Recently I watched a TED Talk by anxiety researcher Olivia Remes. It was extremely helpful and informative, and made me feel like I had somehow balanced out the hours of not so stimulating and thought-provoking YouTube fare I had consumed prior to that. One particular piece of advice she gave evoked some strong and opposing feelings simultaneously, namely inspiration and trepidation…
We expect so much from ourselves, setting our own standards so high that we end up putting things off for fear of failure. And putting something off for a little while, leads to putting it off indefinitely and eventually abandoning the idea altogether. The point that Olivia made, was that we should stop trying to do things perfectly and just dothem – even if we end up doing them badly.
The thought of freeing myself from my own expectations, from the fear of not doing something perfectly, inspired me to action – to write this second blog post in fact. I’ve been putting it off because I’m afraid to fail, afraid to disappoint myself and afraid that what I have to say won’t be worth reading and won’t make any difference once I put it out there. But I was so inspired to just write, to just risk doing it badly because then there will only be room for improvement next time. What I realised was that people rarely set out to do something badly and I am no exception. Well… except for the time my husband Daryl decided that we should have fresh beetroot which, in case you didn’t know, comes out of the ground as hard as a rock and stubbornly clinging to as much dirt as beetrootly possible. In addition to that, let’s just say that preparation leaves your hands, and anything else the beetroot touches, looking like clues on an episode of CSI. Needless to say, I intentionally did such a bad job that beetroot only arrives at my house in its evolved, aka ready-to-eat, forms now. But back to the fear of failing at blogging, I may lack the skill to weave words into the thoughts I want to project into cyberspace, but I do have the skill to make a start and to learn to do better as I go.
Fear is paralysing. When you fear failure you resort to inaction, because if you never try you can never fail. But we are the ones setting the bar for success or failure, which means that achieving success is completely dependent on our own thoughts. I could define success as writing a grammatically perfect awe-inspiring blog post which leaves thousands of people a little more hopeful for the future. Or I could define success as posting something which, although imperfect, is exactly what I would want to share with one single person struggling and needing a ray of hope. Changing my idea of success to doing it badly as opposed to doing it perfectly but then never doing it at all is the most inspiring piece of advice I have heard in a long time.
I wish someone had put it to me so eloquently when I started university. It was crushing to be so overwhelmed by the workload that simply passing some subjects was a miracle. I was accustomed to being a top achiever in school and I defined anything less than a distinction as a failure. This is where I should add that I am visually impaired (the unable to drive, danger to self in strange environments and glasses don’t help much kind of visually impaired). I should also add that I was struggling with an undiagnosed panic and anxiety disorder (the “I feel like I’m going to die so I’ll just get out of this situation because dying is less embarrassing than admitting than I have a problem” kind). Lastly I must add that I had a grand total of one friend (the best friend from school but not in any of your classes and even more visually impaired than you kind). When I look back on all the guilt and blame I placed on myself for not achieving the highest academic and social success at university I realise how the manta “do it badly” would have helped me view my experiences in a totally different and more realistic way. I would, for example, have viewed finding my way around the enormous campus as an incredible achievement as opposed to feeling inadequate and panicked when I battled to find a venue. I would have viewed just showing up for the day a success instead of viewing leaving a class because of a panic attack a failure. I wouldn’t have put pressure on myself to be what I thought people wanted me to be in order to make friends. Instead, I would consider it a success to be true to the nerdy, socially awkward self I was with that one friend, and do the same with everyone else I met until I found more people who accepted me for me. I eventually navigated the campus with no difficulties, got an honours degree, made some amazing friends and began to learn to live with mental illness, but the journey could have been dominated by feelings of success instead of feelings of failure, guilt and shame if I had just shifted my mindset.
But I mentioned another feeling at the beginning of this post, namely, trepidation. Freed from the bonds of perfection and the constant fear of failure, what is left to stop me from pursuing anything I have ever wanted to achieve? Only excuses – and that is a thought both thrilling and terrifying.
“Do it badly” is a challenge that can reshape your future and take you on roads you would never have dared to travel if you were afraid to fail. The phrase reminds me of the lyrics from one of my favourite U2 songs which I sing in my head when fear threatens to stop me from doing something I want to do:
Get out of your own way,
Get out of your own way,
I could sing it to you all night, all night,
If I could, I’d make it alright, alright,
Nothing’s stopping you except what’s inside,
I can help you, but it’s your fight, your fight.
The song reminds me that although you can and should accept help and support, you have to decide to get out of your own way. You have to decide to push through the fear, to be honest with yourself about your limitations and your excuses and to just do what you’re putting off with the only criteria for success being “did the thing”.
Portal to Change 
Shew my friendly friend. A good piece of writing. I thoroughly enjoyed it… And yes I started with the second one.. which means I get to go read the first one now 😀
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