To achieve your goals, it’s vitally important that you protect your confidence. One way to do that is to forget about the whole concept of perfection. It doesn’t exist.
You see, perfection is an illusion, and if your objective is to achieve perfection in any aspect of your program, you may end up with a sense of deficiency and uncertainty, which is not what you want.
If you don’t strongly believe in what you’re doing—if you cannot overcome feelings of self-doubt—it doesn’t matter how much accurate information about training and nutrition you have. Without confidence, you won’t be able to stay on course.
Think of the athlete who’s having a great game until he makes a mistake. He throws an interception that is returned by the opposing team for a touchdown; he misses a critical free throw; he strikes out in a key situation. In a matter of seconds, he can plummet from extreme confidence to uncertainty and ineffectiveness.
If he doesn’t know how to get his confidence back, he’ll fall into a slump. He’ll lose his energy. He’ll stop playing to win, and instead, he will begin playing "not to lose."
Athletes aren’t the only ones who need to maintain a strong sense of confidence in order to excel. Actors, artists, businessmen—all of us—we’re at our best only when we’re operating from a confident Power Mindset. Take virtually all successful people, extract their sense of certainty, and you’ll strip them of everything else that has put them where they are—their talent, their drive, their energy, their judgment, their insight.
On the other hand, if you take people who are struggling—who are uncertain of themselves—and give them a healthy dose of confidence, their lives will turn inside out for the better, and fast. And that’s what happens when you focus on progress. Even when you don’t get everything "just right," you’ll still feel strong. You’ll still maintain your confidence and momentum.
