5 ways Antiperfection will improve your life
So many of us are slowed down, are held back and put ourselves down seeking a standard of perfection that doesn’t have rules or a clearly-defined end point. We feel like we’ll recognise it when we get there but… honestly.. will we?? It holds a lot of people back from enjoying creating or sometimes from creating anything, and I’d love to be part of breaking down that barrier so kids and adults can enjoy art but these points apply to all parts of anyone’s life. Here are five ways your life will be improved by being slightly easier on yourself, not having no standards at all just not seeking totally unobtainable ones.
Please Note: if you love your perfectionist streak, if it holds you to standards which make you happier, if it makes you a more productive person, gets your work done faster and makes you feel good about yourself then this isn’t for you! You might like other posts like Antiperfection vs Burnout Culture which was written as a guest blog post! :D
Back to us mere mortals. Here are five ways that antiperfection could improve your life:
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Progress - we will make more progress through our tasks if we aren’t trying to make each tiny element perfect. Get it done and you can always go back and improve it when you have time (if you just can’t help yourself).
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Staying motivated - going over the same tiny part of a project is disheartening. Keep moving, keep the novelty element and keep your ideas flowing. You’ll get more done in the session without constant interruptions and self doubt. You can always polish later if it’s really necessary.
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Self worth - you are enough, your ideas are enough, your opinion of whether it’s good is enough. You can do this. Drop the self doubt, get it to the best state you can and then you can always send to a friend for a final proof read rather than torturing yourself and going in circles with the same worries.
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Forgiveness of self and others - if you accept that sometimes mistakes happen and sometimes things truly don't need to be perfect then you’ll be much more capable of giving yourself and others a break occasionally. Life can be hard enough let’s not beat ourselves up over things that if we are honest with ourselves we couldn’t have changed or didn’t really need to.
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Focus on realism - have you got what you need? Are you the right person to do this? Do you have a choice?! Sometimes unfortunately we might not be the best person for the job and we don’t have what we need but there is no other option so we just have to do our best and keep the 4 points above in mind as best we can.
This subject is obviously hugely complex and personal. It’s related to personalities, life circumstances, individual histories and support systems. For me it relates to creating art as well as every single other aspect of my life. But hopefully this will give you a tiny nudge in a slightly more ‘antiperfection’ life direction, and might even convince you to pick up a paintbrush or pen and chill out trying one of my upcoming blog posts on how to paint different watercolour flowers.
I’d love to hear your thoughts below in the comments or via email or message.
If you’d like a little reminder for your office wall or you have a friend who could really do with these reminders then please join the campaign! I’ll have a few bits in the shop soon which I’ll link here as soon as they’re available including small cards to pin up somewhere you’ll see it or on a workmates wall ;)
Please head to the Badibidu shop if you’d like some antiperfect colourful relaxed art for your walls!
The #antiperfectioncampaign business card!