A Wren Says

In order to avoid getting stuck in rush hour traffic, I left hours ahead of when I needed to be at work. I set up with my laptop inside a Starbucks just minutes away. Thirty minutes before I needed to arrive, I packed up my things to head to my car, only to discover it completely blocked in by a delivery truck. My car, and my car alone, was the only one in the parking lot with this unfortunate fate. An unloading session I was told would only take 8 minutes stretched out, making be 8 minutes late. I had put in so much effort to avoid this. I did everything in my power to make it on time, only to be foiled by a delivery man.

Maybe I didn’t try hard enough. Maybe I should have forced the truck to move. Maybe I should have tried to inch my inch turn my car about to squeak out of the space. Or maybe, just maybe, I did everything I could and yet it still didn’t work out.

Have you ever been in such a situation? Have you ever felt that you gave your best, most perfect effort only to not get the result you wanted? Clearly, I have.

This year, I have been on a mission to make more mistakes. My belief is that freeing myself to mess up will get me to try more often to take the opportunities in front of me. This experience tells me that sometimes you will still fail if you are perfect. You can put in all of the extra time and energy that delights your perfectionistic tendencies, and it still won’t be enough. So, what do you really have to lose?

If rejection and failure are always possible, why not give it go no matter how messy it looks? If a pristinely orchestrated plan can fail due to bad luck, could fortune not also reward your timid and imperfect work? Perfect execution doesn’t always lead to perfect results. Sometimes, a haphazard effort delivered at just the right time gets you more than you would have ever dreamed of.