{"id":30980,"date":"2019-12-27T22:49:43","date_gmt":"2019-12-28T04:49:43","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/davidmcelroy.org\/?p=30980"},"modified":"2019-12-27T22:49:43","modified_gmt":"2019-12-28T04:49:43","slug":"shame-of-not-being-perfect-comes-with-every-new-thing-i-try-to-do","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/davidmcelroy.org\/?p=30980","title":{"rendered":"Shame of not being perfect comes with every new thing I try to do"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"\"<\/a><\/p>\n

I like things to be easy.<\/p>\n

When I was young, most things came very easily to me. I didn\u2019t have to work hard for much of anything. I quickly learned to stick to the things which were most obvious to me \u2014 and which impressed people the most \u2014 and just sit back to receive the praise.<\/p>\n

For the most part, I\u2018ve done the same thing for my adult life. Unless I have a huge incentive, I stick to what I know how to do. It\u2019s safe. It gets the praise I crave. And it keeps me from having to risk failure.<\/p>\n

But every now and then, I push myself into something completely new. The old fears start surfacing. What if I\u2019m a fraud? What if I fail at this? What if I\u2018m just embarrassing myself? What if I\u2019m not perfect?<\/p>\n

I\u2019m in that position right now as I work toward the first complete episode of my new podcast, Love & Hope. (Listen to the three-minute introduction here<\/a>.) I know the things I need to do. I\u2019m working on them. But I\u2019m not an expert at these things \u2014 and I once again feel the old fear of not being perfect.<\/p>\n

At times such as these \u2014 when I allow my perfectionism to cause me go numb inside and make me want to run away from something I\u2019m doing for the first time \u2014 I have to remind myself that nobody else knows what he\u2019s doing the first time he does it, either.<\/p>\n

I just wish I weren\u2019t so intimidated by my fears of not doing everything right the first time I attempt it.<\/p>\n

I have trouble allowing myself to be a beginner — and that’s a very good way of ensuring I never start most things that I’m capable of. Even with this podcast I’m working on, I started out telling myself that I would take existing audio segments and just put them up as episodes — intentionally keeping production very simple — while I got my bearings.<\/p>\n

But that changed quickly.<\/p>\n

Instead of just using one blob of recorded words, I threw out the things I’ve been recording for the past six weeks or so. I had to add theme music. I had to add a sponsor break. I had to add credits with music. I had to try to make it sound more like what I hear when I hear the shows produced by the most experienced producers and performers.<\/p>\n

I’m not experienced, but my mind doesn’t allow me to take that into account. I just want to scream at myself because I’m not getting it right — not writing, editing, recording and producing just like a pro.<\/p>\n

One of my biggest problems with anything I attempt is that I want to be a master of everything from the beginning. I know what\u2019s good in whatever medium I want to work in, so I feel shame that my first attempts aren\u2019t good by those standards.<\/p>\n

Even if what I do is better than what other first-timers might do, I feel humiliated at my lack of mastery.<\/p>\n

So I have trouble sharing work that I know isn\u2019t good by professional standards. Even when I force myself to do that, I beat myself up about it and often prevent myself from doing more of it. I know that in order to do good work in a medium, you have to do a lot of bad work and then mediocre work to develop what you\u2019re capable of, but I can\u2019t seem to apply that lesson to myself — because it involves letting people see how imperfect I really am.<\/p>\n

The old shame of imperfection \u2014 and the irrational fear of being punished for not being good enough \u2014 are still really strong in me.<\/p>\n

On the outside, I appear confident and certain about everything I try. I just wish I could feel that way inside. And I wish I could allow myself the grace of being imperfect while I learn — instead of having to constantly fight the desire to run away from things that aren’t easy from the start.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

I like things to be easy. When I was young, most things came very easily to me. I didn\u2019t have to work hard for much of anything. I quickly learned to stick to the things which were most obvious to me \u2014 and which impressed people the most \u2014 and just sit back to receive Keep Reading<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_genesis_hide_title":false,"_genesis_hide_breadcrumbs":false,"_genesis_hide_singular_image":false,"_genesis_hide_footer_widgets":false,"_genesis_custom_body_class":"","_genesis_custom_post_class":"","_genesis_layout":"","jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":{"0":"post-30980","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","6":"category-uncategorized","7":"entry"},"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p1x9iR-83G","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/davidmcelroy.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/30980","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/davidmcelroy.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/davidmcelroy.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/davidmcelroy.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/davidmcelroy.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=30980"}],"version-history":[{"count":9,"href":"https:\/\/davidmcelroy.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/30980\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":30990,"href":"https:\/\/davidmcelroy.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/30980\/revisions\/30990"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/davidmcelroy.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=30980"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/davidmcelroy.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=30980"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/davidmcelroy.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=30980"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}