Do It Imperfectly

Transcript

I was just thinking about doing things imperfectly.

You might notice the next door neighbors rooster in the background.

Lately I’ve been procrastinating about making new episodes. My backlog is not quite as thick as I would like it to be partly because of this rooster crowing makes it a little hard to find the right hours to publish.

Its like I have to record very early in the morning or record very late at night but here’s the thing about life.

I’m sure you’ve heard this many times before but the situation is never going to be perfect. You’re going to start a new project or you want to take a chance and meet a new person. You will never come up with the exact right words to say.

You will never have everything planned out so perfectly it comes out right the first time. Its a kind of fantasy. We try to imagine that things can be perfect and everything is in place.

You know sometimes these things are going to be better prepared than others but there’s a point where we have to take a chance.

Of course it ties into this idea I talk about so much. The idea of being autoexigence, self demanding ness.

The drive that so many of us have to get things right, not make mistakes that Albert Ellis framed it “the idea that everything I do I must be good at.”

Of course that is completely unrealistic. So what is more realistic? Belief about the situation, one thing is of course I get better at things by doing them.

I can approach perfection by practicing and doing things imperfectly.

There’s also this idea there’s a certain Japanese art movement I forget what it’s called but two presuppositions is everything is imperfect and everything is incomplete.

So nothing is ever going to be perfect, nothing will ever be complete so we can take advantage of that. We don’t need to wait for the right situation or think things will be perfect. We can relax into the situation.

We can think I can become ready by doing this.

There is that trope in so many movies and someone say’s “Are you ready?”

And the protagonist says “ready as I’ll ever be”.

Which is interesting because it is a trope but one of the better tropes because it does display this truth about the nature of preparedness. A lot of the time we won’t be ready for the things that challenge us, that confront us.

Even things like societal evolution like when a new challenge pops up for a society and people think “I am not really ready for this, this has obviously come at the wrong time.”

And in our minds we can see so many times the motivational speaker once I heard mention the idea of becoming a father, the first time you become a father you might think you really aren’t ready. And through that process is how you become ready and learn to do it.

Maybe you can say at some stage I am competent at raising a child. I don’t think I’ve ever heard anyone say that phrase.

Everything is a learning experience, everything gives us a chance to explore ourselves, our perfection or imperfection.

Exploring different ways of doing things and finding out how to be ourselves.

Thank you for listening, thank you for giving things a go. As we used to say in Australia, have a go mate.

Thanks for extending yourself a bit and doing something you aren’t sure you are ready to do.

I have this tattoo on my left shoulder of the fools card of tarot. I’ve probably mentioned this before. The fool is standing there looking dandy and he’s got his puppy with him and he’s about to walk off a cliff. That represents this leap of faith when we embark on a new path.

Jump into the unknown. Responsibly but jump into the unknown.