- Beginning. First lines escape me. They wander into my head, then wander out before they find the page. Not spectacular enough, I say to each. What I miss is the good enough ones. Those that lead to the second line, the third… maybe even the fourth.
- Voltaire. Don’t let perfect be the enemy of the good.
- Correspondence. I write this email:
Dear Olivia, I hope all’s well in your world. I wonder if you’d be free for a chat sometime soon? Perhaps next week? Margery
I edit three times. Analyse the apostrophes and question marks, read it aloud to pass the ‘conversational’ test. Add “best wishes” then remove it, because it’s just filler and my heart’s not in the best wishing. Do my emails need to be art? Yes. It’s this kinda thing that slows me down.
- No first drafts. “For the perfectionist,” Julia Cameron writes, in The Artist’s Way, “there are no first drafts, rough sketches, warm-up exercises. Every draft is meant to be final, perfect, set in stone.”
- Morality. I must be a good person. I must be kind to others and never judge. If I do, I’m bad. But wait, isn’t the mind made to judge? Good/bad, right/wrong, rich/poor, worthy/unworthy? Maybe, every now and then, I’ll let myself off the hook.
- Vocabulary of perfectionism. Should haves and Shouldn’t haves. I should’ve brought a jumper. I shouldn’t have said that. I should’ve remembered his birthday. I shouldn’t have been late. There is wisdom in knowing the universe of “should” does not exist. What’s done is done. What was always meant to happen, did.
- Broken pottery.The Japanese art of repair, Kintsugi (“golden joinery”), teaches us a lesson. When pottery breaks, the potter applies lacquer mixed with powdered gold to the broken pieces of the cup or bowl or vase, celebrating the breakage as part of the history of the object. Put back together, the imperfections glow.
- Beliefs to challenge. Things need to be perfect for me to be happy. I need to get it right or else I’ll be abandoned. Other people need to meet my expectations.
- Survival. Perfectionism isn’t a ‘bad’ thing. It’s an adaptation to a hard situation. It helped a bunch of us survive our childhoods, as Bonnie Badenoch tells us. It helped me avoid trouble; it stopped Mum and Dad from raising their voices.
- New mottos. Try less. Be half-assed.
- Parking. When I park between two cars, I’ve got to be equidistant. If I’m even slightly closer to one, it’s not very respectful of me to ask the driver to shimmy their body sideways, is it? So, I back out again, go in again… out, then in.
- Not good enough. “Underneath that shiny veneer,” Elizabeth Gilbert cautions in her book Big Magic, “perfectionism is nothing more than a deep existential angst that says, again and again, ‘I am not good enough and I will never be good enough’”.
- Suitcase. These days, I might not even write a packing list. I might just throw my clothes in the suitcase, not rolling them or partitioning the shirts from the pants. I might even forget my toothbrush. Now that’s a win.
- Relating to perfectionism. Instead of: Damn my perfectionist tendencies! Try: Oh, look at me, trying so hard to get it right when I don’t need to. Very sweet. And not necessary here.
- Going with the flow. “I need to feel good all the time” – really? Can I just be in life’s flow instead? As Michael Singer says, when there’s a ripple in your energy field, don’t touch it. Feeling sad? Don’t touch it. Feeling angry? Don’t touch it. Don’t create more ripples. Let it be, and you’ll return to your birthright: calm, peace, stillness.
