So in case you haven't figured it out yet, I totally drank some of the Kool-aid that Brene Brown is peddling. Her book,
Daring Greatly, has become my bible. It's the text book of Figuring Out My Life 101, which is a 0 credit class at ITMU (I'm Totally Messed Up) where I'm the only student and the professor.
Which explains why I say 'dude' a lot (student) and why I'm a pompous prick much of the time (professor). I'm trying really hard to make what she calls
Daring Greatly a practice in my life as a parent, leader and wholehearted person.
It's hard, though. It requires being vulnerable. And ridding your life of shame and fear. Today I listened to the part of her book (again) that she calls, Daring Greatly: Appreciating the Beauty of Cracks - "To claim the truths about who we are, where we come from, what we believe and the very imperfect nature of our lives, we have to be willing to give ourselves a break and appreciate the beauty of our crack or imperfections."
The vulnerability of being imperfect has stifled me as a blogger. I think of something I want write about, but instead of Daring Greatly and doing it I let the gremlins in my mind go to work. "What do you know about that?" "You will probably spell some stuff wrong & use commas in all the wrong places, and people will see how stupid you are." "If people see that you're blogging and not out looking for work they will judge you & they probably should because this blog is nothing...go get a job!" "Seriously, another photo of the sunset or your dog...why even bother?"
These gremlins have prevented more blog post from being published than I can even tell you about. Over and over again I let the fear of not being perfect prevent me from being...anything.
Gretchen Rubin, author of The Happiness Project contributed to Daring Greatly with a quote about her own battle with perfectionism:
"I remind myself, Don't let the perfect be the enemy of the good. (Cribbed from Voltaire) A twenty-minute walk that I do is better than the four-mile run that I don't do. The imperfect book that gets published is better than the perfect book that never leaves my computer. The dinner party of take-out Chinese food is better than the elegant diner that I never host."
Like Gretchen, I'm constantly holding myself up to some fake bar of perfection and in turn have a lot of nothing to show for it. I have months of silent blogs, weeks of image less memory cards, and days of unopened books because I may not write, photograph or read perfect enough for it to matter. The loud mouth gremlins in my head made me forget that it
all matters when it's coming from a place of love, gratitude and connection.
Today I wrote two imperfect gratitude notes, one imperfect blog post, and will make an imperfect dinner for my imperfect family. I did all of this with love, in the spirit of connection and with sincere gratitude for all the blessings in my imperfect life. I'm not even going to think about the commas.
