It's my life & I'll implode it if I want to
abandoning perfectionism and doing whatever the f*ck you want
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A perfectionist’s life changes forever when they embrace the fact that this life is theirs and theirs alone to fuck up, burn down, and rebuild as many times as they please. Maybe once a perfectionist makes a risky decision, everything will implode, and maybe it’s okay if it does.
Burn it down
In the mind of a perfectionist, decision-making can be agonizing. Each choice is carefully weighed and considered as the perfectionist analyzes how it might shape their path five to ten years down the line. As to not disturb the path to success, perfectionists agonize over each choice that could possibly alter the most direct and logical path forward. Every decision feels like one that could make or break the entire illusion of stability that they have spent months or years carefully cultivating. But, without this painstaking decision process, perfectionists may feel a loss of control so intensely that it feels like everything they love will implode with the ‘wrong’ decision. This can only be remedied by learning to embrace destruction and uncertainty.
I’ve spent months or years agonizing over projects only to abandon them altogether. In my first podcast, Hannah Says, I abandoned it after 33 episodes and a $7000 sinkhole that only seemed to grow wider. When I had started, I anticipated I would podcast for the rest of my life, eventually rise to the top of the Spotify charts and star in a series produced by a podcasting giant. But once I started, I realized I didn’t enjoy the process, it was a sinkhole of money, and I despised doing solo episodes. So, after a long and agonizing decision, I finally quit.
Knowing that success often stems from consistency and determination, perfectionists convince themselves that once they finally feel confident about a decision enough to follow a certain path, they must stick to it forever. The agony it took to finally decide, create, and launch something into the world cannot be all for nothing. One wonders, if I let it all go, or if I take a break, am I making the biggest mistake of my life? How can I walk away when I have no idea what else lies ahead and the current path feels safe and secure?
I abandoned a podcasting dream that I probably could have made work and tried hard to do so. I spent ample time trying to reconfigure, adapt, and evolve. But eventually, after two years with no satisfaction, I got tired of strategizing. I could have resisted my unhappiness and forced myself to publish weekly anyway. I could have invested more, strategized more, hired a coach and a team, and spent months or years putting in my hours to eventually find my groove. Instead, I walked away and dedicated that time to doing something that I very well might also abandon to start all over again.
A perfectionist’s life changes forever when they embrace the fact that this life is theirs and theirs alone to fuck up, burn down, and rebuild as many times as they please. Maybe once a perfectionist makes a risky decision, everything will implode, and maybe it’s okay if it does. Maybe along the path of destruction, one will lose some things they did not anticipate losing, and that will fucking hurt. But through the grief, they might uncover their soul’s path which was hiding underneath the tight, perfectionist grip of control the entire time.
You never know unless you try and fail
One thing I’ve learned in my graveyard of abandoned projects is that all the strategies in the world can’t replace trying and fucking up. It is hard to envision how a project will go and how we’ll feel about it until we actually do the thing. I myself have spent months and years trapped in my head before finally feeling confident enough to start a project when I should have just started messy and unsure. Because, throughout these projects, I learned invaluable knowledge that could only be gathered by doing instead of strategizing.
When one chooses to abandon a project they’ve poured months of strategy and faith into, it feels like failure. If they cannot do something forever, why try at all? But in the process itself, the skills learned while undertaking the project build and don’t go away. In each project, one learns a little bit more, expanding their ever-growing arsenal of soft and hard skills and evidence that they can fucking conquer whatever they set their minds to.
Each project left behind doesn’t disappear into some abandoned abyss of nothingness. Those skills are carried with us wherever we go and lay a solid foundation for the future, even if they seem unrelated to what we will do next. Even if one walks away from something, there is always the ability to return when they’re ready. According to the Kabbalist mystics, it is important to walk away from something for the sake of returning with fresh eyes. There is also the fact that there is a right time for everything to happen. Things must happen in the correct order. A project may be temporarily abandoned as one develops the skills necessary to make it a success, which should have been built beforehand. But how can one know when to take a break, when to just walk away, or when to keep going despite the lingering feelings something isn’t quite right?
Do whatever the fuck you want
I guess at the end of the day, one really can’t know. No guidebook’s going to spell it out for us. We just have to choose to either continue, determined to keep agonizing, strategizing, and holding faith that things will work out, or walk away and do whatever the fuck we want.
Maybe there is something to walking away, making somewhat inconsiderate choices and barreling toward what is pulling you forward. Maybe, there can be power in sometimes doing whatever the fuck feels good in the moment without considering how it will feel five years down the line.
Because when we don’t like the process of creating something in the present, what makes us think that we are going to be excited to maintain it five years down the line? Happiness and success are found in embracing the process rather than the end goal. Will the extra income, validation, and potential career growth opportunities be worth it, if they were the result of years of sustained struggle? Will it ever reach a point where it becomes easy, where we find a grove and achieve effortless success? What if exponential growth lies right around the corner? But, what is the cost?
Is it possible for us to find even more opportunities, possibilities and income down the path that doesn’t make logical sense or feels risky and unsafe? Is it possible that we have no idea what we’re missing on the other side, but then when we find it, we don’t feel any more satisfied than we did before? How horrible would it feel if we abandoned and blew up a project, only to find ourselves desiring to return to the husked remains of what we destroyed? Are we banking that a different project will make us an overnight success, fix our problems and suddenly make life a little bit easier?
So many questions and few accompanying answers. But at the end of the day, it’s our fucking lives to blow up as we please. Maybe it’s better to live boldly and without regrets, leaving no stone unturned while barrelling toward that which brings novelty and excitement. Maybe it’s better to look back on a life thoroughly and messily lived rather than thoughtfully and agonizingly strategized. At the end of the day, no amount of perfectionist strategy can shape what cannot be controlled.
Maybe, the zone of destruction and excitement is where magic lives.
