Goodbye Perfectionism! The freedom of practicing impErFeCCTion

I recently started a business with two friends. We spent way too much time trying to make the perfect website. Perfect texts, perfect images, professional, yet relatable. We were pushing and crumbling under the impossibility of the task. None of us were professional website builders, writers, or designers, and yet we aspired to do better than any website ever. 

It was pushing the air out of our lungs. It depressed us, made us feel small and unworthy. While we were aware of how crazy our expectations for ourselves were, we kept telling people we would only need one more week and then one more, one more. Our friends and families tried to assure us that it didn’t have to be perfect to be launched. Their pleas grew more desperate with every week.

Nonetheless, with every week there was a little more. With every week, the website felt a little more like us, made us a little happier. And yet the thought of launching it terrified me beyond measure. Was I really ready to face the world with something I made that was not perfect? How dare I?

Are these thoughts familiar? It’s easy to encourage others to “just do it”, but would you feel at ease with it?

I was raised into an education system that compared me mercilessly to my peers, allegedly for my good. No worries, this will not be an article about the many ways our education system cripples so many of us. However, it is good to remember we all felt like master craftspeople with our first drawings, never doubting our skill and creativity.

I realized only today, that suddenly it didn’t feel as terrible anymore to make things other people will see. That suddenly I didn’t feel ashamed anymore.

TALK MORE ABOUT SHAME; HOW IT FORMS AND HOW TO FREE YOURSELF FROM it with disconfirming experiences.

And now, after feeling embarrassed for so many hypothetical experiences, I feel less afraid. I can just make things. I have embraced my identity as a person who is allowed to be embarrassed as much as they want. I have nothing to prove to anybody. You can’t shame me. I have become shameless. That’s not true, obviously. I am just feeling power drunk on how liberating this freedom feels. 

“ Ist der Ruf erst ruiniert, dann lebt es sich ganz ungeniert” (“Once your reputation is ruined, one can live unashamedly”) is a German saying, that I used to think was a warning. When your reputation is ruined, you will be so ostracized that nobody cares what you do. Only lately am I realizing that only out of this freedom can real creativity flow. Real creativity needs the space to be different. Not a carbon copy of what already exists. Something new, that gets the chance to exist. Not to revolutionize, but to have the chance to. Not to fulfill all my hopes and dreams, but to go one step up. And then one more. You get the picture.