How to Overcome Perfectionism: Focus on the Journey, Not the Goal (BKI 50)
Hi, this is Diana. Bright Knowledge Instants give you one thing you can do today to move your creativity ahead. And today we have reached number 50. This is the 50th bright knowledge instant. And this gets me to thinking a lot about creative journeys and perfectionism. So perfectionism, I have found to be one of the most toxic things to both your learning and your creativity. And I fall into that same trap myself.
You know, I want every instant to be perfect. I want every performance to be perfect. I want every teaching moment as I interact with students to be perfect. And they will not be. They can't be by definition, because we're creative souls. As soon as we reach our goal of perfection, a whole new world opens up, of new possibility, new horizons. If we focus only on achieving these perfect goals, we're going to get burnt out pretty soon because in fact, we can never achieve those perfect goals and feel satisfied as soon as we come close to it.
A whole new world opens up, as I said. So when we focus instead on the creative journey and understand goals as simply markers or milestones along the way, we can feel a lot more energy, open up, a lot more inspiration, and a lot more learning. Our minds become expanded when we focus on the journey rather than just end results. I know that when I'm aiming for a goal in a sort of perfectionistic way that I put blinders on and I don't notice other influences that are coming in and that are maybe challenging my point of view, that are giving me an opportunity to grow, that are things I thought I once didn't like and now I'm like, actually, that's very interesting.
My mind expands when I say I'm on a journey rather than I'm going towards a goal. When I go towards a goal, I limit my opportunities quite strongly. There's a wonderful phrase, beginner's mind means that many opportunities are open. In the eyes of an expert, few are open. So as we focus instead on this idea of process, you'll find yourself having a lot more energy and also that it makes more sense, because results really happen not out of the blue, but out of a buildup of things that you've been doing over time.
And they can be microscopic little activities. It could be that five minute practice that you had today that actually caused you to realize something very important. It's a tiny little seed that was planted that will blossom into something huge. Those are the moments that manifest in the end in you achieving your goal. But the goal doesn't appear out of the blue. It's really from the journey that it happens on so my advice to you today and the advice I try to take and believe me I know how hard it is because we're a perfection culture my advice is enjoy the journey it is only the journey you only have the now My friend Masayo had a beautiful phrase she shared with me it is now is the only forever so if our minds are towards these goals out in the future we're not actually even getting the now so this looks like in daily life appreciating every moment in your in your life because really it's all fodder for the creative process every moment adds up to engagement which is ultimately what creativity is and sometimes we don't know oftentimes we don't know how important something was until we look back on it so might as well celebrate be present learn be inspired every moment that you can be and along the way you are going to achieve even more powerful milestones so here's to the journey and to 50.
Bye.