Coming to terms with the importance of striving for bravery instead of perfection is what forced me to start writing. One thing all humanity shares is the acknowledgment of the certainty in the phrase, “Perfection is an illusion.”

We all understand that perfection cannot be personified. In fact, it bathes in non-existentialism:

It is as unattainable as the promises of someone who has passed away… as unrealistic as composing a 10-page paper in under an hour…And as mythical as a pill that promises a snatched waist in less than a week.

However, we still remain subconsciously attracted to, and even driven by what ends up being its shadow: we buy the diet pills and waist cinchers; and wait until Sunday night to start a paper that is due the following morning, (assigned two weeks prior).

This phenomenon affects our productivity tremendously. With the fear that the perfect outcomes we envision could possibly never prove themselves evident, we choose comfort at the expense of discovering all that there is to our own abilities. We device amazing plans, but quickly deviate at the sense of any awry possibility.

We purge our lives of the glory in the journey, forgetting that the experience itself almost always trumps the end results.

It is imperative to recognize the tremendous rewards in simply participating: if not for us, then for all who are observant of us.

“Teach Girls Bravery, Not Perfection,” a TED talk by Reshma Saujani, an American Lawyer, and politician, is leveraging not just for girls, but everyone. It puts much emphasis on being ok with taking a leap simply in the name of bravery. Ms. Saujani highlights the idea that even if one does not arrive at the most favorable results, they would still have confronted their doubts, and discovered much more strengths along the way.

Making perfection the end goal has the might to render us crippled with fear of attaining the reality of something less than perfect. We would then cowardly choose indolence, and reach the end of our lives only to realize that we never really lived.

The ghost-count of books not written, speeches not made, lives not impacted, continuing to overwhelm our archives of “could-have(s).”

So, Dear hidden gems: In skepticism of whether or not taking a leap is worth the outcome, think “bravery,” instead “perfection,”  The origin of starting this blog alarmed by the possibilities of everything going haywire is my way of jumping on this wagon. I hear it guarantees an odyssey of refinement that “perfection” can never measure up to.

So as if there is no next week, once the door of that airplane has been opened, rest assured that your breath alone guarantees the necessity of your footprint. The urgency in fueling your potentials must start at the end of this post.

So on the count of three, dive into that open sky…

or better yet, do it on two.