This past week I launched my new business. I have been dreaming about this for quite awhile, but more notably, I have obsessed over it for what seems like forever. Part of launching my health coaching business included creating a website. I have had great success over the years with websites...shopping on them, reading books on them, getting home decor advice and gift suggestions from them...but I never thought I would have my own website, let alone have to build one! I started working on the Core Four Health Coaching Website six months ago. I have learned an incredible amount, including that Go Daddy is so much more than a company that has entertaining Super Bowl commercials. I had to come up with a company name, design a logo, register my business with NYS, get insurance, get a domain name, design my brand and the services I would offer, and so much more!I used the word "obsessed" earlier because for the last six months that is what I have done. I have 'burned the midnight oil' while working on creating my business and building my website each and every day since April. Every word, font, color, image and description was a labor of love. I was forced to think about things that never occurred to me like mobile optimization, photo padding, copyright laws, and color schemes. When I made the decision last week to "GO LIVE" with my website, it was not because "every i had been dotted and every t had been crossed". I know that I could have continued to obsess over every word and image on every page of the website. There was a phrase that kept ringing in my ears. It is actually something I say quite often to my sons - "progress not perfection." It was time for me to take my own advice. Sometimes we spend so much time trying to make something perfect that we never take the leap necessary to go forward. Imagine if Steve Jobs had waited for the first iPhone to be "perfect"? Can you imagine if Michaelangelo had said about the ceiling of the Sistine Chapel in Rome "It's still not perfect, I think I am going to paint over it and start again"?
Why are we all so hard on ourselves? We don't expect our families, our politicians or our meteorologists to be perfect, yet we demand nothing less than perfection from ourselves. If we decide, once and for all, to start striving for progress instead of perfection, won't it lead to us getting a lot more accomplished? Would I finally plan the dinner party for my friends even though I haven't had a chance to polish my hardwood floors? Could I start the Green Smoothie Cleanse that I am excited about even though I don't yet have all of the ingredients in the house? Would I get more exercise each week if I was okay with a 15-minute routine on busy days instead of the usual 45 minutes? The answer to all those questions is YES.
Have you heard the new Darius Rucker song "When Was the Last Time You Did Something For the First Time?" Until last week, I would not have been able to come up with an answer to that question. We get stuck in the same old routines and habits. We eat the same familiar foods, wear the same comfortable outfits, routinely go to the same stores and restaurants and do the same treadmill workout day after day. Last week I published a website and launched a business. It was the FIRST TIME for me for both of those things. I am so grateful that my inner voice nudged me out of the holding tank I was stuck in.
I know my launch wasn't perfect. I do not yet have the professional photos I wanted for my home page, there is a cringe-worthy grammatical error in the first paragraph of my first newsletter and I only have a handful of people on my mailing list. Could I have waited for everything to be perfect before I went live and launched? Yes, of course. How long do you think it would have taken for me to get to the point where I deemed everything PERFECT?
I have 4 clients signed up for my Health Coaching services. That is 4 more than I had last week and 4 more than I would have had if I had waited for perfection. It is time for us to each take a leap forward. While that leap may not be a perfect one, it will progress you forward. Take the leap! When was the last time you did something for the first time? I hope your answer to that question is: NOW!