Participation Trophies

I’m going to just write and see what happens. Maybe I can do that classic raw artist move and put an unedited version of this into a blog post. Although that would require copying all of this into digital text, which would be a bit of a ballache. Let’s just give it a go.

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I’ve been thinking about life a lot recently. Well, about the beliefs that I hold in my life and how that influences my life without my even realising it and I think that I’ve been holding myself back. With this idea of having to maximise every moment to be happy (more to it, but that’s the result). I’ve added so much pressure to every moment. Realistically, just being there is enough. I want to give myself a participation trophy every time I do something because until now, I’ve been setting perfection as the pre-requisite for, well, life.

I have an inkling that I’ve been wrong thinking that you need to make life great. Instead, I’m beginning to believe that all I need to do is turn up and life and my natural ability to learn through experiences (as a human) will do the rest.

And I know that kind of looks like I’m preaching coasting through life, but that’s not true. At least, not completely. I still need to be there for the difficult stuff, like expressing myself fully and thoughtfully, mending relationships when they become fraught, and - on those more anxiety-fuelled days - go shopping to then cook a meal. I’m sure you’ll appreciate that’s not an extensive list, but the point is that I just have to try, and not put so much pressure on every action to contribute to some sort of life-long happiness.

Will I use perfectionism as an excuse to avoid doing the hard stuff? “Not so much”.

They say not to let ‘perfect’ get in the way of ‘good’, but for me it’s more accurate to say that I shouldn’t let ‘perfect’ get in they way of ‘something’. I’m sitting en route to Germany to see what city I might want to live in (if at all) and I’m having to hold back tears because it hurts to know how much I’ve chipped away at myself and how much life I haven’t lived because subconscious beliefs led me to set such high expectations, often impossibly so, that I ‘failed’ to meet.

“No more!”, I yell, feeling like William Wallace shouting “Freedoooom” in that epic Braveheart scene. But a more realistic expectation is “Not so much”. I [slightly reluctantly] accept that I will have moments where I beat myself up for not hitting my standards and I will retreat from life because it all gets a bit (a lot) too much for me sometimes. Will I use perfectionism as an excuse to avoid doing the hard stuff? “Not so much”. And that gives me more opportunities to experience the wonders that life has to offer.

So in line with what I’ve written here, I will share this, completely unedited, along with a less-than-flattering sketch of my mum I did whilst on the flight (sharing with her permission). Now I’ve got to go, I’ve just landed!