I Give Myself Permission To Make Mistakes
Perfectionism: is often defined as the need to be or appear to be perfect, or even to believe that it's possible to achieve perfection. (thank you, google)
Do you struggle with perfectionism?
I know I have and still do at times.
But, what does it mean to achieve perfectionism? If we’re constantly growing, evolving, and improving to become better for ourselves and to offer the best product/service - how are we to know when it’s “perfect”?
I just don’t think we can.
I recently had a session with my transformational coach (tapping) and we worked through perfection and judgment.
Funny thing, I didn’t think this was something that would come up as I don’t feel I lean towards the “perfectionist” too often.
But, it came up from talking about not moving forward in fear of making mistakes.
She helped me see that it stemmed from childhood (as are most things!) as there were a couple of times I can remember getting in trouble for not doing something the way someone else wanted it done.
It wasn’t done to their liking or how they would have done it and therefore it wasn’t good enough.
**this is the deep part of the work I do with this coach and she helped me with this part to be able to explain it, so stick with me!**
In these moments I learned on a deep foundational (nervous system level) that it wasn't safe to make mistakes or that imperfect work leads to intense criticism/anger/rejection etc. This means I also learned, on a deep subconscious level, to repeat the judgment toward imperfection that I witnessed in childhood. It became an automatic subconscious pattern that was "wired in" and repeated over and over again.
**back to regular talk - but holy moly is the subconscious strrroong!**
So, fast forward 28 years and it’s interesting how it shows up today and what it looks like:
Not fully committing to moving forward as my true self fearing I’ll mess something up
Judgment towards myself for not knowing exactly what to do
Judgment towards others because they don’t do it like I would (whew - this one was so powerful) even though I KNOW there is more than one way to do all the things!
My coach challenged me to give myself permission to make mistakes because in the grand scheme of things, what is the absolute worst thing that can happen? (okay, so I feel I need to add - this doesn’t give you permission to be a jerk, a$$hole, or an indecent human being because that’s not okay.)
So, while I’m working on being okay with making mistakes - I also challenge you to do the same.
Write and publish the blog.
Start the business.
Create the product.
Ask for the sale.
Launch the website.
I can 100% promise you that it’s not going to be perfect the first time and it’s probably not going to be perfect the third time around.
But, you’ll learn a whole heck of a lot each time you try. And after each time that you try whatever it is, you’ll be able to improve and that’s what really matters.
Write this down and repeat it every.dang.day.
“I give myself permission to make mistakes!”
I would love to hear about a time when perfectionism crept in and caused you to doubt what you were creating...or something you haven’t launched yet because of perfectionism!