It doesn't have to be perfect. Really? Yes, really!

Here are some examples of statements I heard on a regular basis as a child. Maybe some of them sound familiar to you.

Dad:
“That picture needs to be moved. It is way off center.”
Reality check:
The picture was a sixteenth of an inch off center on an eight-feet wide wall.

Mom:
“This living room is a complete mess.”
Reality check:
Sitting on the floor beside the couch was one pile of old magazines waiting to be looked through before being thrown out. And there was sheet music sitting open on the piano, which I had just finished playing before I went to the bathroom.

Dad:
“Better to be half-an-hour early than five minutes late.”
Reality check:
Unless when you arrive early, it’s very cold outside and you have to wait for someone to arrive to open the door for play rehearsal.

And here’s the big one:

Mom and Dad:
“If you are not going to do a job right, don’t do it at all.”
(As a teenager, I often tried to get out of doing chores by proclaiming, ‘I won’t do it right anyway, so I might as well not do it.’)
Reality Check:
I still had to dust and vacuum the living room, and dry and put away those dishes.

So, why am I telling you all of this?

Because lately, this perfectionist behavior that was fostered with loving care during my formative years, and proudly practiced with excellent results throughout my adult administrative career, has really started to cause me problems.

“How,” you might ask.

And I would reply, “Look at the last posting date on this blog.” Never mind. You don’t really have to look. I’ll tell you. It was September 22, 2008 that I last wrote to you. The post was called “Heart Connections in Autumn Light.”

We are now “Freezing Our Butts Off in Winter’s Dimness,” and I’m finally managing to sit my butt down and write to you. So before I continue . . .

a belated
Happy Halloween
Happy Thanksgiving
Happy December Holidays
and
Happy New Year
to all of you!

Now, back to how perfectionism has caused my blogging derailment.

Bottom line: If I can’t do it right ~ and by that I mean as perfectly as possible ~ I have a hard time making myself do it.

And what factor determines whether or not I will be able to do something as perfectly as possible? Time. Perfection takes time. And if you live on a tight schedule with a long To Do List ... well, it comes down to an easy equation:

Less Time = Less than Perfection

(and according to inherited parental truths)

Less than Perfection = Don’t Even Start

Therefore, when my To Do List was topping out at over 30 items around mid-October, the “Write Blog Post” item on the list kept getting shifted to the bottom.

But why? I love to write. Writing has been one of my greatest joys since I was a child. I wrote my first play at age 10. My favorite jobs have included writing as an integral part of my work responsibilities. So why put off blogging, which is actually doing something I love to do? Because I need to do it as perfectly as possible, and that takes time.

Well, so does cleaning the bathroom, lady, but you managed to do that.

Now there’s a good example. In fact, just last week, I started out to do a quick spruce up of the bathroom to just freshen it up. But once I got going, my Perfectionist Self got out of control. It was as if my glasses had magically become magnifying lenses ... forcing me to see every little speck of anything on every little surface. And, of course, once I saw all of those specks ... well .... Three hours later, my 7 x 5 foot bathroom was absolutely spotless.

About fifteen minutes later, I was sitting back in my comfortable chair, having a calming cup of tea. As I sat trying to recover from my spontaneous cleaning frenzy, the moment of “Are You Insane?” hit me. I had just spent three precious hours of my time sponging, scrubbing, rinsing and polishing my little bathroom, and no one but my husband and me would even see it. And he wouldn’t care.

And as I continued to marvel at the level of perfectionist compulsive behavior that cleaning jaunt exposed, I began to see a wider of view of the effects of this gift/curse. If I could allow myself three hours away from my “To Do” list to do the unappealing task of cleaning a bathroom that no one “outsider” would even see, why couldn’t I find time to write my Blog? Again, writing is something I love to do. But . . . lots of people would see it . . . . . . . .

Is that the key? Who would see my work? Well, of course it is.

I couldn’t allow myself a spontaneous writing frenzy ... just let it flow and let it go ... because I couldn’t risk the possibility that it would not be as perfect as possible. I have read that some bloggers just log on and write off the top of their heads, not worrying about typos or missed words. But not me. I could never allow myself that freedom. I had to write it, and then reread it, and rewrite it again.

With the Perfectionist Me keeping watch and making sure that every one of those 30 items on my To Do List were completed with an A+ approach, it was no wonder that I was feeling like one of the great joys of my life ~ writing and blogging ~ had become just another one of those To Do’s.

So friends, today I have taken a slightly different approach to writing this post. Instead of the write, and re-write, and re-read and re-write again process I have taken in the past, I decided to just write. Honoring that changing ourselves 180 degrees in one spontaneous moment of Ah Ha is difficult, I am sure it will be difficult to just click publish as I complete this. But I’m going to try it. And, I’ll bet, that even if I’ve left out a word, or misspelled something, you will all be able to figure out what I was trying to say.

My hope is that my “bold new approach” will help to inspire those of you who also have a Perfectionist Self whispering negative messages into your Inner Critic’s ear ... telling you that you should beware of taking approaches and trying new things. I hope that you ~ like I am about to do right now ~ will allow yourself to at least turn down the volume of those negative messages. In doing so, we can reclaim the joys of “just doing” things that we love to do.

Peace & Light,

and here it goes

Jae

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