Team Perfection or Team Relentless?

I was with a friend the other day who is a former Division I college athlete. Today she coaches people, not just on the sports field, court, or track, but also in the boardroom. Her work focuses on mindset.

She was wearing a shirt that said “Relentless.”

I looked at it and said, “I love that shirt. I want to be relentless!”

She smiled and said that when she teaches people about mindset, she often starts by asking them a question:

“Are you team perfection or team relentless?”

Her point?

Relentless wins.

At first that might sound a little counterintuitive. After all, we’ve all heard the saying practice makes perfect. Isn’t perfection what we’re aiming for? But when you really stop and think about that phrase, the practice part matters much more than the perfect part.

My friend Ann’s two camps—perfection and relentless—capture something important. If you had to pick one side of the coin, relentless is the one that actually moves you forward. It’s the mindset that carries you, sometimes slowly, toward your goals.

Perfection, on the other hand, is a slippery target. What does it even mean? The standards keep shifting. And if we get too tied up in doing things perfectly, some unfortunate byproducts arise, like second-guessing, worrying, hesitating. Instead of learning and growing, we become cautious. Sometimes even paralyzed.

Relentless people don’t worry as much about that. They simply keep going. They show up again tomorrow. They take the good with the bad, assess, learn, and move on. They stack another day of effort on top of the last one.They keep lacing up their shoes and keep moving.

And that steady, persistent effort is where the real progress happens.

You may never reach “perfection,” whatever that means. But in the process of striving, practicing, and improving, you’ll accomplish things you never imagined. Come to think of it, that might explain why Ann named her company Inner Gain (https://innergain.co/).

Join me on team Relentless.