I’ve struggled with perfectionism – I still do – with feeling like I’m not quite good enough, and what I do isn’t quite right. There are a lot of reasons for this, which I won’t get into in this post – I acknowledge that I’m a work in progress.
I tend to be a lot more forgiving of other people’s imperfections, yet haven’t given myself the same compassion.
In being aware of this script and my expectation for me to be perfect, I’m finding opportunities to invite imperfection, and perhaps let a little chaos or disorder into my life. I mean, I have chaos and disorder in some ways, some of which are out of my control, and some of which are of my causing (oops!) These new ways are of my choosing, and they’re helping me embrace imperfection.
I have two sets of dishes: blue ones and black ones. I bought them years ago and have managed to keep all but one bowl that broke a while back when I dropped it, filled with delicious spaghetti. Darn! 🙁
Ever since I’ve had them, when I put my dishes away, I always stack the blue ones together and the black ones together. It doesn’t matter if the blue ones are on top or the black ones, as long as the same-coloured ones are together. This is organized and proper. It’s how I can see order in my cupboard. It irks me if they are mismatched or out of order, because that’s not the way it’s supposed to be.
But who created the expectation of how it’s supposed to be? I did.
And I can choose to change it.
And so, when I put the dishes away, I now practice not putting them in order by colour. I admit, it still irks me. I feel uncomfortable seeing it, and I want to fix it by putting them back in order. And I choose to leave them, even looking at them for a few seconds and acknowledging that I am choosing to embrace imperfection.
I’m getting better at living with typos or incorrect auto-corrects on my phone, choosing when to correct them, and trying to only do so if the error could cause issues with clarity or message.
I’m practising pressing send after only reading through an email once or twice.
As someone told me years ago: I’m human; humans make mistakes and that’s ok. It applies to me too: I’m human; that means I can make mistakes and it’s ok.