Perfectionism is the thief of joy

This past weekend I had a realization; my tendency towards perfection prevents me from trying things.

When going through my breakdown at the start of last year, I was given a number of questionnaires to complete to see what exactly was going on with my brain. From that I found that a lot of the ways I was thinking were actually not normal. I can have all or nothing thinking, if I can’t excel at it I won’t even try thinking, and if I can’t make it perfect why bother thinking. I hadn’t fully appreciated how much this had held me back from trying things, even small not overly important things because I knew I could never actually make it live up to the perfect image I had in my mind.

2020 is proving to be a year where I need to find joy in simple things. Having got into more of the creative courses at school, I remembered how much fun I used to find it to just let loose and see what happens. This was sparked first by finding cute halloween images for work that we could hang from the ceiling. Then I was asked to paint the window/s with Christmas images. I found black and white ones that I could easily trace and then colour them in as I saw fit. The thing with painting on windows, one side is going to look like shit! Of course that’s the side you view the most as it’s the side you paint. I won’t lie, I wiped off a few of the images and started over before being able to let go and just think “do your best”. Inspired by this I went to the dollar store to pick up some cheap Xmas decorations that I could put my mark on. I found wooden snowflakes and decided I would paint them and make them sparkle with glitter glue. I got all the supplies from the dollar store, not a craft store and underestimated the quality of the paints I got. I didn’t mind having to put a couple of coats on, but I was disappointed that when I started painting the glitter glue on it stripped some of the paint colour off.

Here is the major goal I hit while doing this. Instead of getting pissed off and throwing them out for not looking like I had planned, I decided to just carry on and see how they will turn out. If they aren’t perfect, oh well, they are just for my house and I’m not forcing anyone to look at them. I can take the lessons I learn from these and either make some more this year or wait until next year. Mind. Blown. I cannot remember the last time something like this didn’t derail me completely and just throw in the towel. This was major progress.

Now I wonder, how much joy have I missed out on by not just letting things play out when I knew I couldn’t make them perfect? No more. I will try things and do my best not to care if I can’t have it perfect. It’s a hard habit to break, but I’m willing to work on it