I was not trying to advocate Perfectionism

Hi!

Thanks for your message. One problem I had in my post was that it seemed like I was advocating perfectionism. As noted in "Feeling Good" (a highly recommended self-help Psychology book about Cognitive-Behavioural Psychology), Perfectionism is a bad tendency and can easily lead to many depressions. From what I know of myself, I'm not a perfectionist and don't ever wish to advocate it. For example, in the Technion, I had a policy of never trying to improve my grade for a class as long as it was a passing grade. I even got some 50-something grades and still kept them. The reason was that I wasn't a perfectionist and that I was trying to limit the amount of extra frustration and extra work I'll have to endure. I graduated, and while it cost me a lot of blood, perfectionism would have made it much worse.

Feeling Good also discusses dealing with guilt, and that you shouldn't feel bad about your failures. What I meant in my entry is that we should try to keep some natural, but bad tendencies at bay. One should not worry too much about having erred, but you should strive not to err too much.

Naturally, you need to keep your ideals in context. They are meant to help you lead a better life, not make you miserable.

So I think that when striving for excellence, one should not feel too bad if he or she errs.