“If I can’t make it perfect, is it okay if I try to make it better?”

When a project doesn’t come out precisely the way we hoped, when customer service isn’t 100%, when the reality doesn’t match the dream, then what?

One option is to embrace your failure. To have your tantrum, to become bereft, to wallow in how unfair the world is. No sense messing up a perfect moment of imperfection.

The other option is to put some effort into making an imperfect situation a little less imperfect. Perhaps, with some distance, it might even be a lot less imperfect, or even better than you were hoping for in the first place.

Imperfect is a chance for contribution, connection and improvisation. It’s a chance to see the humanity behind the moment you were spending so much energy creating.

The alternative to perfect might be better.

*Originally published on sethsblog.

Seth Godin has written eighteen books that have been translated into more than thirty languages. Every one has been a bestseller. He writes about the post-industrial revolution, the way ideas spread, marketing, quitting, leadership, and, most of all, changing everything.

Image courtesy of Annie Spratt.