Taking Imperfect Action
I was recently working on my website, building it from scratch and making a million ‘final’ changes. Every time I opened it up I would look at the Blog page all empty and lonely. I'd say to myself, “I’ll do that later, I can write up a post, no bother, will take me no time at all”. But I kept on leaving it and as I did it became a bigger and bigger task in my head. I started to run all sorts of stories about it in my mind: What will my first post be about? Well, it’s the first post on my page so it NEEDS to be profound. It HAS to be witty. There SHOULD be loads of takeaways for people who take the time to read it. I had also run with the narrative that I couldn’t launch my website until I had completed said blog post because it would look weird to have an empty tab on my site.
Anytime I hear those words, should, needs to and has to, I try my best to question them. They are the type of language for me that comes from a place of obligation. Places of obligation are usually someone else's wants or needs and not our own. It’s important to question if we hear these words, is this what I want or is this someone else's story? So when I notice these words, I ask myself, is this really true? Can I only launch my website when there is a post written? No, of course not. I decided that this post was causing me a block and that block was delaying my action of putting myself out there. I decided to temporarily remove the blog section from my site. It’s hidden to the public and I can make it visible when I am ready. Phew, what a relief.
The next thing I needed to examine was the thought that this should be the most profound piece of literary prose ever. Is this true? eh no. In fact, feeling like it should be great takes away from any little spark and flow of writing that I have right now. In reality how many people will actually be reading this and if they don’t like it, what's the worst that can happen? I needed to write something, anything and post it and then I wouldn't need to be mulling over it anymore.
This is not about letting standards go to pot and being sloppy in our work. Sometimes we need to just question the level of perfection we are trying to aim for ourselves and query if it serves us. Does it need the level of energy and perfection we are bringing to it? Perhaps if it’s your TED talk then yes, but if not, then consider lowering your standards to good, good enough, average or above average! Not everything needs to be A+ standard. If in aiming for that we are preventing ourselves from taking any action at all then we need to take a look at it.
Taking imperfect action is one of the cornerstones of the work I do with the women I coach. I am a recovering perfectionist so I know the stories, I did all the "I can’t do X before Y". Examining these stories, noticing where you use the word should and stopping to examine it can be a great start. If we wait until things are perfect we will never make the changes that we want to in our lives, big or small. So take the imperfect action. Move forward step by imperfect step.
