You may be thinking, that doesn’t sound very promising, mediocre at best. I want results, not a maybe this will work.
I have lived a lot of lives and none of them have worked out. Until I stopped obsessing over what I lack and gave into the lure of mediocrity.
For years I called myself a lazy perfectionist before I knew what perfectionism actually is. I was listening to the book It all Makes Sense Now by Meredeth Carder yesterday and she described the feeling to a T. I found that I would overthink to no end, fixate on what I'm making being some groundbreaking finished product and eventually get so exhausted by the whole experience and the pressure of getting it just right I would just give up at the last minute because it would never be good enough. I have so many stories from my life that demonstrate this pattern.
Which looked like obsessing over being good at something to the point of freezing in my tracks, working so hard yet always being last to finish a project, hiding under the covers avoiding life, forever in research mode, collecting all the materials and never actually sitting down and doing the thing. The accumulation of all of these experiences (and lots of time and perspective) helped me reach an internal shift to begin seeing life through a regenerative lens. You know how people say failure is not an option, well, I’ve failed so many times that I’ve started to embrace a different approach, failure is the only option. What are you even doing if not failing? You are definitely not live, laugh, learn-ing (i.e. growth)
How did I get here?
Well, let me tell you. I’m going to try and explain how one of my core memories unlocked my core belief system.
Picture it, a midwest living room in 1999, the hit television show rugrats is on tv (the biggest box tv you can imagine). A feral child is eating cup of noodles on a big comfy couch hanging with with her two teenage brothers. They are watching the episode titled Oppisites Attract / Art Museum. It starts out with tommy and chuckie wanting to do different things because tommy is adventurous and chuckie is anxious. They end up separating and both of them find a new friend to play with that matches their energy. At first there’s relief, they are stoked to play with someone who really gets them. Chuckie and his new friend bond over the very real fear of being eaten by your oatmeal. And then, something clicks, chuckie realizes this kid fred is afraid of everything and starts yelling at him ending his triumphant monologue with “I mean you godda do someTHING someTIME”. The siblings thought chuckie's delivery of this line was absolutely hilarious and would repeat it in a variety of situations throughout time. And that feral child was me.
So there you have it the origin story of something sometimes works. Even the scaredy cat in the play yard knows you cannot live in fear, you literally have to do something sometime.
This silly, yet life changing connection between rugrats and my real adult life has helped me realize creation and destruction are two sides of the same coin and sometimes you have to burn things down and make huge mistakes to get where you are going. Through writing this newsletter and experimenting with learning to love the problem of being a human with messy emotions and a fallible nature I hope to answer questions like
- How can we let ourselves live “thickly” with depth, a full expression of self, and see frustration and challenges as a gift to try again or try something else entirely?
- How can we experience life through observation, experimentation and play without attributing the binary of success or failure to every action or outcome?
- How can we detach from and rebel against perfectionistic thinking that feeds your shame shadow the most delicious lunch it’s ever procured?
I have so much more to share on how small mindset shifts have transformed deep seated fear into a whole new world, a world where I can stop hiding under the covers and unearth the version of myself that's been buried 6 feet under by life.
I hope you join me in brushing away layers of dirt in trial and error,
- corrie
