Beyond Perfect, Finding Freedom in Embracing Imperfections
Breaking the Chains of Self-Crticism and Nurturing Your Inner Child
"Two tweets. Just two tweets day. Just like taking pills. One in the morning, and one in night. That's it."
A week ago my friend of mine motivating me to use Twitter.
"No, we need a strategy and plan. It's about branding and making meaningful connections with our audience. We cannot just make fool of ourselves in the public.” That is how my defensive brain responded.
I get caught in the disease of analysis paralysis frequently. And so I was strategizing twitter since years. And still doing so.
But this time their words hit me. "just two tweets...".
My soul asked my mind and heart, "have we fallen so low that we can't even post two tweets? Or is the world so difficult that it requires a rocket science project plan to tweet 280 characters? Or... Are you scared?"
Yes I was scared, not because of what people would think of me, or because of taking on something difficult.
No.
I am scared of not giving my best.
Yes it happens. Perfectionism does not only occur while showing things to other people, it can occur as a personal commitment, as a habit. And this is not good.
To always do your best, means to always criticize yourself when you fail. And 99% of your efforts, you will receive good enough results. But not the prefect thing.
Perfectionism, in itself is not a bad thing. Society value it. Being able to deliver a perfectly build product, a perfect performance, who would not desire it. Every time a performer makes any mistake, we don't forget to notice it, whether we react or not.
The problem is in what it does to the performer himself. Criticism. Constantly emotionally criticizing yourself. Becoming cold to oneself. The process starts with getting into details of what's wrong within me, and it keeps on until we start hating ourselves and keeps on validating everything.
As a human being, we all are a kind of performer, working hard to share love, but tell me, how a performer would share love if he has started hating himself?
And so it happens. Perfection kills us.
I have killed half of my life so far.
Even while writing this, I am rechecking each and every sentence, if I have made some mistake, my spell check is already enabled, constantly thinking of more appropriate words. And even after doing my best, it won't be good enough. Someone somewhere will point out something I missed. Validating that I am not perfect. So I might have already killed half of the creativity while writing this.
But why? I ponder.
May be for some of us, our parents trained us this way. They kept on demanding us to the best and perfect. But their efforts ends up in doing nothing for us! Or may be it because how some people are.
Or may be not, let's not focus on the past, but how to stop it from happening again, how to treat this disease?
"I don't know."
This is what I know and this is beautiful. Many times, we are free to just say, “I don't know. Let's try it out.”
The problem thus lies in grand expectations we are having with ourselves.
On a planet of billions other living creatures, when did I become so important?
This is how I guess we would treat ourselves.
Stop taking yourself seriously. It's okay. You are just a child, living and learning. That that does not sound so practical right? Okay so let's figure it out.
I intuitively find that the problem lies in not able to measure the amount of perfection required.
Let me put it in a different perspective. Say I am a jewellery designer. My duty is to make amazing detail orientated jewelry. It's not a moral obligation. Not everyone wants the amount of details I can do, my obligation should be with my client. I can provide cheaper service with medium details and premium service with painstaking details.
The point I am making is, perfectionism is like my skill. And not every time it is required. Sometimes good enough work is perfect for that situation.
Some say devil is in details. And I think we should let the devil stay there and bother with him otherwise we would miss a lot of other important things.
As of writing this I am remembering a friend of mine suggested me, "It's not that you won't make mistakes. Don't make such confidence, that's ego. But be confident that, you are strong enough that you can endure those losses." She continued, "If you can't, you won't be able to start".
Loose the battle win the war. That's what it is.
We need to figure out whether the situation really requires that level of perfection? And this measurement lies in asking yourself a simple question.
What major thing in your life could go wrong If I purposely did not do my best?
"Just two tweets". ... My guess, in 99% of cases, your answer would be, "nothing much".
More things gets destroyed in life by the life itself randomly than your own mistakes. Ha ha.
We are just scolding ourselves, like a parent or someone, confusing our effort to the level of moral obligation, "I must do the best". No, you don't. You just had bad parenting.
Laugh it off. Make the mistakes, and laugh it off. It's fine. Of course measure it up, but don't do everything perfect. It is your sacred gift, nature gave it to you. Value it and save it for the things that really deserves your detailed attention. For the rest, allow yourself to make the mistakes and laugh it off.
There is even a video about fearing setting by Tim Ferris, this would complement my idea of measuring.
So this is it. I am convinced. For this week, I am now allowing myself to go wrong where it is allowed. And laugh it off. I will nurture my inner child with my self learned parenting skills.
This letter is not perfect. It was not expected to be, I am not perfect either. And it's fine. As I decided. I am writing this for me and people like me. And I succeeded in that. I did helped myself. I know Half of my subscribers won't even bother to make it till here. If you did, I appreciate. I hope you have found some value in it.
Someone somewhere around you, like me, might be in need of this. I cannot reach everyone in this world, and have just a few readers as for now. So as you have made it so far, I request and would appreciate even further if you you can share or forward this letter to those who might need.
Thank you.
Stay connected. Don't loose those who appreciate you, even when you are do it all wrong.
And of course throw away shit people. Life is too small for perfecting every relationship. I am tired of them already. More on them later.