Working hard and striving for perfection seems to have been overtaken by ’having fun.’ In fact, we are called A weird psychotic overachiever if we are motivated to try and be flawless with everything we do. All because we view failing as the opportunity to improve. In fact, I agree with John Bowers who said, “Stop fearing failure and stop living in a world filled with consequences of good enough.”
We are so afraid of being tagged an overachiever in this kumbaya good enough world that we identify failure as not achieving the result versus mentally understanding what caused the failure in the first place; e.g., We lost this opportunity because our marketing staff never really briefed us on the prospect.
This was evident in the 2018 Baseball College World Series where everyone blamed a missed pop-up as the reason Arkansas lost the College World Series. The headlines read, “Missed Foul Ball Cost Arkansas the World Series.” Every newscast played the clip repeatedly, quickly to point out it Arkansas would have won the World Series if one of the three baseball players would have caught it. Which is true, had they caught it! Unfortunately, they didn’t, which gave Oregon State’s batter a second chance. A chance where he singled in the tying run, that was followed by another player who hit a two-run homer. Again, according to the reporters and the hall talk, costing Arkansas the game and the 2018 College World Series.
No, it didn’t.
I agree one of the three players should have caught the foul ball, but what we fail to show, what we fail to discuss, is he still had two strikes why didn’t Arkansas get him out, and with what happened, they still were the home team with last at bats. Okay I agree scoring two runs to tie, three to win in the bottom half of the last inning with only three outs is a lot to ask…wait a minute, Oregon State not only did that with two outs, but the batter had two strikes?
For whatever reason Arkansas failed to get the third out and Oregon State won, tying the series and giving them a chance in a third winner-take-all game. A game Oregon State won and became the 2018 Baseball College World Series Champion. No matter how you play it, missing the foul ball did not cost Arkansas the game, nor did it cost Arkansas the 2018 College World Series. It was either Oregon State’s perfection or Arkansas’ lack of perfection.
Going forward the question we need to ask ourselves, “Are we aiming for perfection at the risk of becoming an overachiever, or are we contented with good enough?” Michelangelo said, “The greatest danger for most of us is not that our aim is too high, and we miss it, but that it is too low, and we reach it.”
https://youtu.be/8nazUHZaOgc
Until next Blog, be a Perfectionist!
Al McCormick
