Ep 04: Perfectionism Doesn't Belong in Your Creative Practice
Listen Now!
Perfectionist in Recovery
Perfectionism doesn’t belong in your creative practice.
Hello and Welcome! You are listening to the Perfectionist in Recovery Podcast. My name is Marcy Parks and I am a perfectionist in Recovery.
On today’s episode, I wanted to chat a little bit with you about perfectionism and why it has absolutely no place in your creative practice.
In the frist episode, I chatted briefly about how my perfectionism manifests and I want to revisit that briefly here just in case any of this sounds familiar for any of you listening.
So my perfectionism most often comes in the form of anxiety and cyclical thinking. It permeates every part of my life, not just my creative practice. When I was in school, I would strive for straight A’s, when I was still competing in swimming, I could not settle for less than first place in any event, or a set number of new records by the end of a season. When I was in high school, my art was hyper realistic and I would spend weeks working on the tiniest details of a piece of work to get it just right. The feedback I would receive at that time from my art teacher was to “loosen up”, a concept that I could absolutely not grasp at the time. If I did not meet the standards I had set for myself, I would be ruthless in my self talk. My sense of self worth revolved 100% around my achievements.
When I try to consider where I picked up these habits, I think about what it was like for me growing up. I am the youngest of 4 children, my three older siblings are all boys. They were all great athletes as well. My family is very, very competitive, and I grew up with an intense desire to outdo my brothers in every way. If they got their name in the paper for sports, I wanted mine to be the headline. If they received any honors in school, I wanted more. My family was also very achievement and results focused, so praise was most often given based on performance, end result, or product. In other words, I just wanted bragging rights.
Now I am not putting the blame on my upbringing or saying this is the sole reason for my struggle with perfectionism. I also think it is very much part of our culture, especially for women. For a long time women have been fighting for equal standing room with men and we have had to jump through so many hoops to get to where we are today. If we couldn’t meet the standards, then we would be out of the race. But that doesn’t acknowledge that the standards are completely different for women than they are for men. I think there is a lot of pressure for women to prove that we can work full time, manage households, raise families, maintain unrealistic body standards with flawless skin, hair and makeup (but not too much makeup) and still get dinner on the table, just to prove that we deserve a seat at the table, and if we somehow can’t juggle all of these things to perfection, then we aren’t deserving.
And then there is the pressure of capitalism. Capitalism puts the focus on production and efficiency, and though it has it’s positives, when it comes to creativity, it can be very limiting. There is no room for play in a capitalist system. Where capitalism demands efficiency, creativity needs play, where capitalism focuses on production, creativity requires freedom, where capitalism emphasizes the end result and profit, the beauty of creativity comes from exploration and the journey of creating.
Further into my adult life, I stopped making art all together, and for someone who identifies as an artist, that’s a big deal. From the time I started college in 2007 to 2015 I would start one painting and never finish it. Though, I had many ideas for projects, either written bodies of work, paintings, or even other projects unrelated to art, I would often not begin them for one reason or another. When it came to art specifically, my perfectionism would tell me that because I did not have an art degree, I could not make art. But generally, my perfectionism would stop me from doing many things because I “didn’t have the time/resources/space”, or if I couldn’t do it perfectly, it wasn't worth doing at all.
What I now understand is that perfectionism is just a defense mechanism to keep us free from criticism. By being “perfect”, we are without error and therefore without judgement, without shame, without blame. Perfectionism keeps us comfortable, it keeps us in a tiny little bubble of control.
But what perfectionism also does is keep us from taking risks. It keeps us from discovery, exploration, play, and the great resource of our imagination. It keeps us trapped in the cycle of approval - as long as we are perfect, others will approve and no one can criticize us. By keeping our focus on the acceptance and approval of other people, It keeps us from ourselves and the growth that would be most fulfilling to our own personal journey.
And striving for excellence is different from perfectionism. It is one thing to do your best and be happy with whatever the outcome, and a whole other experience to be putting pressure on yourself, or limiting yourself, to achieve something that is unachievable. Again, perfectionism is about the end result. Striving to better yourself is about growth, it’s about the journey, it’s about enrichment and acceptance.
But the reason perfectionism doesn't belong in your creative practice is because creativity is, by nature, the antithesis of perfectionism. Where perfectionism is about self defense, creativity is all about vulnerability. Have you ever had the experience of sharing your creative work with the world? It is nerve wracking! “What will everyone think?! What if they hate your work?! If you have not had this experience, maybe imagine reading your journal out loud to a room of people. Are you cringing yet?
Where perfectionism is structured and regimented and planned, creativity is wild, unbridled, spontaneous. Think about it - if we are so routine, that we allow little to no room for the unexpected to occur, everything becomes predictable. We condition ourselves to know what to expect and then we stop believing anything could be any different. We leave little room for inspiration. That’s not to say routine can’t be part of creativity. In fact, in the second episode, I talked about the necessity of routinely scheduling creative practices. It is important to make a routine of free time to be creative.
Perfectionism lives in a state of fear - fear of getting something wrong, of feeling uncomfortable, of receiving criticism, of being perceived poorly - living in a fear of failure. Creativity is brave. Vulnerability is brave. Standing firmly in the truth of your messy, human self is a courageous act. Acknowledging yourself to be flawed is brave. Perfectionism means you have nothing left to learn, you have arrived. Vulnerability is acknowledging that you have a lot left to learn.
What it all comes down to is that perfectionism is false, it’s a mask, it’s not real because nothing is perfect. Creativity is authentic. It is far better to strive for authenticity than it is to strive for perfection.
I still struggle with my perfectionism, but my creative practice is where I actively try to challenge it. Through my abstract art specifically, I am learning to let go of things needing to look a certain way, or to be so clean and tidy. Through journaling, I confront the harsh voice of my inner critic directly, and work to challenge the false narrative I have built over time.
Other ways in which I try to challenge my perfectionism might be with little challenges I give myself. One example was when I dedicated 2019 to a year of making “bad art”. I was feeling like I was in a rut with the art I was making at the time and was feeling the tension of a desire to grow, but no real idea of how or what that might look like. This was my way of giving myself permission to explore, try new and different things, and let go of the pressure to “produce” something. This was probably one of the best things I have ever done for myself and my art practice because so many beautiful, unexpected things came from it. I experimented with block printing, which led me to running paintings through my sewing machine, and then I did a whole series of paintings incorporating pressed flowers I had harvested with my daughter earlier in the year (some of my most favorite paintings came from these experiments). Ultimately, this experiment got me out of my comfort zone, trying new and different things, and led me to creating the work that I am doing today. It also was a good reminder that my art practice is mine. It is about pursuing my own creative impulses, whatever those are, and is for no one else. Yes, I made a lot of “bad art”, but in the end, I just kept asking, “what is bad art, anyway? And if there is such a thing, who gives a fuck?”
So to wrap things up, today I am going to leave you with this -
Action Items for This Week!
1. Keep up your journaling! If you want a journaling prompt for this week, maybe journal about things you have wanted to try but have been too scared to try. Actually - yes, make a list of 10 things you have always wanted to try, but never have. Crossfit? Painting? Swimming? Sky diving? Get a good list of at least ten things.
2. Give yourself permission to be bad at something. Not doing so great at budgeting? IT’S OKAY. Not saying budgeting isn’t important, not saying you shouldn’t still try to be better at it, but it’s okay to not be good at it right now. Whatever it is you are struggling to do better about, take the pressure off of yourself to get it right right now and accept that it’s a process while still holding yourself accountable to continuing to try.
And if you are looking for a little extra something to inspire your inner artist during the pandemic, check out my website at www.marcyparksart.com and to get my free Self Discovery Journal Guide. This is a journal guide I put together that goes along with the meditation I offered last week. In the guide, I give you a full weekend’s worth of creative practices including a powerful journal guide, artist activities, and affirmations to help kickstart your creative recovery.
Until next time friends, be well.
Ready to take the first step in your creative recovery?
If you enjoyed the episode, LEAVE A REVIEW!
My dream is to help more people connect with their creative identities and embrace themselves as a whole, messy human, and as it turns out, leaving a review on iTunes helps me to do just that!
So thank you in advance for leaving your review and helping me to connect more people with their inner artists!