process. Remember that any successful venture has seen many iterations that failed before finally finding one that works. So practice resilience. Each blow that knocks you down is another reason for you to get up and try again. Before you throw in the towel, I challenge you to keep going at it even if you’ve suffered a setback.

2. Find your support group, your community, your like-minded people. You need someone to cheer you on when it gets tough, a sounding board for your creative ideas, and a party to celebrate your successes.

3. A calculated risk provides a cushion for failure. Not all risks are created equal. When you’re thinking of taking a risk, make sure it’s one founded in reality and that you have a fallback plan in place so that any potential failure won’t cripple your venture.

4. Don’t expect overnight success. Too many people give up before they start to see a glimmer of the results they were hoping to achieve. Building your own business is not easy but don’t let that deter you because anything worth having is worth the blood, sweat and tears it takes to achieve it.

6. We are our own loudest critics

One success, one step in the right direction, no matter how small, is the boost that keeps you going, your reason for being motivated and showing up each day. It’s easy to get trapped into thinking that the rewards are so insignificant compared to the blood, sweat and tears that went into your project. But it takes a lot of guts to start your own venture, so don’t downplay even the littlest mountain that you conquered.

Without a doubt, we are our biggest and most loudest critics. We set very high, and sometimes very impossible to reach, standards for ourselves. We want to be the best. So instead of using these ideals for self-defeating purposes, why not try to shape these ideals into goals with tiny, attainable steps? We all need the encouragement to just start, so try taking one small step. Chart your progress not just by visualizing the end goal, but by taking count of the steps you took to get there.

7. Our flaws make us all relatable

Don’t hide your flaws; they make you more relatable. Relatability unites you and your audience and gives them a greater reason to listen to you. It’s impossible to be perfect because there’s always room for improvement. Even when you think of someone who appears to be perfect, there’s a great chance that they’re not stopping at where they are, but are always looking for ways to improve and be even better at what they do.