Years ago, I took a short standup comedy course in Manhattan. It ran for about three weeks, meeting twice a week. We wrote material, then performed it for the class in an old classroom.

At the end, there was a kind of final exam: five minutes on stage at Caroline’s on Broadway, the same club where Jerry Seinfeld, Louis C.K., Chris Rock, and Norm Macdonald had worked.

I was terrified. This was before I became a professional speaker. I wasn’t worried about bombing so much as freezing. Forgetting my jokes. Standing there unable to speak.

I went to see my comedy teacher, Stephen Rosenfeld, during office hours. He listened and said, “That’s perfectionism.” Then he gave me an analogy I’ve never forgotten.

He said perfectionism is like insisting you drive from Manhattan to Cape Cod without making a single left turn. (Manhattan and Cape Cod are 250 miles apart. On a good day it’s a five-hour drive.) “What does not making a left have to do with getting to your destination?” he asked. “Nothing. If you want to get to Cape Cod, make as many left turns as you need.”

What struck me later was how easily we add a needless rule to what we’re doing and then treat it like a design requirement. As if the goal were “don’t make mistakes,” instead of “get to the place you want to go.”

Rosenfeld told me he’d seen performers give technically faultless sets that moved no one. And he’d seen others go on stage, forget their lines, pull notecards out of their pockets, shake, cry – and the audience loved them.

“You can give a strong performance while making mistakes,” he said. “Perfection isn’t necessary. It’s not even possible.”