Mike’s Doc Blog

Been dark around here for the last few weeks. Getting my proposal ready has proved more difficult than I anticipated and it all stemmed from something being in my way…ME.

I’ve been caught up in making the proposal perfect and that has led me down rat holes on literature searches, formatting reviews, reading, reading, reading. It got to the point where I was so caught up in being perfect in my proposal draft that I couldn’t move forward. The inability to move ahead led me to thinking that I might not be cut out for completing this journey. A dreadful and erroroneous thought.

Oh, I had false starts and hopeful determination for it to be “different this week” but I found myself spring the traps of perfection and distraction by other things that were moving ahead, or just plain time wasters. During these self-desctructive false starts I had a continual message being sent by loved ones and supporters: perfection isn’t possible and you’ll do fine, just get started again ad get something done, leave perfection to the process.

So, to those of you who have been telling me, thank you. The radio in my head is tuned to your station now. Thank you.

It was finally the message sent to me by my mentor, apart from the ball in your court message, you know perfection isn’t possible right? It played to my ego, it played to my knowledge. Of course, I know it can’t be perfect. The funny thing is that this is a message being sent in other areas of my career as well. Sometimes, just getting something done on the implementation is enough to let loose the flood gates and really make a mark on things.

So you say you are stuck. You say you need to start again. I say, I’ve been there and it feels good to get out of your own way. Get something down on paper, get things moving and trust the process of continual revision. Just like this post, not perfect but on paper. I can improve and revise as I move forward.