Show of hands: how many of you consider yourselves perfectionists?
Don't be shy; I am one of them. Especially around my business.
. . .
. . .
Part of it revolves around the fear of failure and success while another part is imposter syndrome for me. I'm scared to fail, but I'm more scared of succeeding and being "found out" as a fake in what I do, even though I'm not. It's kept me frozen for five years, fearing the possibility of both sides of the coin, but ultimately proving the failure side right in doing nothing. Does that sound familiar to you?
I think I'm being chivalrous in not moving forward and "waiting for the right time," but it's delaying the growth of being new to something. My biggest hangup is wanting to make sure everything is great, from photos to descriptions to pricing and packaging. But I'm trying to make them perfect all at once.
I've been so hung up on making sure I have everything to make things great from the start that I've completely missed the point: I want to open a shop, not be storage for shipping and craft supplies for "future shop items." Right now I am just that, though.
. . .
A Study in Perfectionism
My sweetheart sent me a video last week regarding perfectionism. It was about an experiment done with pottery students. One group was tasked with making as many pieces as they could in a month while the others were told to focus on creating the best piece they could. The students who were making as much as they could would be graded on how much clay they used in the end, and the others with how perfect their one piece was.
After the month was up, they found that the students who were making as many pieces as possible ended up making better quality items than the ones who made just one. The students who made more learned through their actions. The takeaway I get from it is to just create. "Quantity leads to quality." (read an article involving the experiment here). Make as much as you can of what you need and let yourself learn along the way. Tediously mulling over every step before it's done is unproductive; nothing gets done in that time. Mentally, things are happening, but there's no physical actions being put in effect to start the journey to greater things.
This stalling and "waiting for lightning to strike" as they say, has pushed my opening date further and further away. I said with confidence last year that February 2023 would be my time to shine... Well, it's February 3rd and my shop is still closed and empty. I did nothing in those months to prepare myself beside fight over which crinkle paper would be best, or whether this tissue paper would come across as "trying too hard" compared to another. No critters were knit, no row counters made. I wasn't deciding anything or putting weight on the scale for anything. Frivolous problems were being "solved" only to bring about another to delay me.
Exhausting, yes?
Pair it with imposter syndrome, and you may as well throw the whole idea away. But what good is that when you want to do something big and new and, yes, something you won't be amazing at from the start? You're allowed to be there as a beginner and keep getting better. There's nothing but the imaginary gates we throw up stopping us from things we want to do.
"If you hear a voice within you say, 'you cannot paint,' then by all means paint, and that voice will be silenced." -Vincent Van Gogh
I have a long way to go before my perfectionist thoughts are managed. My comfort zone is with those I trust and not showing my work to others if I can help it. I hate judgement and being seen in any way. That's a big obstacle to overcome when I want to run a small shop on the internet by myself. I have to be seen. I have to be judged, whether silently or to my face. I have to quiet that voice with knitting needles in my hands and fifty pounds of yarn as my grading scale.
How do you overcome perfectionist thoughts? What has been the most helpful advice you've received for it?
Comments