What do strawberries and perfectionism have to do with each other?

Well if you wanna find out you’ll have to listen to this weeks podcast episode or watch it on YouTube. I promise it’s not clickbait I really do talk about strawberries and it’s not silly, it’s totally relatable and probably helpful too.

Do you struggle with perfectionism?

I actually don’t when it comes to photography and that’s kind of a blessing because it’s allowed me to ship the work and not get too bogged down in the minor details.

For most of you though, I would say it’s probably an issue as photography seems to attract that kind of personality. I wish there was a study I could sight here on the topic because I do think that overwhelmingly perfectionism is a HUGE barrier for a lot of artists.

Choose Your Own Perfectionist Adventure

In my experience with the perfectionists it usually takes form in one of two ways.

I’m interested to know if you agree or suffer from one or the other or god forbid both…you poor thing, please watch the above video.

Inward perfectionism

This one is what my husband has and what I would say most people I talk to have.

This is the type of perfectionism that is totally driven by your high standards of yourself. You aren’t so much bothered by others thoughts about the work or art it’s more about how you feel towards the effort and execution. You can’t be happy unless YOU feel it’s done to your standard and even if someone else gives you high acclaim or says they love it you just dwell on the 1% of it that could have been improved or the tiny little mistake you made that no one even noticed but you do and it’s literally killing you.

I do not have this one iota. I don’t think that anything is made better by being perfect and I think perfect is bullshit and it’s boring.

So maybe that’s why?

I also wasn’t brought up in any way to excel or succeed, which sometimes is to my detriment but most of the time I think it’s made me proud of an effort and not scared to just share it regardless of its perhaps need for more polish or practise.

I also find the search for “perfect” or the goal of it to be extremely futile and irrational and therefore a waste of my time from an efficiency point of view, as well as a happiness one too!

So this kind of perfectionism is from within and points to the need for some self reflection and discovery. If this is you, look into why that is something you struggle with and how you can try to omit it from your process.

Outward perfectionism

I see this as something that I could possibly align with more than the first one.

This type is more focused on the publics view or how others perceive your work or output as being “perfect” or celebrated.

This probably veers into other territory beyond perfectionism but I think it’s a form of it because it can hold you back from doing things for fear of not being seen as perfect by others.

The worry that if we share our work or ideas people won’t like them or they will ridicule and criticise us leading us to believe that the work wasn’t good enough and therefore we should have tried harder etc. - this is where the perfectionism trait can enter because we now lose confidence and start to dwell on projects and procrastinate and these are by products of perfectionism.

If I’m not super in love with something I put out, but lots of people seem to like it, then I kind of think it’s okay… I’m swayed by them or at least boosted up by it and I then don’t feel so bad about the piece. This is very contrary to the above type which all hinges on whether or not you yourself deem the work as “good enough”. Both are equally challenging and dangerous if we don’t know how to control them.

The online world loves to present a perfect picture of things - an easy win, a quick hack, a beautifully curated life in little squares or whatever aspect ratio IG grids are now…

It loves to show you the snippet and the salacious section that will either shock or make you envious. It’s important to understand this because it’s very likely that even the richest, most together, most happy looking people will have or do struggle with some type of idea of perfect they can’t meet.

Letting go of perfect might be a lifelong battle but I think if we start by recognising how our perfectionism takes form and why, we can start to engineer a few strategies to lesson and mitigate it.

Hopefully this weeks letter paired with the podcast/video will help you to kick stat this.

If you are totally free from perfectionism let us know below and share some tips if you’v struggled with this before.

I’m being very open this year about how I cope and what I go through as a modern creative so please feel free to do the same, or just quietly enjoy these weekly episodes and take what is valuable to you from them.

This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit lucylumen.substack.com