Hi lovelies!
I’m always curious what I’m going to write about each week. Sometimes I have a sense the week before, and sometimes it becomes clear as the week progresses. (so far 🤞 an idea has always come!)
Perfection reared it’s head in many conversations with friends lately, and then Nancy Rebecca did a video about it this week, and I thought - yup, that’s it.
Nancy’s video, is as always, totally worth a watch. She talked about how the frequency of perfectionism becomes a thick layer that actually blocks our spirit from being able to connect with us.
Embracing our imperfections is like with Japanese Kintsugi - where broken pottery is repaired with gold. That’s how the light gets in. Many cultures have a similar tradition of intentionally keeping an opening in some way.
From Leonard Cohen’s Anthem:
Forget your perfect offering
There is a crack, a crack in everything
That's how the light gets in
I distinctly remember a conversation from almost 20 years ago in Vancouver. I made the observation that it seemed to me that women were seeking to be perfect in order to avoid being judged.
And we saw how that works - it doesn’t matter, you’ll still get judged. Loose weight, now you’re too thin, or you wear too much makeup, or not enough makeup and shouldn’t you make more of an effort? America Ferrera’s speech in Barbie captured this so well.
So we put a fence of ‘perfection’ up, trying to protect ourselves, and it just keeps us from being our beautiful imperfect selves.
And it’s a distraction that keeps us from doing our meaningful work in the world. All that energy applied to trying to achieve something that doesn’t serve us.
Because we connect to the light through our cracks. We connect to each other (light) by being open and real and imperfect.
A few weeks ago, I had officially had enough of myself.
I live in a nice home, in a incredibly beautiful spot, and yet all I saw as I looked around the house was all the projects I could be doing. Should be doing! How would I refinish all the tables. Paint the floor in the front hall. Build a garden enclosure, touch up the paint here, repaint there. On and on.
I would periodically add them all to a list, hoping this would give me some relief. Instead, it made me feel more overwhelmed because there are dozens and dozens. And I felt overwhelmed because I assumed I wouldn’t have peace in my home and in my head, until they were all done.
My dad used to do this too. I remember saying to him one time, “Dad, just because you had the idea, doesn’t mean you’re obligated to execute it.”
Trish, just because you had the idea, doesn’t mean you have to do it!
Because the vast majority off all these projects are in fact totally optional. My brain is churning out ideas to make my house ‘perfect’, or more perfect than it is.
And other than normal repairs/maintenance and general cleaning/tidying - it’s all a GIANT blackhole to nowhere! A giant distraction to nowhere.
Enough already.
Instead, I sat down and asked myself - at this time in my life, as I’m transitioning careers and healing parts of myself and hopefully stepping into a version of myself where I’m thriving - what are my actual priorities? Right now? In this season of my life.
And you know, having a perfect home was NOT on the list.
As it worked out, being in a peaceful environment was number 3.
I want to be able to enjoy my house as it is; just somewhat cleaner and tidier and knowing everything has a home where it can be put away. So I decided all of these decorating projects are currently on hold. I will not be taking any actions at this time, and I’m not interested in spending hours and energy pondering how I could be fixing up this or that. Every time my brain starts spinning up ideas, I’m like, nope - it’s on hold baby. Let’s focus on our current priorities.
In the future, I will pick a project - one at a time, but only after I feel like I have a handle on it this weed patch (in my mind).
So it got me thinking, if I’m this bothered by things not being perfect in my house, where else am I so critical of myself? Because I doubt it’s in isolation.
Definitely in writing fiction. There’s been many moments in mid-flow that little voice goes ‘this sucks, it’s never going to be good’. And it would cause me to pull back and stop writing for the day or for even several days. Hopefully you’re picking up on the fact I was in fact sabotaging myself. If you’re wondering what I’m talking about with self-sabotage and why we do it, check out last week’s post.
I started to do something else instead when I catch it. I reply to the voice - ‘yeah you know some of this is good, some of it’s not, but that’s ok, it’s just a first draft. I can improve something, so better to just keep writing.’
Oddly enough, I haven’t been plagued by perfectionism in my marketing career.
I remember MANY, many years ago checking my boss hard one day when he was talking about a project we were working on and how it had to be perfect.
And I strongly interrupted him, ‘No it does not!’
He was aghast. So I said, what in the world does perfect even mean? Your definition, mine and your boss would all be different anyway. We’d never get it done or ship it (as Seth Godin would say) if we used that as an end goal.
And I saw it time and time again, folks choking at the last minute and not delivering a finished product because they were afraid and thought it had to be perfect.
If we embrace it’s not going to be, it’s never going to be and instead say, it’s ok to fail and learn and it’s good to always know you can raise the bar. You give yourself and others permission to move. And to try and to experiment. We get so much better work when it’s totally fine to achieve nothing.
Paradoxical, but permission to fail gives you room to thrive. And that’s why this is the topic of the week!
Some of the conversations over the past few weeks about being plagued by perfectionism, maybe you can relate to:
Multiple friends not wanting to share their healing talents because what if it wasn’t perfect. If you relate to this, you could set an intention that the session itself will be divinely perfect for that person on this day - it’s not for you to worry about or decide what that even means. Just to trust that it will unfold.
Other friends, like me, bothered looking around their place and having an endless stream of things to do. And at some point, it starts stealing their joy in their home.
One friend saying something about wanting their work to be perfect and I was like - WHY? If you were perfect, then we couldn’t be friends because I am surely not perfect (and will never be!). And she stopped and thought it through and replied, “That would be really boring wouldn’t it?” Yup - think so. So don’t be boring, embrace our lack of perfection!
This is for all you virgo’s out there - it’s ok, you can let it go! 😉