Perfectionism is an insidious demon that must be fought with every weapon you’ve got.
Here’s what’s so tricky about perfectionism: it turns procrastination into a virtue.
Because it’s good to have high standards, right?
And it’s good to expect the best from your self, right?
We want to make things that are beautiful, extraordinary, unique…
And then you crumble under the pressure you’ve put on yourself and never create anything at all. But it’s not your fault – it’s your damn high standards.
The other problem with perfectionism is that it keeps you from noticing the great things that you create effortlessly.
By keeping your focus on that which is hard, unattainable or impossible to execute, you fail to give yourself credit for that which is easy and fun.
While you’re busy struggling with the idea that you need to be some great painter (all the while NOT painting), you might miss out on a brilliant career as a caricaturist. Your frustrated desire to write the perfect novel can prevent you from seeing your potential as a lyricist.
This is the worst kind of snobbery.
Disdaining your own gifts is as cruel as disdaining your own children.
Remember: The World Needs Your Art.
It’s the economy.
It’s your job.
It’s the boss.
It’s the Internet.
It’s him, her and them. (Especially THEM!)
You may be believing that the only reason you’re not moving forward on your project is because someone or something is in your way.
You’re pretty sure that you’d be just fine if it weren’t for those outside circumstances.
Or that person.
Or that group of people.
But here’s the problem: You can’t control them.
And they are NOT going to change.
Your job is not going to change.
That person is not going to change.
The condition of the world is not going to alter itself to suit you better.
So stop trying to control things you cannot control.
Let me say that again: STOP trying to control the things over which you have no control.
And quit giving those things so much space inside of your mind.
Just bless them, and, inasmuch as is possible, forget them.
Quit having imaginary arguments with them about how they should be treating you better.
Quit complaining. Entirely.
Instead, put as much of your focus as you can on the things you CAN control.
Namely: YOU.
You control how often you take a deep breath. You control the food you eat. You control the number of times you think loving, grateful thoughts.
You control the stories you tell yourself about you, your work and the world.
Shifting your focus from “out there” to “in here” will have an immediate and radical impact on your life. You will have reclaimed your power.
And here’s the wiggly bit — from that new position of power, you actually might be able to have an impact on the outside world.
My friend Jason has made a commitment to himself that every time he travels, he makes an effort to be the kindest person that anyone at that airport deals with that day. He considers it his personal mission to make traveling a gentler experience for himself and for everyone he meets. Pretty great, huh?
Simply by shifting his attention from the things he can’t control (TSA, delayed flights, crowded waiting areas, crying children) and paying strict attention to that which he can control (his attitude, his gratitude, his sense of humor, his breathing, his recognition of the Divine in everyone he meets) Jason manages to turn what can be a grueling experience into a blessing.
When you keep your focus “out there,” you are a victim.
When you keep your focus “in here,” you’re a transformational agent of change.
Little shift; big difference.
This little missive is #3 in a series of 7 that I’m doing to encourage you to Start Right Where You Are.
Start Right Where You Are is a lovely, live, 6-week teleclass that starts next Friday, Oct. 16th. It’s only $197 (payment plan available) and, as usual, “satisfaction guaranteed or your tuition cheerfully refunded.”
Here’s where you can go to find out more about it: www.StartRightWhereYouAre.com.
And here’s where you can watch the straight-from-the-heart preview event:
http://app.webinarjam.net/replay/608/7cfca59ac1/1/0
Which got these responses:
“awesome very helpful answer – so joyfully actionable. I’m on it!” – K.
“totally laughing out loud” – C.
“Yep! I even snorted” – T
“love that reframing – actually brought tears for honoring and being authentic..” – K.
“very emotional…. thank you Sam” – S.
When was the last time a webinar made you laugh AND cry?!!?
Plus there’s a special offer that’s only good for the first 50 people who take advantage of it, so listen SOON, OK?
So just to recap, here are your opportunities:
1) Spend 15 minutes right now working on a project that is dear to your heart.
2) Watch the “Procrastination & Desire” video here:http://app.webinarjam.net/replay/608/7cfca59ac1/1/0
3) Check out Start Right Where You Are at www.StartRightWhereYouAre.com and see if it feels like a good fit for you.
And please write me back and let me know how it goes for you, OK?
Remember: The World Needs Your Art.
“My teacher told me I had no talent.”
“My partner isn’t very supportive.”
“I’ve failed before…”
One of the reasons you aren’t moving forward on your projects is because you got your heart broken.
You’ve gotten bad reviews, lost money, chosen bad partners, been scorned, laughed at, put down, fired, misunderstood, tricked and rejected.
And that old pain still hurts.
But guess what?
We ALL have experienced that pain.
Moving past the pain is what turns you into a great artist, because it forces you to learn about fragility, about limitations, about foolishness, ambition and trust.
Once you release the idea that you (alone) have been victimized, you can start to dive into the infinite subtleties of human dynamics.
You can start to realize that everyone in your life genuinely thought they were doing the right thing. They honestly believed that they were helping you, protecting you, teaching you something important.
No matter how misguided, they were doing the best they could with the information they had at the time.
Just as you were.
And are, still.
Your creative life is not supposed to be an endless hopscotching from one lily pad of success to another, any more than every romance is supposed to end in happily-ever-after.
Being a creative genius is about falling down 8 times and getting up 9.
Or, more accurately, falling down 8000 times and getting up 8001.
Every single person – and certainly every single artist – can tell you toe-curling stories about their agonizing failures and impossible obstacles.
So…it’s not just you.
I know your heartbreak has been painful for you, but it’s no reason to stop working.
In fact, the first thing I would recommend is for you to make some art about that heartbreak.
Make a story/song/dance/picture about that humiliated student, that wounded daughter, that neglected performer, that bad review, that unwise bargain.
And then…perhaps you can spend 15 minutes on your project.
“It’s supposed to be hard. If it wasn’t hard, everyone would do it. The hard is what makes it great.” – Tom Hanks as Jimmy Duggan in A League of Their Own, screenplay by the great Lowell Ganz and Babaloo Mandel
This little missive is #2 in a series of 7 that I’m doing to encourage you to Start Right Where You Are.
Start Right Where You Are is a lovely, live, 6-week teleclass that starts next Friday, Oct. 16th. It’s only $197 (payment plan available) and, as usual, “satisfaction guaranteed or your tuition cheerfully refunded.”
Here’s where you can go to find out more about it: www.StartRightWhereYouAre.com.
And here’s where you can watch the straight-from-the-heart preview event:
http://app.webinarjam.net/replay/608/7cfca59ac1/1/0
Which got these responses:
“awesome very helpful answer – so joyfully actionable. I’m on it!” – K.
“totally laughing out loud” – C.
“Yep! I even snorted” – T
“love that reframing – actually brought tears for honoring and being authentic..” – K.
“very emotional…. thank you Sam” – S.
When was the last time a webinar made you laugh AND cry?!!?
Plus there’s a special offer that’s only good for the first 50 people who take advantage of it, so listen SOON, OK?
So just to recap, here are your opportunities:
1) Spend 15 minutes right now making some art about one time when you got your creative heart broken.
2) Watch the “Procrastination & Desire” video here:http://app.webinarjam.net/replay/608/7cfca59ac1/1/0
3) Check out Start Right Where You Are at www.StartRightWhereYouAre.com and see if it feels like a good fit for you.
And please write me back and let me know how it goes for you, OK?
Remember: The World Needs Your Art.
“I’m so busy…I just don’t have the time.”
“Now is not the right time…maybe later.”
“I’m not ready yet.”
You know your projects are important to you…but you just can’t seem to find the time to work on them.
Or maybe you feel like there will be some time in the future….once the kids are in school, or once you lose 10 pounds, or maybe after the holidays….
Or you honestly believe that you are not yet ready to begin. You need another certification, or maybe a training, or you just need to feel more ready.
I hear this all the time.
And in all love, I gotta say: BALONEY.
You DO have the time. You’re just spending it on something else.
And I guarantee there is no time in the future when it will be more “convenient” or a “better” time to begin.
And you are ready.
Believe me, the fact that you have had the idea tells me that you’re ready. If you weren’t ready, you never would have thought of it.
Look, we all get the same 24 hours.
Nobody gets more and nobody gets less.
And I know you have real demands on your time…the job, the kids, the spouse, the parents, the community….but I bet you can find 15 minutes, right?
So do that.
Commit to that right now.
Put your hand on your heart and say this pledge:
“I promise that I will spend 15 minutes every single day, 365 days a year, on my project, starting right now.”
And then set your timer or the alarm on your phone and do it.
Even if you just stare at a blank piece of paper for 15 minutes – that’s great!
Or maybe you want to meditate or pray or breathe or stretch or dance or play with polymer clay or embroider a flower on a scrap of fabric or compose a few bars or write just ONE SENTENCE of your memoir….
Whatever the project is that you know would make a difference in your life, spend 15 minutes on it right now.
And then do that again tomorrow.
And the next day.
And then – and this one might be hard because somehow doing more than 3 in row of anything can be a little challenging – you’ll want to do it again. And maybe give your a little reward (like a nice walk around the block or a phone call with an old friend or a nice swim….) just for being so good and brave.
This little missive in one is a series of 7 that I’m doing to encourage you to Start Right Where You Are.
Start Right Where You Are is a lovely, live, 6-week teleclass that starts next Friday, Oct. 16th. It’s only $197 (payment plan available) and “satisfaction guaranteed or your tuition cheerfully refunded.”
Here’s where you can go to find out more about it: www.StartRightWhereYouAre.com.
And here’s where you can watch the straight-from-the-heart preview event:
http://app.webinarjam.net/replay/608/7cfca59ac1/1/0
Which got these responses:
“awesome very helpful answer – so joyfully actionable. I’m on it!” – K.
“totally laughing out loud” – C.
“Yep! I even snorted” – T
“love that reframing – actually brought tears for honoring and being authentic..” – K.
“very emotional…. thank you Sam” – S.
When was the last time a webinar made you laugh AND cry?!!?
Plus there’s a special offer that’s only good for the first 50 people who take advantage of it, so listen SOON, OK?
So just to recap, here are your opportunities:
1) Spend 15 minutes right now on a project that means something to you.
2) Watch the “Procrastination & Desire” video here:
http://app.webinarjam.net/replay/608/7cfca59ac1/1/0
3) Check out Start Right Where You Are at www.StartRightWhereYouAre.com and see if it feels like a good fit for you.
And please write me back and let me know how it goes for you, OK?
Remember: The World Needs Your Art.
We love the story of life as a road. (Success is a ladder. Time is ever marching forward.)
But we know it’s not true.
We are on shifting sands, sliding forward and backward and sideways and diagonally in our thinking, our feeling, our learning and our lives.
Time swirls about us endlessly; effortlessly sweeping us back to That Day in the Third Grade…That Picnic by the Lake…That Long and Horrible Night…no, certainly time is the most unreliable of all the unreliables.
If we think of our lives as being linear, we cheat ourselves out of the fullness of our experience.
Plus, it’s that foolish linear thinking that leads to self-immolating thoughts like, “I should be more successful by now” and “Look, that person is more successful than I am.”
We know these thoughts are lies, too, but if you only measure by the clock it is all too easy to slip those lies into your pocket and carry them around as part of your belief about yourself.
The more we learn about our art (our love), the less we know.
The longer we live on this earth, the more the years seem to pass in a day.
As our fortunes rise and fall, the more we recognize that money and status are no more accurate a marker of success than a new crop of tomatoes or a big hug from an eight-year old.
Today, challenge yourself to notice the ways in which your life is a gyre, moving in many looping directions all at once. And how that is good and meet.
The world needs your art.
Almost Perfect, Except For Just This One Thing… by samanthabennett222
Create a Customized T Shirt At Zazzle
See more Words To Live By T-Shirts “>Just A Little Divine Dissatisfaction
JUST A LITTLE DIVINE DISSATISFACTION
You’re never satisfied, are you?
Even when something is great, you are always thinking that it could be just a skotch better.
You are always revising.
Your whole life is brief, fleeting moments of satisfaction that only serve to punctuate the endless wash of “if only.”
The grass is not only greener on the other side, it is richer, thinner and better-looking as well.
You just can’t leave well enough alone, can you?
Guess what: nobody can.
Human beings are especially designed to be dissatisfied. We are in a near constant state of dissatisfaction. Dissatisfaction is what we do best. Our brains are constructed to be always ticking along, thinking, “How could this be better?”
And, perhaps more importantly, “How can I be better?”
We are always seeing something that isn’t there and wishing that it was. And artists are more dissatisfied than anyone else.
Artists are better than anyone at seeing a new solution, a new means of expression, a new version of perfection. Artists specialize in seeing what’s not there. Out of nothing, artists create something.
This nothing-into-something business is what people talk about when they talk about miracles, and artists do that sort of miracle more often than most. Of course, mothers and fathers do it, too – that’s why we call it the “miracle” of birth.
Talk about nothing into something: first there was nothing and now there’s a whole new person in the world! And good cooks do it, naturally. And gardeners. And children do it constantly.
So this chronic dissatisfaction you are feeling is not a bad thing. It is Divine Dissatisfaction. It is the restless spirit of creativity calling you to action. You are being called to create. You are being called to reveal the miracle within you.
So, next time you feel like you are an empty well under a clear blue sky, remember: There’s Nothing Wrong With A Little Divine Dissatisfaction.
What are you divinely dissatisfied with today? And what do you think you might do about that?
By the way, you may buy the shirt above by clicking here.
