Inviting Perfection: Why Failing is Okay

I believe that we learn by practice. Whether it means to learn to dance by practicing dancing or to learn to live by practicing living, the principles are the same. In each, it is the performance of a dedicated precise set of acts, physical or intellectual, from which comes shape of achievement, a sense of one's being, a satisfaction of spirit. One becomes, in some area, an athlete of God. Practice means to perform, over and over again in the face of all obstacles, some act of vision, of faith, of desire. Practice is a means of inviting the perfection desired.
~ Martha Graham

June is the FLX/WordCount Blogathon!  Join us for 30 Days of blogging madness!

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esterday I talked about whether blogging every day in a challenge would overwhelm readers and inadvertently force the writer to post less than stellar work.

Then I tweeted it to Jeff Goins.

I got schooled…and told some really great advice. 

Writing every day is a habit every writer should cultivate.  And if being part of a blog challenge is how you do it (like me), then that is what you use it for.

We should always be putting forth our best work, but we shouldn’t be afraid to put our words out there at all.  Nobody is perfect; every failure is an opportunity to learn and do better next time.

This is a concept a lot of us struggle with.

The pressure to perform at your peak 100% of the time is ingrained in many of us from a young age.  Failure is seen, not as an opportunity to learn, but an embarrassment to be avoided at all costs.

But think about it.  What is the best part of watching your favorite TV show or movie?  Yes the action was realistic.  The CGI was elegantly executed.  The plot artistically written.  The actors were at their peak.  But all of that pales in comparison to. . .

The gag reel.

I love watching my favorite actors burst out laughing right in the middle of a line.  Or completely forgetting their lines.  And their co-stars doing outrageous things on purpose to mess them up?  Classic.

Tell me the Neutron Cream Prank during the filming of Star Trek: Into Darkness wasn’t just beautiful.

Do you know why we love this?

Because it makes these larger than life stars seem closer.  They make mistakes.  They don’t get it absolutely perfect the first go ‘round.  They love to goof off as much as we do.

They’re human. 

And so are we.  So fail! Fail brilliantly!  Because the important thing about any art is the act of making it.  It brings us closer to ourselves, closer to our destinies, closer to our audience.  And closer to our own humanity.

And doing so invites the perfection we desire.

Oremus pro invicem,

~ Mikaela

What are your daily writing habits?

Toxic Relationships: Calling It Quits on Our Bad Habits

It can be difficult to leave a long-term relationship, even when our inner-wisdom tells us it's time to let go. At this point, we can choose let go and endure the intense pain of leaving behind the familiar to make way for a new chapter in our life. Or we can stay and suffer a low-grade pain that slowly eats away at our heart and soul, like an emotional cancer. Until we wake up, one day and realize, we are buried so deep in the dysfunction of the relationship that we scarcely remember who we were and what we wanted and needed to be.

~ Jaeda DeWalt

June is the FLX/WordCount Blogathon!  Join us for 30 Days of blogging madness!

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elationships define us.

You’re someone’s child, possibly someone’s parent, someone’s aunt or uncle.  A boss.  An employee.  A coach.

Even as a writer, I have a relationship with you, my readers.

Sometimes these relationships are good: healthy, integrated, interdependent.  Sometimes, they’re toxic: shattered, abusive, codependent, even addictive.

This pretty much sums up my relationship with food. . .and my health.

Mental WWE

It’s been proven time and again that the mind has great power over the body.  Grief can produce fatigue, insomnia, lack of appetite.  Joy produces more endorphins, ups our energy, makes our skin glow.

For some of us, however, our mental/emotional health is in a fight to the death with our physical health.  Or more accurately, in a fight with our habits.

And let’s face it, some of those habits are downright toxic.

For instance, I eat when I’m bored.  I eat when I’m depressed.  I eat when I’m hungry.  I eat when I’m full.  But when you really look at it, 9 times out of 10, I eat when I’m bored.

The Root of All Evil. . .Er, Toxic Habits

As with any unhealthy habits, addictions, or behaviors, to truly “cure” the disease, you have to answer the question Why.  Why do you watch five hours of television instead of talking to your spouse?  Why do you eat a dozen doughnuts when you come from a family of diabetics?  Why do you put off writing that report/proposal/book/post until you give yourself an aneurysm completing it?

In my journey towards a healthier, happier, more integrated me, I’ve discovered that they why of my eating when I’m bored had an even deeper why: why are you bored at all?

Because I’m a creative.  A smart creative with mild ADD.  The question is not do I have an idea; the question is which idea do I explore first?  And yet, I get bored.  And then I eat.  And let me tell you, when I’m bored, I don’t eat carrots and broccoli.

The answer is two-fold and I’ve already answered half of it above. 

Image credit: www.mbrozafoods.org

Having even mild ADD makes concentration and focus a challenge.  People with ADD or ADHD, can hyper-focus, that is, become completely, 100% engrossed in something.  I’ve almost missed my train home a couple of times because I was immersed in some writing or editing project.  (Once I almost missed the train as it was standing right in front of me because I was hyper-focused on downloading music on my smarty pants phone!)

But as you can see, it’s not always the something that we should be focused on at the time.

The other side to this tale of habit woe is perfectionism.  I’ve talked about this double-edged sword before, but it bears repeating:

As with all artists, the writer pours himself out in his art ~ there in bloody black and white for all to see. Once the words are on the page and published, there is no going back. . . This means that our art flows directly from our soul. It is real. It is painful. It is achingly beautiful. But it is truly our blood and bone, heart and sinew. And so if we fail to reach someone; if the observer fails to "get" us or the beauty or idea we are trying to convey, it is like singing in a darkened theatre.

You put everything into your performance and the lights go on afterwards and instead of the attentive audience you thought was there, there is only empty space. Or worse, empty stares. (The Perfect and the Real, February 2011)

And of course, what is part and parcel of perfectionism?  Fear.  Fear of failure.  Fear of rejection. Ergo, the root of my boredom is really fear.

That’s just great, Mikaela.  But now what?  How do you “dig out” that root of fear?

Now, it’s decision time.

There is Such a Thing as a Good Goodbye

I’m with Charlie Brown on this one.  I like hellos, not goodbyes.  But sometimes, in order to save one’s sanity and health, you have to call it quits.

My relationship with food right now is not healthy.  In point of fact, it’s driving my mind crazy and my body bonkers.  Because remember, I don’t eat veggies and fruit when I’m bored.  (We won’t go into what I do eat ~ I have healthy, organic friends who read this and they might die of the shock.)

When I eat when I’m bored, I can actually hear my gut saying, “What the…!?  Again!?  Lady, last time you ate that piece of bleep! we sent it back ~ with a big helping of acidy horse head complaint!  What kinda scam are ya tryin’ to pull here?!”

Who knew this Southern belle had a New Jersey digestive tract?

My biggest and number one task is tackling the fear of failure and rejection.  It’s the root that needs to be dug out.  Otherwise, like a weed, the habit never dies.  That’s one of the reasons I see my therapist regularly. 

But I can’t just sit back and wait for the cognitive and dialectical behavior therapy to take.

I need to do some extra mental and physical homework on my own.  Some of these I’ve tried, some I’m still working on.  See if these might help you say goodbye to your long-term bad habit:

Get rid of all the comfort food (poison) in my house and my office.

Replace it with healthy yet fun alternatives. (I just went to Whole Foods and got a bunch – woohoo!)

Get outside.  (Now that my garden is growing, I try to visit it every day to weed, water, and walk in it.)

Get up without hitting the snooze and get in 15-20 minutes of yoga and strength training. (This one is tough ~ I am NOT a morning person.  I’m a morning growly grounchy-pants.)

Write.  Write everything.  Journal the good, the bad, the ugly, the insane.

Spend time with supportive friends.  (Just went camping with some ~ woot!)

Join a support group (haven’t tried this one yet)

Relationships define us.  But the toxic ones don’t have to anymore.  We ARE strong enough to walk away.  We ARE strong enough to form healthy, integrated relationships.  It’s just going to take some time and some hard work.

But as the wise guru Clairol reminds us, we’re worth it.

Oremus pro invicem,

~ Mikaela

Read it again: The Perfect and the Real

Learn more about Interdependence: Psych Central

Word Count Blogathon Day 29: Organizational Harmony: The Key to Creativity

Ring the bells that still can ring

Forget your perfect offering

There is a crack in everything

That’s how the light gets in.

~ Leonard Cohen

Perfection.  The enemy of the possible.  I've said it before; I'll say it again.  Holding yourself to an impossible standard is a waste of time and creative energy.  However, holding yourself to no standard is an equal waste of time and creative energy.  At least I have found this to be true in my own life.  The day to day minutia takes over like kudzu and one day you wake up and can't find your desk.  That leads to silly excuses like: "I'll clean it off tomorrow and then I'll really write!"  But tomorrow comes, and you look at the stacks of paper and books and just feel overwhelmed.  And you use that as an excuse not to write.

At least that was the scenario I lived with for a long time.

My tolerance for clutter and chaos is pretty high.  My brain works like a mind-map, not an outline [although I do love outlines], and it is always coming up with creative ideas and considers having to think about organization and rules and filing systems is a waste of time.  But even I, the queen of living in well-orchestrated chaos, have my limits.  And about a month ago, I reached it.

So I hired a professional organizer to come in and make sense of the garbled sheet music that is my boudoir / home office.  After our initial meeting, I knew Alejandra was just the conductor I needed to make my life harmonious and in key again.

Once the dust settles [ahem!]  I will let you know how it goes and whether my creativity did indeed get a boost!

Oremus pro invicem,

~ Mikaela

The Perfect and the Real

A man would do nothing if he waited until he could do it so well that no one could find fault.
~ John Henry Newman

What is it they say about good intentions? They make up the pavers on the road to Hell...yes, I know that one. Or maybe I am thinking of the best laid plans of mice and men? Well, anyway. It is always my intention and my resolution, to write more. Such a broad goal. What does it really mean, to write more? I certainly have been writing more personal letters and I journal quite a bit.

But usually when I state that I wish to write more, I mean in the public forum. Either here or having a fiction or non-fiction piece published. Yet weeks go by and there is. . . .nothing. Silence. A blank page. The pen waits to be picked up and goes dry in the waiting. Yet, like Lord Byron, I must write or go mad. So why the empty space?

Perfectionism is the mortar of writers' block. I do not obsess over proper grammar or words spelled correctly. Those are necessary to give form and structure to beauty and thought, but that is what Sullivan and other editors are for. Instead, I agonize over word paintings, the perfect analogy, a poetic turn of phrase, whether a line is a good "hook" for my readers.

Even more, I wonder about my readers. Will they "get it?" Translation: will they "get" me? As with all artists, the writer pours himself out in his art ~ there in bloody black and white for all to see. Once the words are on the page and published, there is no going back. Est quid est. Perhaps it is just me, but I believe that iNtuitive Feelers such as myself suffer more from this angst than other personality types. Somehow, we cannot divorce our art from ourselves.

This means that our art flows directly from our soul. It is real. It is painful. It is achingly beautiful. But it is truly our blood and bone, heart and sinew. And so if we fail to reach someone; if the observer fails to "get" us or the beauty or idea we are trying to convey, it is like singing in a darkened theatre. You put everything into your performance and the lights go on afterwards and instead of the attentive audience you thought was there, there is only empty space. Or worse, empty stares. I would prefer open and engaging criticism of my art rather than an blank indifference or mere tolerance. Neither engages the artist or the art he creates. It negates him and his gift.

Yet, for all that, to be real, to be authentic, is the most important thing for this artist. To shy away neither from the morbid, the painful, the brokenness, the wounds, nor the ecstasy, the joy, and the sheer love of being. And if some cannot understand, cannot hear the song or are indifferent to its beauty or obsessed with its imperfections, I cannot stop. I must continue to ply my art and hope that beauty that is real and imperfect and quirky will light the fire of warmth and illumination in some soul.

Here's to that great intention of writing more and overcoming my obsession with perfection.

Oremus pro invicem,
~ Mikaela