Cut and Paste, I am not sure what that means to you but when I started my career, cut and paste meant cut with scissors and paste with glue. That is how we made the Program Flyer at the Recreation Department. So now, I am learning that in order for my messages to reach more people, I need to make “reels”, let me tell you that is a long way from ” cut and paste”. A long way indeed!
I am fine with that cuz I love learning and evolving and changing, that is all good. Except that I don’t actually know how to make reels, do you? In my mind, they need to be perfect, in my mind, the message needs to be perfect, hair perfect, lighting perfect, all perfect. Trust me making a perfect reel is not helpful for this cut-and-paste girl.
This literally reminds me of babies learning to walk. As far as I know, when babies learn to walk, they try, they fall, and they get up. They adjust, they try, they fall, they get up, and so on until they are walking. I have never heard of any evidence that says that a baby thinks, ” OK, today I am going to walk perfectly” and that they stand up and walk perfectly. Perfectionism does not get in the way of a baby’s learning to walk.
So what about if we adopt a learner’s attitude towards certain parts of our lives? That is what I am doing with these reels. A kind of playful curiosity as opposed to the iron rod of perfectionism. How about adjusting the measure of success to” I am going to try and make a reel I am going to spend 30 minutes making a reel. I am going to watch this video about making a reel.”
What about if you need to do your income tax? It is on your list. Maybe it has been on your list for a bit of time. In your mind and on your list it says ” do income tax”, meaning complete tax return and submit. One of my colleagues, clients, and wonderful friend spoke of this to me. When she adjusted her measure of success to ” getting started on the taxes” she was able to create the time and space to start to move it off of her to-do list and to the completed list.
The super interesting thing I have observed is that when perfectionism is removed, we create the space for learning, doing, and being in an open, receptive, non-judgmental way, the actual result that is to say in my case, the reel can be better and certainly the process is more enjoyable and fun.
As always, I hope this has been helpful.
Coach Susy,
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