TL:DR : How perfection paralysis and Outcome dependence contaminate your goals, give you oneitis for life, compromise your integrity, and stop you from living authentically, fully and abundantly.

Perfection paralysis is a classic Nice Guy mindset. Out of fear of making a mistake, many people never take the first step, fail to live up to their potential and die with regret not because they failed, but because their capabilities never found full expression and their authentic self never truly lived.

Our man Dr Glover took 6 years to write the book NMMNG because he wanted it to be absolutely perfect and he got distracted by outcome dependence (make it to best seller's top, appear on Oprah, etc.). This meant he lost sight of the real goal (the only authentic goal in fact) and lost his integrity chasing outcomes.

Once he dropped the unrealistic expectations of absolute perfection, dropped the other goals that weren't actually goals, but outcomes, he came back to his original goal of writing enough to help men out, he finished writing the book.

This is what happens when perfection and fame became the goals instead of the book.

Anything that you think looks perfect was actually a journey of improvement, open to learning from mistakes, with very high, but realistic and attainable standards. Then they pushed beyond that one step, then one more step and then more. That is how it worked.

Everything that people thought was perfect years back has since then been improved so much so, that you look back and wonder how that 1995 computer with 8 MB of RAM and 100 MHZ was once considered state of art. This is true for everything in existence.

I had this great fear too that stopped me from pursuing a musical hobby even though I had the talent for it. Over time I had to watch others with half or even a quarter of my potential performing up there and taking the honors. I wanted everything to be perfect like my idols. What I failed to realize is that even Usain Bolt had to start from crawling once.

Once I let go of my expectation of perfection and came back to the first step and then the next step, over time I actually ended up going past the bar I thought was perfect and unattainable to me, but without the toxic crippling lack of confidence. I discovered many things I never knew existed!

I realized that no matter how great you think you are - ignorance is always the biggest part of you. And that's a good thing. By accepting my ignorance without shame, I used it to get other people to talk a lot about their work and life (and people just love to talk about themselves) and learnt a lot more. My old self would have felt ashamed and scared feeling that I would be judged or shamed.

My actual problem I realized later, was that I wasn't willing to work with the present as an opportunity and I spent too much time comparing the so called perfect future with an imperfect present. I idealized the bar and toxic shamed my present self for my past failures. Once I let it go, accepted where I was honestly and just walked from where I was, soon things started happening that were better than what I had imagined. When I accepted my flaws honestly, I also figured out ways to work and improve on them, found solutions, and turned my weaknesses into strengths. I even ended up knowing and discovering things that many high level musicians didn't. This gave me confidence and I stopped feeling shame and fear over those limitations. They may have been genuine problems, but the solutions also came through them.

But the surprise was when I had people coming to me and asking me how did I do all that and then telling me they couldn't imagine taking their hobbies to my level etc etc.

That was never my goal, I didn't even think of it as a possibility. My goal had become pure - just take the next step to pursue my interests. Once I dropped oneitis for an outcome, many more outcomes happened beyond my limited ideas. Appreciation was just a consequence and ultimately the inner fulfilment of authentically pursuing my goals, surrendering to life and letting it guide me was greater than praise. This also allowed me to become a very good judge of criticism without the toxic shame of the past.

All solutions to all problems arise naturally through the present moment, if we are willing to let go of our oneitis for the perfect life we imagine.

Along the way I realized there is no need to become exactly like someone else in all ways possible nor is it healthy or attainable. What is attainable is that you find full expression to your life and even that can far surpass your original concepts of perfection. That's when you realize your old ideas of perfection were in fact a huge limitation and reality was bigger than what your mind could imagine.

Now I need to apply that everywhere else too. What I thought was perfection was actually fear talking. When I let it go, what I wanted did come to me eventually and then some, and then a lot more.

The worst thing you can ever do is to think you're absolutely perfect or absolutely incapable of what you think is perfection. Both these attitudes are unreal and as a result you fail to acknowledge your limitations ans see your limitations as an opportunity to grow.

The master has failed more times than the student even tried, or dreamt.

Jascha Heifetz was considered to be the most perfect violinist of his time - a violin machine. But in his own words, perfection did not exist, only standards. He claimed he made as many mistakes as anyone else, but fixed them in time before they could be heard and do the damage. If you are the type who likes that music, you will observe enough to realize he was inhumanly good, but no one was "perfect".

There are ultramarathon runners who swear that if they tried to think about the finish line 100 miles away, they'd lose hope and think of quitting. But they split it up into the next tree, the next road sign, the next step, just this step and they do it. Those who mastered the mindset won those brutal races. If they still failed, something was indeed wrong and it would have been better to stay alive for another day.

This happens naturally if you tried pushing your limits. Because this present moment is the only moment where there is no stress. This moment is the only one the burden of time or your fantasy of perfection do not exist. This moment is the only place where you learn from the past and create your future. Toxic shame exists in the past. Outcomes exist in the future. But life and goals are now.

The secret to all such phenomenal achievers is out in the open. They aren't absolutely perfect and never will be, but they never stop learning, never stop improving, one step at a time.

This then brings us to outcome independence. Outcome dependence is the other side of the perfection coin, at the other end of the spectrum. So outcome independence needs to be addressed hand in hand with perfection paralysis.

Goals and outcomes are not the same, even if they appear to be. Too many people get them wrong and think an outcome to be a goal. A goal becomes contaminated by outcome dependence when it is used only indirectly to attain something else - then it is not your real goal and it loses integrity.

Then people try to cut corners, do things in secret, give up, get stressed out, ignore truth and compromise authenticity for the outcome. E.g. Every time top management screws up something, and disaster ensues, you can be sure that goals and truth has been compromised for a particular outcome. This may work out in the immediate moment, but a little later the consequences will have to be paid. The Boeing 737 max case is just one example. Or Dieselgate. Top management fails precisely because they can't differentiate between goals and outcomes. When profit becomes the goal at the cost of the actual objective, you lose, heavily.

Outcome independence makes your goal pure, allows you to put in all your energy in an authentic manner and opens up the possibility for abundance beyond your limited range of vision. It also allows you to stomach more easily the wins and losses. Great sportsmen for example know how to put losses aside quickly and let it go. This also helps them play for much longer without burning out unlike others. At the top mentality is everything, not perfect infallible techniques, though the performance standards are unreal in absolute terms.

You can only act on a goal, never an outcome. An outcome is a consequence that happens after the end and it is not something you really control. Goals are the beginning. They start in this moment and take you to the finish line. What happens after you get there is not a goal, but an outcome. If you chase outcomes, prepare for disappointment. Counter-intuitively the more you focus on the goal, the more it reflects in the outcomes.

You may find your original goal takes you elsewhere down the road of life than what you imagined. Some goals may turn out in failure. But later on you realize that what unfolded was actually better than what your oneitis vision of life wanted. Where one door closes, another opens. You just haven't seen it yet because you are fixated in oneitis for life. Moments of failure are ground for the greatest inspiration and new goals, if only you let go of the one perfect life you imagine.

I don't think Dr. Glover could even imagine he could make such an impact on so many people. His success in fact arose from his biggest failures in his life. But that's what being authentic does. It opens up life and many more possibilities beyond the limited imagination. When his goal was pure and inspired, it achieved more than the desired outcome.

Look at all the men who had success with women and wrote the Bible on it. All of them started out as hopeless cases, they figured out their mistakes and took action one step at a time. They kept at it and learnt from their failures. Each and every one of them at one point has been absolutely shocked by the kind of success they had down the road.

To separate a goal from an outcome is a process that needs some experience to figure out. But I will draw upon some cases. For e.g. everyone comes here wondering what they can do to make that girl love them. But eventually they realize the attraction is an outcome of a bigger goal - to be an attractive man. To write a book for men from one's failures and successes is a goal. If it becomes an all time best seller, that's a consequence. You cannot directly aim for such a consequence - your book will lose it's integrity to the market and if shit sells, that's what you'll end up writing.

You can do research on a topic that might revolutionize a field, but you can't really do research for the sole sake of a Nobel. Federer or Nadal wanted to be World #1 and play tennis, but I don't think they imagined in their wildest dreams they would end up where they are now with over $100m in prize money alone. That $100 m wasn't a goal. It was a consequence of wanting to win. And that desire is still strong.

There's JK Rowling. She just wanted to write a book on a very good idea that just so popped up from inspiration. I don't think her goal was to make a billion dollars and given her dirt poor circumstances at the time, I think she couldn't have seen beyond getting a roof over her head.

Another example -- Gordon Murray wanted to build the ultimate road car, so he built the F1 the way he wanted it (he's building an ever better one now). It is still the fastest naturally aspirated car ever (the faster ones are turbo), but the performance was the result of uncompromising engineering, not chasing numbers alone. Had they built a car exclusively to get a Certificate from Guinness I have no doubt it would have been compromised on every other parameter and wouldn't be selling for over $10 m now or have such a god like status in the industry.

One guy called Rich Roll just decided he wanted to get fit to avoid being dead at his daughter's wedding in the future. That led into one thing, then another, then something else entirely. No one had the slightest idea what was in store.

Mike Matthews wanted to find out why he wasn't making gains in the gym. I don't think he started out dreaming of doing 2 Ph.Ds and founding his own business, a website, writing books and starting a supplement side business too, making a lot of money and getting a lot of compliments from others. That was not the original goal. That however came out of that original goal, which is still at the core of it - lift and diet properly.

And on it goes. All these examples show you which was the actual goal and which was the outcome. The goal always brings you back in your frame and your responsibility and ownership. Outcomes are in the future, goals are now.

As it turns out, aiming for a "perfect" consequence almost always ends in failure or a compromise that eventually sucks your soul joyless. It makes you needy and a victim of external factors. It stresses you out and makes you suffer severe anxiety, impairs your performance (which is actually the key that betters the results), and takes you away from this moment where you can actually make a difference. And in more extreme cases, you can get so obsessed by the golden eggs that you kill the goose that lays them (yeah, remember that story?). Consequences are the fruit of the tree, but the goal is to water the root. One cannot focus on the flowers and fruits so much that one neglects the root. You have better prospects of getting more golden eggs if you take care of the goose, but if you kill the goose for the eggs, you will have exactly zero eggs.

No great achiever or discoverer or inventor ever truly managed to fathom the extent of the outcome of what they did down the road - they had goals, they had the inspiration, but the outcomes went far beyond their understanding at the time they pursued those goals. People thought quantum mechanics was crazy. When the transistor was developed, it was claimed to be a useless gimmick. Well looking at electronics today.... Things like this make you realize outcome independence is an actual reality and not just a state of mind.

So none of us will truly know what perfection is, because the abundance of life far exceeds our tiny oneitis of life in our minds. That's why we need to put outcomes aside once we realize our goals are genuine and just come to this moment and take that first step and the next step. All our ideas of outcomes and perfection are limited, and that is their fatal imperfection.

But do note, while perfection doesn't exist, standards do exist. Your standards should not be of low value - that will compromise your integrity and prevent your capabilities from finding full expression. But reaching high standards is a journey, and that's important to remember.

As to the purity of your goals, pure goals arise naturally through necessity, survival pressure, experience, truth, enquiry, love, inspiration, and even (and especially) failure. I wrote this post in a rush of inspiration as a sudden clarity made me see this more clearly. But your mind wastes most of its potential in dysfunctional past patterns of thought and behavior or fear of the future and fear of imperfection and it will try to stick with the known Devil than the unknown God.

This is what some cultures called as 'karma yoga' and it took me many years to understand what outcome independence really means. It sets you free and allows abundance to flow. In fact, there is something called the "zone" or "flow state", and you see it often in sports. When you're in a zone, you are absolutely outcome independent. You don't think or judge anything, you just flow. That is actually when you are at your very best. Thinking or judging or outcome anxiety will break this state. Your intention is absolutely pure at these moments.

Now you may make a list of what you claim are your goals, but your real goals and their patterns are buried deep in your subconscious mind. You can only know what your subconscious mind truly desires by looking at your actual behavior, meditating and introspecting. Your actions will always be congruent with your real goals deep inside your mind no matter what stories you tell yourself. And those real goals buried within you are what create the actual reality of your life. Your innermost thought at the point of origin is always the one that becomes real. This is why fear and insecurity can be such self fulfilling prophecies. And also why inner confidence works the same way.

So if you need your goals to be genuine, they must go deep within where they are powerful enough to wipe out old patterns that hold you back. Then you can truly pursue them. Along the journey, life itself will turn into your best guide (it's not always gentle, often it's a tough teacher) and show you the way forward.