The Trap

Over the months I've had so many opportunities to work on my articles but the thought that I wasn't good enough crippled my passion. I visited blogs that talked about a lot and listened to a few bloggers talk about their work and that horrific voice in my head told me I would never be as good as they are and I believed. I desire perfection, I want my work to be perfect, that people would read and it would truly make an impact but what I desired was my undoing.

I found myself procrastinating, I would wake up and say maybe I'd write some other day, or maybe read more about more writers, maybe I needed a more professional website and slowly I was roped into the Trap.

The Trap called Perfection.

A few days ago, I was scrolling through my timeline on Twitter and I encountered a certain tweet about perfection. He mentioned the famous quote by Churchill "perfection is the enemy of progress" this quote was not unfamiliar to me but that day I heard him say the reason a lot of dreams, goals, visions have been terminated before even starting was because of this enemy.

The next couple of hours I was in tears and I realized how long I've been in this trap, and Sadly I realized I wasn't the only one in it.

Thanks to Social Media, our need to be models of perfection has been greatly amplified as we have come to compare our lives to that of the edited reality of many.

Many of us have found ourselves creating impossible demands on ourselves because of what we've seen.

Here's something to keep your wandering mind busy. The world is Imperfect. Perfection is Impossible. Trying to achieve flawlessness is an unattainable goal and this is why you will never stop being depressed, angry, and frustrated.

Dear Fear,

The one thing every perfectionist out there that was once like me is afraid of is you. The fear of failure. I once met an artist back in my college days, if he was still alive I would hope he gets to read this because I owe him an apology. He was an amazing artist, friend and his work was beautiful but he never showed the world what he was capable of. He was a sickler but a talented man. One day, I was seated under the tree in my Faculty Quadrangle, it was late in the evening and very few students roamed the faculty and it wasn't as noisy as it usually was. He walked up to me and smiled, his hands behind his back. I looked at him and asked what he had with him and why he was in a good mood, he said he drew something. Then I asked him to show him. It was an abstract painting, it was so beautiful, it was like nothing I had ever seen. Then he stopped me halfway into my admiration and said "but sadly it's not good enough" with a very dissatisfied tone. I asked what was wrong with it, he pointed it out to me and to be honest I didn't see anything wrong with it, no one would have noticed the flaw because it was an abstract painting! Then I asked him "what do you want to do with it then? He smiled and said "I'll just draw another, there'll be another competition and this time I'll get it right" and he shreds that beautiful painting to pieces. I apologized and tried to talk him out of the mood he was in and he walked me back to my hostel. Nobody ever got to see that painting because he didn't make it long enough to.

And last night I started to wonder what if he did submit that painting? What if I stopped him from destroying it? Well, I would never know.

Now I know, that I would never get rid of you. I was not meant to get rid of fear, neither is anyone. Fear just like every emotion comes with being human.

Tell me. What is life without accepting the risk of failure?

Fear is an emotion, you have control over it. You either let it rule you or you use it.

"At the end of fear, is where great things happen"

Now because I'm scared of failing I will not shut my voice or drop my pen, instead, I'll keep on writing and making those mistakes because that's the only way I can truly experience growth.

How can it be that the desire to achieve greatness in what we want to do can lead to a negative result???

It's not the desire that's the problem, it's your definition of greatness, perfection, excellence that's the problem.

We've all said this before, "When I'm ..... Then I'll ....." ( Fill in the blank spaces)

For me it was when I get this content perfect then I'll share it with people.

We've all had those light bulb moments when we have great ideas and then we go look at people who have started on a similar path and then look at where we are and get discouraged because we tell ourselves we don't have enough tools to beat the competition and so we kill our dreams and go right back to feeling worthless and the cycle continues...

I'm starting a series that'll center on perfectionism and how it has affected a lot of us and the way out of this trap. ..

Follow, Share, and be sure to open your heart to the lessons I've got to share. ..

Thank you for reading.