Article 4: (Stop) Trying to be perfect.

Disclaimer: this article contains explicit language. For those who know me well personally, you know that I swear, and I swear a lot. Although never without reason. It’s always either to put someone comfortable by tearing down the barriers of formality, or to put emphasis on a statement to ensure that they remember the important part of what I say. So I apologize in advance for my swearing, but I feel the title and the theme of this article warrants it.

Open, Chapter 22, page 300:

“I don’t have this.

Brad (Gilbert) says nothing.

I yell at Brad: Are you kidding me?! You’re going to pick this moment, of all moments, to decide not to talk?! Of all times, this is the moment you’re finally going to shut the hell up?!

He stares. Then starts screaming. Brad, who never raises his voice to anybody, comes apart.

What do you want me to say, Andre?! What is it that you want me to say?! You tell me he’s too good. How the fuck would you know?! You can’t judge how he’s playing! You’re so confused out there, so blind with panic, I’m surprised you can even see him! Too good? You’re making him look good.

But---

Just start letting go. If you’re going to lose, at least lose on your own terms. Hit the fucking ball.

But---

And if you’re not sure where to hit it, here’s an idea. Just hit it to the same place he hits it. If he hits a backhand crosscourt, you hit a backhand crosscourt. Just hit yours a little better. You don’t have to be better than the whole fucking world, remember? You just have to be better than one guy. […] Just hit. Just fucking hit. If we’re going to lose today, fine, I can live with it, but let’s lose on our terms. The last thirteen days, I’ve seen you lay it out on the line. I’ve seen you rip it, under pressure, maim guys. So please stop feeling sorry for yourself, and stop telling me he’s too good, and for the love of God stop trying to be perfect!”

That was former tennis professional turned coach Brad Gilbert giving a (somewhat aggressive) pep talk to former world number one and the only man in Men’s Singles to have achieved the Career Super Slam (all four majors, Olympic Gold Medal, ATP World Championship Finals winner), Andre Agassi.

That book had a profound effect on me and still does to this day – I’ve read it about 2 more times since. It’s incredible the parallels that I now see in the lessons I have learned in my life so far and what Agassi says in his book. One thing that always stood out to me was that last line of that passage: “for the love of God stop trying to be perfect!”

We all strive to be perfect, and that’s a great thing. In a sense, you can argue that our desire to be perfect has brought us to where we are today. It has helped us reach for the stars (and land on the moon), develop new ways of doing things, new technologies and approaches, and put words to ideas and concepts so that we may understand them better. But.

The reverse side of the coin is that it can make us obsessive as well. Call it OCD (and I mean no offence to individuals who do clinically suffer from this), call it perfectionism, call it whatever you like, but at what point does our desire to be perfect actually prevent us from moving forward?

Last year, I started mentoring university students and especially for those who want career advice, I often see that they have this semblance of a vision, an idea, but not a dream. Often they want to continue down the line of their field of studies: finance student wants to go into investment banking or consulting, logistics student wants to do supply chain, computer science student wants to go into video game development. First question I ask them is this: “okay, why?” And usually, after about a good 10 minutes of discussion and the usual "I mean I’ve studied it so might as well use it" or "I'm passionate about it" chitchat, the real motivation finally comes to fore: "my friends have internships. My peers are doing this. I don’t want to be lagging behind them. I have a plan and it’s not going to plan." Comparison basically, to one’s peers or even to one’s future self – in both cases, individuals they barely know anything about. And this is about the moment where I "lose my shit."

I ask them: “So let me ask you this, who is going to live your life? In 10 years’ time, who will benefit or suffer from the consequences of your decisions today?” The answer is fairly obvious, so we dig deeper: “what do you truly want?” And like all overachieving kids that they are – because let’s face it, too few of the children who are in elementary school today will actually end up in university or beyond – they babble things to find a response when it’s okay to say “I don’t know.” Because now we can start asking questions to eventually find answers, which we may not find tomorrow, or in a month, or in 5 years. But we will find them. (On a side note, someone please explain to me how the fuck a 20-year old kid is supposed to know what he/she wants to do for the next 40 to 50 years when he’s been essentially conscious for 15, and actually thinking about the future for maybe 3 to 5 years at best.)

It’s okay to fail because that’s how you learn – the person who has never failed in life has never learned anything.

It’s okay to not have a plan because who knows what the future may hold?

But that does not mean we should simply do nothing.

Like Einstein (apparently) once said: “Life is like riding a bicycle. To keep your balance, you must keep moving.” So I tell them this: keep moving.

All roads will lead to Rome. Whatever your Rome may be.

There’s no perfect plan to get where we want to be, and hell, we may not even know where we want to end up.

And who says there can only be one Rome?

Now I may sound patronizing and like this know-it-all, but truth is, I’ve been that finance kid, that engineering kid, that kid who did two bachelors not because he was particularly interested in the fields of studies, but because he was scared of the future. I didn’t become an executive at two student associations and whatever extra-curricular just because I wanted to do it (which I did), but because I wanted to make sure my C.V. was ironclad by the time I applied to jobs. So with a Civil Engineer B.Eng. and a Finance + Marketing B.B.A., and as stacked a C.V. as I could get make it, I ended up starting to “really” work at 26 as a printer salesman, going door to door to sell printers to companies in downtown Montreal. Glamourous.

But I wouldn’t change that for anything in the world as I learned so much through such experiences, and made incredible friendships and connections, that still serve me today.

Point is, does it truly matter where we go or what plan we have? Meh, probably not as much as we think we do. But it certainly does not warrant the pressure that we put ourselves under!

The only thing that truly matters in the end is that we keep moving forward.

All roads will lead to Rome. Whatever your Rome may be.

And coming back to perfection, I guess I might as well give you my two cents since you’ve made it this far. In my opinion, as human beings, being perfect is not only impossible, it's depressing. Once you reach perfection, there is nothing left, there is no longer any room for improvement, imagination, or creativity. Striving for perfection is a noble and beautiful pursuit, and one that we should all take, but actually attaining perfection means nothing more than despair. (This is actually paraphrased from a character in Tite Kubo’s manga Bleach – for those who remember my previous article, we can find ideas and inspiration from absolutely anywhere)

So let us strive for perfection and give it our all. But also, please, understand that your best can be good enough, and only you can be the judge of that, nobody else, and that, can be considered a form of perfection. When we can shut out the world, and just compare ourselves to who we were yesterday, or at worst selectively compare ourselves to others (when negotiating for a raise or a promotion for example), I think we'll have reached a good spot.

Dedicated to my mentors, my inspirations, my “Brad Gilberts”: Cess, Q, Vince L., C, Cap, Chuck, Colz, the Bros, Mom and Dad, and last but not least, my brother Eddie and sister Jennie.

I’ll do my best to transmit to the next generation all the precious lessons that you have taught me over the years.

P.S. If you’ve made it this far, thank you for taking the time to read this. This, in reality, was a letter to myself, to my stubborn, workaholic, over detail-oriented, self. It was to remind myself that it’s okay to just be good enough, to not be a world-beater. It may be frustrating because probably like you, I strive to be the best at whatever I do, but sometimes, we have to take the foot off the pedal for a while to allow the engine to cool down before it burns out - as it has. Hopefully you’ve enjoyed it, and if you see some parallels and it has brought just one ray of sunshine in your day, then fantastic, that’s all I could ask for.