Growth Mindset Tip #37: Progress not Perfection for More Resilience

Can doing something less than perfect actually be the better choice?

That's the question behind this week's tip, number 37 in the 25 Lessons in 25 Years series. It starts with a line from Anne-Marie Bonneau, "The Zero-Waste Chef," who said back in 2019, "We don't need a handful of people doing zero waste perfectly. We need millions of people doing it imperfectly."

Michael takes that idea and runs it through a memory from 1997, when he and his wife stood in line at the Louvre to see the Mona Lisa for the first time -- supposedly the world's most perfect painting.

Watching total strangers react to it in wildly different ways became proof that perfection is entirely in the eye of the beholder. From there, Michael connects the dots to his own healing journey, a Mark Twain line about continuous improvement beating delayed perfection, and why showing up "perfectly imperfect," day after day, moves you forward.

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