The good thing about Monday mornings is reading an email from Mark Manson.
Today, he made mention about how life will always have a tension between being perfect as you are right now, and the the call to personal improvement.
What a nice reminder to wake up to.
As I thought about this concept, I found it entered my Morning Pages as well. I very much believe in the power of enoughness. And, in fact, as you get grounded in your worth, you will feel more confident about doing anything. Wanna write a blog post? Let go of the criticisms in your mind, and just write. Experience your enoughness by expressing yourself imperfectly.
You’re going to be imperfect, and that’s ok.
The inner critic is like the sharpen setting
You know how faces tend to look better when there’s just a soft filter on them? Maybe the eyes stay in focus and the teeth and, you know, the tip of the nose. But when you’re editing a filter of a person’s face and you slide the sharpen setting all the way to the right, well, damn, it’s just….scary.
Not only is it scary, but it’s not accurate.
Your inner critic is a little like the sharpen slider: it wants to improve things, but if you were to listen to everything it says, you’d turn into a monster.
Life lived well requires a certain amount push and pull to keep things moving. Yin and yang, day and night, male and female, conservatives and progressives.
Do the thing and do it imperfectly.
Just do the thing. Do it because you love yourself and because you are enough and your desire to post some novel pics to your 3 followers is all the reason you need.
By doing the thing, you’ll get better. You can’t be a stand up comic without sucking for a few years. You can’t become an influencer on social media right out of the gate. That’s not how it works. Getting better at something requires you to do the thing a lot. So do it. Listen to the Ira Glass quote again. Realize that you’ve got taste and your final product right now isn’t going to be as good as it will in 5 years, because right now you’re probably creating content in your free time and not as a full time job and you’re just figuring things out.
It’s ok.
In fact, it’s great.
You are enough
You can experience the thrill of improvement
So, don’t feel bad.
Just do.
Do something.
Do anything.
Do you.