Written By: Darby Baham
“You pray to catch the bus, and then you run as fast as you can. You can’t pray to catch the bus and stroll down the street, right? You gotta pray to catch the bus, run as fast as you can because then if you miss the bus, it’s not your bus. But if you don’t run, that could have been your bus. And if you don’t pray, that could have been your bus. So, I try to do both. Like, all of my work, all of my faith, and then, you know, rejection is God’s protection. It’s mine or it’s not.” – Kerry Washington
I am a recovering perfectionist.
By perfectionist, I absolutely mean that I was once the person who lived her life trying to check off all the boxes that I thought I should have, aiming for the picture-perfect life at all costs. And recovering because, in truth, while I now know that thinking held me back from doing all the scary things that ultimately made me happy, it is a constant work in progress living out this change in my mindset. One day, I will firmly believe that I can’t live a fulfilled life waiting for things to always be perfect. And the next day, I’m literally editing the texts I send to my friends because the horror of a missed apostrophe is killing my soul. So, like I mentioned, recovering.
But one of the biggest things I’ve learned about perfectionism as I’ve worked through the many reasons I held onto it like a baby blanket, is that, often, when I found myself leaning on “perfect” as the end goal, it was because some part of me didn’t trust myself, my path, or the people around me.
Or in Kerry Washington’s terms, I didn’t quite believe “it’s mine or it’s not.”
This was the case when bought a beautiful dress one year and then waited an additional three years to wear it because I made the mistake of deeming it a “perfect date dress.” And once I did that, I also inadvertently put all this pressure on myself to make sure that I didn’t wear it for something that wasn’t the perfect date with the perfect guy. I didn’t realize it then, but not only was I completely wasting that dress, but I was also living out a deep-seated belief that I needed to be perfect when I wore my perfect date dress to ensure any guy I met would see past my flaws. That’s a lot of pressure to put on a strapless dress, no matter how cute!
It was also the case when I spent years working on the first three chapters of my book, trying to perfect it as I wrote it. I spent so much time going over those words that I was stopping myself from pitching it to agents, from getting it out into the world, heck from even actually finishing the full manuscript. And why? Because somewhere along the way I read that your first three chapters needed to knock the socks off an agent, and I didn’t really trust that I could do that. Not without it being perfect, right? Not without agonizing over it again and again.
It took a good friend to remind then that I needed to trust my path and, most importantly, stop re-writing those first three chapters. Basically, either it was meant for me to be an author it wasn’t.
Now, don’t get me wrong. This is not an excuse to not try my best at everything I do. But if I’m honest, that’s never been my problem. It was always not trusting that my best was enough. And so, if I could get the words, the dress, the date, me to be perfect, then maybe the things I wanted would come to be. That’s an ugly crutch that I’m happy to say I’ve largely let go of. Sure, I still read my planned social media posts 50 times before I press send, but I stopped aiming for a perfect life a long time ago. One that is meaningful, where I’m actually enjoying myself and experiencing all the different emotions we get to feel as humans work just fine for me.
And that book that I finally stopped rewriting the first three chapters on? Well, when I let my crutch go, I finished it. And as of January 25, 2022, Harlequin has published it. So, now it’s out there in the world to actually hopefully make a difference, and possibly even convince some other souls to let their crutches go too.
