...but were you happy?
I have always felt a huge pressure to put perfection over everything else. So often I feel like if I don’t do something perfectly then it wasn’t worth doing. What that meant is that I didn’t end up spending my life doing many things that I actually wanted to do. I see this a lot with things like hobbies or skills. If I can’t master my hobby or be really good at it right away, it gets discarded into the giant pile of things that I’m not perfect at. But maybe what matters more was if it was fun or brought me joy. I didn’t want to go to college, and I went anyway because I thought it would get me the perfect life. While that experience helped me to gain a lot of confidence and knowledge and friendships, it also made me so miserable. Because I felt this pressure to be perfect, I ended up spending so much of my time doing things that I didn’t want to be doing and trying to squeeze myself into places that I didn’t fit.
Childhood combat
Even as a child I struggled with trying to be perfect. I did everything I could to get the best grades, be the fastest reader, be the perfect person, daughter, whatever. By the time I was in high school I was exhausted. I still did well but I felt terrible about not being perfect. My heart would race if I got a lower grade. I would carry stress physically in my shoulders if I thought I wasn’t going to do well on a test. And for what? It didn’t make me better. I wasn’t more motivated. Instead, it gave me years of never being able to relax and even less motivation than before. I felt like I was living in an 80-year old’s body at 18.
Caring Battlefield
I really struggle with care tasks because of this pressure too. It makes it all feel so overwhelming. I don’t fold the laundry right away or keep my bedroom clean all of the time because seeing the mountain of laundry or the unmade bed and dog toys sprawled everywhere feels like too much for my brain. BUT, if I folded a little bit of laundry at a time or picked up a few of the dog toys (because maybe that is all that I have to give after a long day), it would feel so much better. It wouldn’t be perfect—it wouldn’t even be DONE—but it would be better than before. It would make me feel better than before. So often we make those tasks feel more overwhelming than they have to be. I LOVE doing yoga, but sometimes unrolling the mat and especially turning on a video or showing up to a class is way too much for me to handle. Some days though, I just stretch out and do a little bit at a time. I always feel better afterward even if I only spent 5 minutes moving. I always thank myself for doing what feels good.
Honestly, this still isn’t advice that I take for myself most of the time. I have an embarrassingly large mountain of clean laundry waiting for me, I still feel the leftover stress in my shoulders almost constantly, and only here and there do I roll out my yoga mat. To be transparent, a part of me will always still strive for perfection. But at least for now, I can continue to remind myself that I still have value even though I am not perfect, and enjoying something is a good enough reason to continue spending my time doing it.
Perfectly packaged
Even when it comes to business, this fight between us and being perfect can be so problematic. We could kill ourselves trying to package every little thing up perfectly, but maybe it’s more important to just show up as we are. And isn’t it so much nicer to see people genuinely? I know I was so scared of being judged, I would spend HOURS recording and re-recording stories or writing and re-writing posts, trying to look or sound a certain way. Having to fight this idea of being perfect would get in the way of making decisions that could have made me happier AND successful.
Your business doesn’t have to be perfect, but it can still have value and be successful. Hiring a VA or outsourcing might not make your business perfect, but it could make it better. It could make it easier to handle, more sustainable for your life. It could give you more freedom to live your life outside of your business. It’s not taking you away from your business but giving you room.
Comments