For the perfectionists...

...the hardest part, probably, is to start something.

For most perfectionists that I know of - the number of hours that were spent procrastinating whether or not to do something, how to do it, and to do it right the first time ^[1] are probably in a few hundreds by now.

While browsing Instagram today, I came across this reel ^[2] where this man is talking about playing your own devil's advocate and even lightly joke about it to help you get started.

In some sense, I am a perfectionist myself. This video is a good reminder of how I used to deal with the negatives that follow this behavior pattern. As a child, I was far more proactive in announcing to my friends and family that I won't be as good as I would like to be, then crack a joke or two about it to lighten up the mood, and to lower the expectations for myself and downplay my potential failure, as well.

For the perfectionists that I know, they put a lot of weightage on others' opinion of them - which is what this video talks about prominently. Somehow, for me that challenge has been internal disapprovals more than the external ones. However, for the times when the fear of rejection and/or shame does take over - this seems like a solid coping mechanism.

If you work in Sales, or any other client-facing role, you'd know that being shameless, i.e., carefree of the potential rejections is ingrained as a part of the trainings. It is an extremely valuable trait in this field - one that is practiced over and over again until one becomes anti-fragile. 😎

As Jake, the dog said:

Sucking at something is the first step towards being sorta good at something.

I hope that you suck at a lot of things and bounce back harder each time.

Footnotes:
1.: One of the companies that I worked with, had their motto as - 'Do it right the first time'. ↩
2.: I could not embed the reel directly, so, sharing the video with credits. ↩