When Sometimes You Just Gotta Let Perfect š¤Good
āNo, I canāt possibly be a perfectionist,ā I said to my therapist. āIām far from perfect.ā
āThatās exactly what a perfectionist would say,ā she said, smiling as I rolled my eyes at her and probably sighed.
Before that, my idea of a perfectionist was limited to those super Type-A organized people. You know the type, with everything color-coded, perfect shelves, perfect everything.
Me? The relatively put-together human I look like on the outside with the very messy insides has always been how I see myself as showing up in the world. I want perfection, sure, but I never get anywhere close to achieving it.
[nifty lil diagram I found while googling perfectionism]
Iām doing a lot of mindset work lately around professional stuff to figure out how I want to show up in the world and whatās been holding me back from doing so. Because when Iām being really honest with myself, I do know that I have a lot to offerāI just can get really unrealistic expectations for current life circumstances/bandwidth. Something I wrote recently, 50 Positive What-If Questions to Ask Yourself to Stop Your Mind from Spiraling, has actually helped me.
My brain has been screaming ādonāt let perfect be the enemy of goodā at me lately.
Iām running the Eugene Half this weekend, and last week, I was REALLY struggling with motivation for my run. I wasnāt feeling great physically, I had a tight time constraint on the day I was planning on running, and so I was tempted to bag it altogether. I knew that just based on time alone, I wouldnāt be able to get to the mileage I wanted, but I remembered that Iād feel better both physically and mentally if I did run. And yeah, the run did suckā¦and Iām still glad I did it. It was an extra deposit in the muscle memory bank as well as in the confidence bank.
Was I still disappointed that I didnāt run as many miles as Iād planned? Absolutely. Would the āperfectā distance I wanted to run have been a better deposit in ye olde training bank? Definitely. Was something better than nothing? Yup.
It is so goddamn freeing when you realize this, and everything becomes just a little bit easier.
Iām leaving in 17 days (!!!!) for Sweden and Finland, which is where my biological family comes from. The only time Iāve spent over there is an 18-hour layover in Stockholm in 2019 that was nothing short of magical. So when Taylor Swift announced international tour dates last year, and I saw she was playing Stockholm, I have never rushed to book a trip and buy concert tickets so quickly. Iāll be flying solo most of the trip, but one of my besties is meeting up with me for the Stockholm portion.
I bought the tickets last year, and up until basically last week, I had nothing about the trip planned, other than the Stockholm hotel (but that was really only because I knew it would sell out, because Swiftienomics.)
Thereās obviously a lot of emotions swirling around the trip, so I wanted it to be The Perfect Trip. I also wanted to learn to speak Swedish fluently before I went. Iām good at languagesā¦but, like, not that good that I could become totally fluent in a few months. I wanted to find The Perfect Teacher to take lessons with.
My therapist suggested I try Duolingo in the meantime, and while I initially rolled my eyes at the suggestion (notice a theme yet?!), Iām now on a 36-day streak on Duolingo, and, guess what? Still havenāt hired the Swedish instructor. I never got around to finding the perfect time for me with the perfect person. (However, if you are looking for really affordable 1:1 language lessons with native speakers, iTalki is a really cool site that Iāve used before trips to South America to brush up on my Spanish, and they have a bunch of other languages, too.)
Good > perfect.
Is there an area in your life where you can give yourself some permission now to not be perfect and just do the damn thing? Just doing the damn thing usually feels better than all the other shit we put ourselves through. Hit reply or comment below.