PERFECTION
Perfection; great word, only, what is it? Perfection by itself is being perfect. Seems simple, but I look at being perfect, as being the best you can be. In my opinion, how can you be better, than being the best that you can be, or provide?
PERFECTION: n. The highest or most nearly perfect degree of a quality or trait.
For all those times when I was an actor. all I did was audition. That’s what that business was about, audition, audition, and more auditioning. At some point, you actually started to enjoy it. I remember so many times when I did my “best”, meaning I did exactly what I wanted to do, felt great afterward, felt at ease, and then I didn’t get the job. So many things dictate whether you “get the job”, way beyond your control. I did my best, I gave them my version of perfection, and didn’t get the job. So how did that affect me? What did it mean to me about the “business”? That’s the easy part, you just move on. When a time comes, and a person did what they thought was a perfect action, what more can you ask? Then again, did you actually “fail”? I don’t think so. First of all, you learned something, and really, I’m speaking to anyone who seeks perfection. You did your best, period! What an experience; and who’s to say that the benefits stop there, at that ONE effort for perfection? The results of future events could affect you in such a different manner than you could of ever thought, coming from our actions of that one event. I certainly experienced that.
When I was in the hospital, my intentions of recovering were much different from what I had done for myself in the past. I now had to work on ME, my rehab. I had no choice, I just had to “move on”. Sometimes that sounds simple, and sometimes it is, and sometimes it just certainly isn’t! You just have to move on. You have to think of yourself, and so many of your past accomplishments, and really let them sink in. Then, you look at how perfect your preparation was for those accomplishments, and repeat that effort; meaning that the job that you didn’t get that one time, actually gave you a push on how to move on, to just take another step. When I was doing my rehab, there were certainly a lot of days that didn’t come out as I had hoped, but I did my BEST, and I wouldn’t have done it any other way, so I still had to count that day as MY day, because I did my best. That’s the point that I’m putting out there, feel comfort for doing your best, even if the results aren’t what you expected, It makes a huge difference, feeling self confidence when our results aren’t what we were expecting.
I know that I wrote earlier about a student, who was in the class that my surgeon Dr. Isaac Yang taught, and that Dr. Yang wanted me to be a part of that class by telling my story. It was a success, and the student told me a very emotional take on my story, because of what she is going through right now, and how the events of my story, including the “ugly” aspect of what I went through, hit her, and gave her an inspiration to achieve her new life. She is now, moving on. Moving from that class from a few months ago, into last week, I stepped into an elevator at UCLA Ronald Regan hospital, and there was one person in the elevator. The usual, ” how are you today” greeting, and I knew that face, but couldn’t place it. It was a young doctor, and she said she was in the class that I was speaking at, and how it brought to her attention a personal part of her job from my story. So as she’s telling me her take on my story, I’m feeling somewhat good about this girl, now a doctor, about my saying something in the class. I then asked her about how big the class was this past October, and she said, “oh no, it was the class you did last year”! Wow; I had no idea what I said, and of course I would never remember faces at that point, but somehow I did remember her face for some reason. But to think that something I said ONE year ago, (or something that YOU might have said a year ago) would still be with someone this much later in life, still amazes me. I guess that it boils down to whatever I did, I gave it my best, because no matter that I can’t remember what I said, or how everyone else reacted to it, it hit one person, and to me, that’s huge. That’s moving on, from one person to the next.
As the great NFL coach Vince Lombardi said, “If you don’t succeed at Perfection, then you’ve achieved excellence!” Well said; wish I could have told him that, because if you gave your best effort on your path to perfection, and you did your best, then yes, that is excellence. Believe that, do your best, give a lot to others, (a smile is a lot, by the way!), and know that your road to perfection is the right road, because only you know when you have given your best!
Always be at your best, that’s the true you…
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