Your Permission Slip to Half-A** It
If you can’t say something nice, don’t say anything at all.
Do the job right, or not at all.
Practice makes perfect.
To me, these common quotes demand perfection. No room for mistakes. No putting your foot in your mouth. No flexibility for trying and sucking. Whaaaat is this obsession with doing things perfectly?! I’ll tell you my theory: it’s our sweet way of trying to avoid uncomfortable feelings (like failure). When we demand perfection from ourselves, we can leave our work in draft form forever, never to see the light of day (or people’s criticism).
Trying to avoid mistakes is akin to trying to keep your teeth sparkly white while you’re eating Oreos. Unless you don’t ever put that delicious cookie in your mouth, ain’t gonna happen. When we’re kiddos learning to walk, nobody calls us a big dumb dolt when we wobble and fall. They cheer us on, grin like idiots, help us back up, and think we’re the absolute shit.
Somewhere along the way, we’re no longer encouraged to get messy. Grades become a big deal, coloring in the lines is encouraged, and thinking outside the box is looked down on.
This type of thinking makes us believe that if we’re not doing something perfectly it’s not worth doing. I’m calling BS. Some things are so great to do, even if it’s half-assed. In fact, as soon as we give ourselves permission to half-ass something and get moving on it, we frequently find that we really want to whole-ass it. But we’ve gotta start somewhere. Here are 4 areas I think you should immediately start half-assing, because some of each of these is better than none.
4 things you should definitely half-ass
Putting your creative work out there
I don’t want people to think I’m an idiot. I want everyone to think I’m the best writer in the freaking universe. I want them to be enamored with my design projects, and like their life is forever changed for the better because of my stellar coaching skillz. However, if my barometer for whether or not to continue to put my stuff out there was that everyone and their sweet pruny ol’ grammy loved it, I would never publish anything, design anything, or coach anyone. If I waited until I was doing those things perfectly to start, I just never would. Someone somewhere will hate what you put out. They will think you’re entitled, too big for your britches, uneducated, regurgitating someone else’s work, too quiet about some topics, too loud about others. You get the idea? You cannot please everyone. We all want to be acknowledged for the unique unicorn of a human we are, but we get so attached to external validation that, like smoking cigarettes, it stunts our growth forever and gives us terrible breath. Stop hiding your creativity and your big ideas. It doesn’t matter if someone else wants them or not, something unlocks inside you when you start to express yourself. Don’t wait for perfection to let it out.
Meditation
If I had a dollar for every person who said they don’t have time to meditate, I’d be giving Bezos high fives right now on our mutual financial success. You even know AS YOU’RE SAYING IT that excuse is a load of doodoo. Why don’t we do something as freaking simple as sitting still and breathing for 15 minutes a day? 5 minutes a day? 1 minute a day? Meditation isn’t all ohms and emptying your mind. It’s a practice of awareness that we are not our thoughts, that being in the present is really all there is (the past exists in our memories, the future in our imaginations), and that we can always come back to ourselves. If you need a really simple meditation that isn’t woowoo, and isn’t demanding you quiet down those thoughts completely (which has proven to be pretty impossible for me), check out this 20 minute guided meditation.
Exercise
I hate running. There, I said it. I also detest frantic cardio workouts. My days of moving along to Tae Bo videos, trying not to stare at the impossibly distracting crotch sweat on Billy’s singlet, are way over. I love walking, weight lifting, and yoga. When I realized that exercise does not have to be anything super formal, balls to the walls, 7 days a week for an hour, and just STARTED, things changed for the better. Momentum ensued and I found my groove. Exercise has helped reduce stress, improve my sleep, calm my anxiety, help me feel better, and built trust in myself. Just try it. Try something. Get creative. Maybe you dance-walk on the treadmill, or go into the woods and lift heavy logs. Maybe you give your toddler airplane rides and piggyback rides, or try goat yoga. Maybe you love running and crotch sweat. Whatever. Make it fit for YOU. Start with once a week. Seriously. If you think that’s too easy, remember that when it’s too hard you don’t do it at all. J
Eating well
I’ve done Whole 30 a couple of times now. What I like about it is even if I deviate in a moment of weakness from the plan of eating only whole foods, I know that overall I’ve committed to 30 days of eating in a particular way, so the misstep doesn’t ruin my entire commitment. We are so good at justifying to ourselves, “well, I’ve already eaten one cookie and ruined my diet, I might as well eat the whole sleeve.” When we go in with a standard of perfection, we can derail ourselves quickly and never recover. Make a commitment to eating foods that actually help you feel good a larger percentage of the time. I don’t believe in “cheat days”. Our brains are very, very good at paying attention to the words we use, so calling it “cheating” can pile on the shame, or give us a sense of excitement for doing something taboo. Detach any thoughts of morality to food choices. Stop saying, “I was bad” when you eat something that is different from what you know you want. You aren’t bad, food isn’t bad. Food is energy (that’s literally what calorie means). So pick energy that lends itself to better overall health, better cognitive function, better sleep, better mood. Don’t beat yourself up when you eat emotionally, get curious and adjust.
If you needed permission to do things badly, here you go. You have to suck at something in the beginning. That’s the nature of learning. Start talking to yourself like you’re a perfect little wobbly baby learning to walk, and not like a crap human who should have their life figured out by now.