Dear Jessica Brennan,
I have often fallen into the trap of not wanting to be seen doing anything until I have mastered it. As a child, I hated track and field days at school. All those relays and high jumps that I wasn’t ever going to be able to win. What if I looked stupid? What if I let my team down, my teacher down?
This didn’t stop when childhood did. As an adult, I often feel the need to perfect something behind the scenes before I expose myself to the criticism of the world.
This is insecurity and lack of self-confidence mixed with lessons learned about how critical people can be of other people’s efforts. Despite the old adages like, “What other people think of me is none of my business”, and “We need to live independent of the good opinion of others”, it can still be difficult to “put it out there”.
Yoga has helped me get over this to some extent. As a practice that is very personal and as individual as the people doing it, it showed me that being the best isn’t essential to being a happy participant. There is no best in yoga. Also, being accomplished isn’t necessary to experience the benefit. I will give you some examples.
If you are a yoga-beginner and you have had a stressful day, 20 minutes on the yoga mat when you get home is the best thing you can do to calm yourself. Your down-dog doesn’t need to be perfect, for the stress to evaporate during your practice.
If you have pulled a muscle in your back, you don’t have to be a yoga guru to bend down like a rag doll and alleviate the pain by stretching. Yoga is just one example of how something that you aren’t particularly good at, can still benefit you.
But the bigger issue here is the self confidence it takes to not be great, and show it. With social media portraying only shiny perfect people, it can be a bit daunting to not be shiny or perfect in the so-called real world. The cake had better rise, the relay better have been won and that down-dog better make a perfect A-frame.
As I write this, I remember when I worked with Alan Frew, he said that he is good at everything he does because he only does things he’s good at. Even though we chuckled when he said it, there is some wisdom in that I suppose.
I think some of us can get caught in the perfectionist trap where the project we are involved in could always be better, so it never is complete. There’s always one more thing to improve. Worse still, someone else may have already done it better. Then we start to fall into this kind of thinking: If I can’t be the best, I don’t want to do it at all.
Even as I write this, I know this approach to life is dumb. I mean everyone is always going to have someone who can do it better, make it more profitable, work faster, make it bigger, run it leaner. There is always someone, fitter, richer, more proficient; and so what?
Even when I do something well, I can tell you where I cut corners – there’s always a sense that I pulled the wool over your eyes. It really isn’t that great. I could have done more. I guess in the end, even success isn’t good enough. This kind of thinking has got to go.
As I get older I have learned the benefit of accepting a mediocre outcome for hard work. I realize that statement sounds weird and that in our culture we aren’t really wired to accept a mediocre outcome when we have worked our tails off. It hurts. It is uncomfortable, yet it is valuable.
For example, I have written some books that aren’t very good. They are yet unpublished and no-doubt will stay that way. I had to learn about outlines and dialogue and at the time of writing, I hadn’t practiced the craft enough to be proficient. When I go back and look at them, I cringe. But at the time I wrote them, I did my best with the knowledge I had, and the end result was just okay, and guess what? That’s okay. The stories are good and the writing taught me great lessons about, well, writing.
For me, showing the whole world some of my okay writing and observing how the sun didn’t fall from the sky as a result, helped me. It has reduced the fear of not being good enough to be seen. Who knew that facing criticism can build character? As I look back, I can really see where trying to be perfect when it didn’t really matter, has kept me from doing many things. The shame of not being the best, kept me from enjoying some of the pleasures life has to offer.
So, Dear Jessica, go ahead and try things; publicly display things that aren’t perfect. Glean the benefits of doing things, even if you’re not the best. Let your down-dog wobble. Make big messy mistakes. Have the courage to not be good at things.
Love,
Mum xo
