Live a grade A life by getting B's
To live a grade A life, I need to be okay with getting B's.
Let me explain.
I am someone who has been taught to get A grades in school. This pursuit in school transpired into getting A grades in career, getting A grades in friendship, getting A grades in almost everything I do. The need for perfection has prevented me from doing things that will likely result in a B or C grade, and god forbid – a D, E or F grade. When I get a B or a C, I feel bad about myself. If I think I’m going to get anything lower than a C, I don’t even try.
Do you feel the same?
Today, I had the idea to finally email all of my friends to let them know about giveglow, and invite them to a workshop I am running. As I wrote this email, I realized that my friends would visit my giveglow website, and I am not happy with the content of my website. Within a few minutes, I started thinking about postponing my email and the workshops for a month so that I can fix my website.
Luckily, I caught my habitual need to be perfect, and asked myself, “Is it better to take action and get a B or a C, or delay action again until I can get an A?”
The answer is, of course, be biased towards action. It doesn’t have to be perfect. The earlier I take action, the earlier I learn, the earlier I get better at what really matters.
Bias towards action can be applied to so many aspects of my life. It’s better to show up late for gym class than not going to the gym at all. It’s better to wear a lame Halloween costume than not show up to the Halloween party.
It’s better to write something completely uninspiring than not write at all.
With this philosophy, I created a writing challenge for myself to write 100 words every day for 100 days. It doesn’t matter what I write. The goal is simply to write.
The more I write, the easier it gets. And that applies to everything in life.
To live a grade A life, aim for getting B, C, D, E, or F grades.
Note: In researching and editing this blog post, I found out there is no such thing as an E grade.