Trying More Often Than Not

Jim Carey’s hilarious character Lloyd Christmas had just driven his on-screen friend Harry Dunne halfway across the USA in the wrong direction in the classic comedy Dumb & Dumber. Harry (Jeff Daniels) at this point starts walking along a barren highway suggesting he is heading home. It dawns on Lloyd that he had indeed made a monumental error and yells “Well pardon me Mr Perfect! I guess I forgot that you never ever make a mistake!” His voice quavering at the end of his outburst in true Jim Carey satire. The scene is compounded with the underlying tone of the 1993 Crash Test Dummies hit song Mmm Mmm Mmm Mmm, which suitably talks about people’s imperfections.

Perfectionism is an illness and I’ve got it. Self-diagnosed, unwittingly suffering at the hands of this crippling ailment. It was only recently I learned of the aphorism “Perfect is the enemy of the good” through a mentor and mind coach. When trying to execute all or some things in your life to 100% or the highest degree you can leave yourself vulnerable and exposed to the crushing impact of falling short. That same coach helped me pivot in a single moment with a more relaxed but measured approach of “More often than not”. At the time of the sage advice, I was running personal systems, matrixes, rules, and schedules. An internal hierarchy hovered over my life.

Caroline Buchanan an Australian BMX and Mountain Bike champion is quoted as saying “I like pressure. Diamonds are made under pressure, and I definitely enjoy it”. Pressure and perfect preparation no doubt remain a prerequisite for elite sport, but it can also be a weapon of self-destruction. For every global sports star who we see lift aloft the trophy there are several, possibly thousands, who have succumbed to the weight of expectation. I think somewhere in the middle is where we are best served. To achieve our goals more often than not. To thrive under pressure more often than not. To follow your daily ritual that serves you best more often than not.

I know peers in the hospitality industry who loathe a bad review on social media platforms. They fear it will upset the algorithm of the 5-star testimonials that preceded it. I was buoyed by one experts advice who suggested it is just as important for potential customers to see negative feedback. Having an absolute 5-star product or service immediately exposes you to the next cynic who will find fault in whatever they can to buck the trend. You can’t please all the people all the time. True that and you know what? You can’t please yourself all the time either.

I have started many times to string 66 days together of waking at 5am and sticking a personal ritual that helps me win the day (66 being the habit-forming protocol). Many times, I have come unstuck. In fact, I am not sure I have even managed 7 in a row. I whine to friends that my world is off its axis when I am not up early! I seek blame and create false cause and affect theories when the day hasn’t gone according to plan. When you spread these obsessive type of dot points throughout your world it compounds pressure that doesn’t produce a diamond but rather a depression.

The more often than not approach gives you freedom. You can under promise and over deliver, not the other way around. More often than not is the safety net under the trapeze. It rescues us when we don’t execute the trick, the risk, the art. Don’t disband your daily ritual if you can avoid it. Just don’t beat yourself up if you do. Most scribes will tell us missing a day is fine, just don’t let it become 2 in a row. I recall Australian long distance runner Steve Moneghetti mention he had never missed a daily run. The obsession best exemplified when after a long international flight into Melbourne and with only an hour of that actual day left, he ran around the airport carpark before driving home.

Greg McKeown in his book Effortless gives us a fantastic and easy alternative to making steady progress on our priorities. That is to introduce lower and upper bounds. It fits well with the more often than not theory. It speaks to keeping the momentum in the positive. Moving forward, not back. The bounds give us a daily range to work within so there becomes a bare minimum to achieve (lower bound) and a maximum (upper bound) throughout the chaos of life’s interferences.

As an example, you may want to improve being a more engaged parent with your 11-year-old. A lower bound may be as simple as playing a simple game for 5 minutes. The upper a scheduled trip or an activity for an hour or so. Fitness might see you perform 10 push ups as a minimum and 100 as a maximum. Reading might be a minimum of 5 pages per day and a maximum of 20 (which incidentally would see you read 25 books a year!). The upper bound is just as important as the lower. Whilst achieving the bare minimum will compound achievement overtime, the maximum stops us from “overcooking the goose”.

I use a meditation app called Insight Timer. My ego is teased at the end of each session as it suggests how many consecutive days, I’ve spent transcending under the guidance of my main man Davidji. The longer the sequence the more determined I become to keep the streak. I am also realistic and understand that for whatever reason I may miss a session and have done. Since using the app, I have amassed 7,300 minutes of meditation. Whilst it equates to only seconds per day since I started some years ago, it equates to hours upon hours spent improving my mind. It is a part of my life that I enjoy, more often than not.

As Marvin Lee Aday said “Don’t be sad…..because 2 out of 3 ain’t bad”.

Yep……Meatloaf.