The Perfection Mindset Getting Wild
The encounters with perfectionism in my life, and how I see it now.
--
“You should work on that, the quality of the video wasn’t good.” comments on the first episode of the podcast.
I see that, I hear you. With the first episode and generally with at least 50 of them, I want to focus on the core. The conversations being genuine, authentic, and fun.
I’ve already built a shield against those comments. The medium gave me a really good perspective after posting over 100th articles. That if you fall under the “It needs to be perfect.” it can freeze you a lot. Not only that, but if the perfection horse takes you for a ride, you can get really demotivated and exhausted out of this process called creation.
Like think about a young child. Trying to say his first word: “Blblbl.” You don’t go: “Oh the fuck, no another one of those. You need to work on your pronunciation or otherwise don’t talk to me you little smug?! Jesus, I thought that with the second one it would be better.” However crazy this sound most of the time, when you create something there is this belief within you lurking.
My nephew just wrote his assignment and I point out to a sentence where he instead of “Whether you are Russian or Chinese” wrote “However you are Russian or Chinese.” I thought it’s hilarious, but didn’t want to put this on his head when there was still a possibility of republishing it.
And he felt a bit unhappy discovering it today, and his mind start kicking again. And I thought: “No again this pattern!” Please don’t take this as a cheap take on someone else shirt, like this is me in all the forms while writing too. Even now! And I need that perfectionism within me. I don’t want to silent it. It’s just…
Imagine, you’re going to go and throw a first kick in a football. By watching the television you have this database of how it should look like. Hopefully you actually go to a playing field and don’t freeze with all the anxiety “What if someone would see me” at home. You arrived, put the ball down and kick it, and it goes totally different way that it should. Like you understand that’s your first kick. You may laugh: “Or here it is, another Ronaldinho right there.” You are like, yeah let me try again. But because now you have this database of how it should look like, you can beat yourself up in the first session of practice and totally destroy the experience.
I am not telling you that you shouldn’t improve. No. that’s not about it. But when, with each kick you destroy yourself mentally, you wouldn’t want to kick anymore. And that’s really sad. I don’t want you to lose any creative endeavor just because you saw someone doing it ‘better.’ Just do it, with each kick do your best, sometimes you do your best just playing and then see what happen.
After 100th kicks, you would get a better grasp upon what is it really that you want to do and finally can make a really nice kick. Just, please, when you notice this mind getting wild over the imperfections; well enjoy the ride! Haha, you have a nice ride in front of you. No, I wouldn’t give you advice, that’s on you to find how to deal with that wild Perfectionoso.
Bye,
Luke
