"I don't tend to try very hard at things, so I never thought I could be a perfectionist," said Dave Bagwell of Nashville, Tennessee. "But I realized I had it backwards - my standards were so ridiculously high that I didn't think there was even any point in trying."
That realization, says Bagwell, was what prompted his decision to start cutting himself some slack. "Not tons and tons of slack," he emphasized. "Just some."
Enough, for instance, to sometimes not show up for work, or to eat ice cream for breakfast - and sometimes continue eating it all day long. "Vegan ice cream. I don't do dairy."
And Bagwell says that his decision to start cutting himself some slack has caused him to realize just how much slack there is to cut. "There's actually an awful lot. I've only just gotten started."
And among the areas in which Bagwell has found it most useful to cut himself slack is with regard to his own assessment of himself. "To be honest, I don't think I ever really was a perfectionist. I was mostly just lazy. But that was what first launched this whole journey, so I couldn't be more grateful. I'd urge anyone to try it."
