Well, hello again fellow steemit friends.
In my post titled Heeding the call of your soul I mentioned how up and down the past few months have been…well, a few months more down the track I feel like the whole thing has taught me more valuable lessons than I even realised I needed to learn. There have still been many rises and falls, but they have come from the uncovering of emotions felt while trying to deal with/ integrate these lessons. I promise this post isn’t boring or “over sharing”!!! Hopefully I actually give you a good laugh at my ridiculousness!!!
So, one of these lessons I want to share with you, is the idea that I have held about “perfectionism”…the idea that so many things have to be in place before i make my next (or any!) progressive move. I have really realised that this has been very evident (and disabling!) in so many aspects of my life, especially with the company I co-own, Headless Nation, and my art.
The easy one to explain is the art, I want to feel more secure in myself as a successful artist before I move further any more with it. I want to be successful in other aspects of my life like fitness and health so that I look the right way and then deserve the progression in my art. I want to be selling X amount of my art before I approach a gallery so that I don’t feel fake enquiring about anything to do with an art exhibition or showing my work in their gallery…I want so many little things to be in place before I hold an exhibition, but 18months down the track from first speaking about the idea, that bar has risen and I still haven’t felt worthy of it….. Till the other week…..
We have so so so many ideas for our brand “Headless Nation”, but in-between idea conception and bringing into this reality, i seem to create 1 Billion unnecessary steps! At the end of the day, it is because I care and want to do it right, but man I’ve created a bit of a demon for myself! Somethings just need to be acted upon in that moment, sometimes you don’t need to wait for anything besides saying “Yes, lets do it”. The thing that happened the other week that sort of triggered learning this whole lesson, was so simple yet so monumental to me…We have so many designs ready to go for our apparel line for “Headless Nation” that we have created entirely from scratch. My partner suggested we improve a current design of our “Octophant T-shirt” and print it in pink instead of blue on the back of a singlet….a new design, a whole new product line as we haven’t done singlets yet….and something inside me in that moment just decided it had to happen, and fast. No waiting, no “oh we have to sample a million singlets to pick the right fabric”, and I won’t bore you with the plethora of other resisting thoughts that usually pulse through my mind when progress is near. Suddenly, I wouldn’t and couldn’t accept those thoughts. One week later, we had these singlets hanging in our Stall at the markets, and very nearly sold out!!!! This allowed a flow on affect for us to then get a whole other design printed onto a new singlet, and yep…nearly sold out of that lot too! Just three weeks from speaking about the idea, we ended up with three different hand printed singlets hanging in our market stall…..
I really have this dream of our brand being…well, honestly…big! I want to reach so many people, and help them see that they can build something for themselves too!!! To create something outside the mainstream. I dream about it yes…. but this time, I made a goal. I wrote it down, I did what I needed to do to make it happen, and we achieved the goal. Since, I sort of feel like my brain has reorganised itself. Now, I actually feel like I can achieve stuff successfully and fast! I feel more capable really. Just from one little thing that may not mean anything to any of you, I get that i probably sounds so small, but I feel like its changed the way I look at my life actually.
I wanted to show you the photo of the original design on the tee- i think we made it better ;)
Guys- Thank you for giving this a read! I hope that if anybody else struggles with or has struggled with the idea of perfectionism holding them back that this post makes you feel better in knowing that other people struggle with the same thing, just maybe in completely different ways?! Oh and side not- the word perfect is pretty loaded…I’m not trying to imply anything stuck up! Thats the last way I want to come across! Its just the closest word to what I am trying to express :)
I’d love to hear your stories and what the penny dropping moment was for you if you have learnt a similar lesson :)
Speak soon friends!
Headlessjess xo
