If you’re making mistakes, it means you’re out there doing something. And the mistakes in themselves can be useful. – Neil Gaiman, “Make Good Art”
Mistakes are good things. They’re also incredibly hard for the perfectionist to make. The perfectionist desires and loves control. She wants to know the outcomes before the outcomes arrive. She wants to tread safely.
If she is able to learn to appreciate the beauty found in curiosity and letting go, her attitude shifts. She may still struggle when she makes a mistake; after all, it’s hard to shut out that perfectionist voice no matter how wrong it is. She may want to still avoid mistakes, but she no longer is imprisoned by that line of thinking.
She has been freed and now sees that art comes from risking it all. She can’t play it safe. She can’t wait on the sidelines and hedge her bets. She has to go all in even if she doesn’t know all the cards in the other player’s hand. She may lose it all, but she’s fully alive. She’s out there doing something, and she’s learning from that doing.
She’s learning that beauty is found in the broken. She’s found that there is a light that never goes out no matter how dark – and, oh, how dark it can be at times! – the night or her spirit. She’s learned to get up and get up again. She will not remain in the darkness. She will fight her way toward the light and cling to it because the only way to get to that light is to get out there and do something.
Image: BK (Creative Commons)
[…] I sometimes feel. I become vexed with myself for not doing better with things, for having to fight the perfectionism that threatens to […]