Mary Pryor

Mary J. Pryor, founding partner of The Pryor Group Inc., is a speaker, trainer, and executive coach, Mary specializes in helping people find time for the important things in life and work. Concentrating on time and life management issues, Mary gets her point across with humor and a human touch.

Contact Soar with Eagles for more information on Mary at 479.903.0208 or carrie@soarhigher.com

It doesn’t have to be perfect.
It doesn’t have to be good.
It just has to be.

Where and when did some of us get the idea that we can move ahead only when everything is in place? As Jim Stovall (professional speaker and President/Co-Founder of the Narrative Television Network) would tell you, all the lights do not have to be green.

You’d never stay parked anywhere in your car until you could see green lights in all directions. My guess is that you climb into your car, start it, take it out of park, (and here’s the important part) you’d start moving forward!

You know forward. According to Webster’s Dictionary, it means moving toward a point in front, onward, advancing. When you’re parked, waiting for a better day, time, solution, idea — you put all your resources on hold. You tie up your feelings and resources because you’re holding tight to, and not acting on, a solution that is “not good enough yet.”

If you’re prone to this red-light thinking, the next time you’re stopped at a mental red light, wondering, “Is this good enough?” ask yourself instead:

Is this a viable solution?
Is it something that would work?

See the difference? The key is to accept your pretty-good solution that will work for now. Focus on what’s right, not on what’s lacking.

Here is a tremendously powerful way to make fear and indecision disappear:

Any solution will access your resources and move you ahead
even if it’s only a pretty good one.

It’s only by accepting a solution that your resources and emotions are freed up to do something! It’s only by using your resources that you’ll move closer to being balanced.

Try to remember that it doesn’t have to be perfect or even good. It only has to be.

The ideas you implement are the only ones that will move you ahead while others wait for all the green lights and all the perfect solutions.

There’s a difference between perfectionism and procrastination. There are also some of the same results for either practice. Completion of a project, reaching a goal, moving ahead on a new sales initiative — these things don’t happen if they’re postponed or ‘postponed until perfected.’

Do you know someone who is a born tinkerer — a person who can become totally involved with one question, one piece of machinery, one concept or challenge?

A tinkerer keeps messing with things, and never feels “I’ve got to get this right the first time!” Actually, most tinkerers don’t even think about ‘right’ or ‘perfect.’ And no one ever told you and me that the main rule to live by is get it right or die. Or even worse, get it right the first time or die!

Children don’t live by that rule. We don’t tell them there’s only one chance to learn to tie your shoes, ride a bike, or master reading and writing. Missteps and mistakes happen in every learning process. When you build in fear of failure, you lock up your resources one more time.

Somehow the tinkerers of the world never got the “Get It Right or Die” message. They got the “Find What Works” message instead. Think about it. Do you need to tinker more, to stop waiting for the perfect answer, to begin working with what’s in front of you, right now, even if it is only ‘pretty good.’

If a cat spoke, it would say things like, “Hey, I don’t see the problem here.”
                                                                                     – Roy Blount Jr.