The problem with perfectionism and the reason why there haven´t been new posts in a long while

Don´t we all know it? There is this great thing that we love doing until suddenly one day outer or inner expectations start to grow. And these expectations change everything. We start getting doubts that our ideas and what we create is not good enough, that it would make us look foolish or that it´s even the biggest mistake we will ever make. Pretty often perfectionism starts going hand in hand with it and instead of trying harder or better we just stop trying at all.

 

When perfectionism kills your creativity

When the doubts are louder than our self-confidence and our own perfectionism stops us from taking any risks at all the creativity level is at it´s lowest point. ´Cause it´s hard to finish something that we are really proud of, while this nagging voice is telling us that it´s not good enough anyway. It feels way easier to just give up, finish it „later“ and procrastinate. In these moments reaching our goals feels impossible and we can´t even challenge ourselves to adapt to new situations or ideas.

 

The problem with perfectionism

But trying to be perfect doesn´t make people happy at all, even when you might be „the best“. It never feels as powerful as the doubts that you had before. So for me personally my perfectionism stopped me from posting for a long while now. Even though I like writing a lot and even wrote a few posts for the blog in the last month, I never published any of them. There has always been something that felt wrong. The perfect picture was missing, my ideas didn´t feel creative enough or I thought that too many people had written about it before already – so why even bother to find my own words?
The excuses were endless. Sometimes I felt like the post didn´t had enough importance, than they were too private or not positive enough. Some felt too controversial and with other the timing wasn´t right to publish them. And than the pages just stayed blank and I lost the fun over it. I told myself that I don´t have enough time for blogging anyway. Struggling with my full-time job and working on the publishing progress for my first book was overwhelming and I thought that not only my ideas where not good enough.

Do your best and forget the rest

And than I decided to do some big life changes and moved to the other side of the world to start a new life. And while I´m still in the progress of settling down I started to miss writing down my thoughts. I was thinking about what blogs used to be for me: a personal diary and not a picture perfect webpage. So instead of thinking about what others might like to read, I will just write from now on what´s in my mind. I want to enjoy the writing progress again and forget the rest. Not everything has to be perfect, it´s okay to just start and see where it goes.


Done is better than perfect

So my goal for the new year of 2020 is to strive for progress instead of perfection. I want to enjoy sharing tips with you again and therefore I decided to change this blog a bit. So as you might have seen all the german posts are down and I will continue to only write in one language from now on, as the translating progress was always one of the things that bothered me the most. I hope that this way I will feel like I can publish something way quicker, without rereading it and doubting myself if I choose the right words or correct translation. So today I am publishing this post without thinking twice about it. No improves, no double-check, no questioning it – just my plain thoughts. No matter if it´s interesting or good enough. And I really hope, that this might inspire some of you to do the same on the thing that you used to love, but stopped doing because of your doubts. Maybe it will open up a new perspective for you and instead of following the rules of perfectionism we all concentrate a bit more on being our true self’s. 

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13 comments

  1. Yes yes yes! That’s exactly how I feel with my song writing. Since people started to listen to some of my songs my creativity got really blocked and instead of just writing them for me I keep thinking weither people would like what I write or not. So stupid that fear can stop us from so many things..

    1. Hi Natasha wow that´s so cool that you are songwriter! I hope you will find a way in the future how to create your music for yourself and don´t get blocked from the outer (and inner) expectations 😉

    1. Hi Ashlee,
      oh you are so right it makes a huge difference when you finally realize that you create for yourself and not for others.
      Wish you a great day!

  2. Dear Tiziana, I am totally impressed with your post and your words are just to the point. We like to doubt ourselves and are totally critical of our work and I understand your feelings. But we’re not perfect, everyone has a weakness and that’s why I think it’s great that you wrote your thoughts down so wonderfully. They are a suggestion for all of us not only to strive for perfection and perhaps miss out on beautiful opportunities. Thank you so much.
    Have a great day!

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