HARNESSING PERFECTIONISM FOR CREATIVE GROWTH

Many artists experience perfectionism, including myself. In fact, this may be a longer blog than usual because my perfectionism seems to be getting in the way of editing this down.

Perfectionism is a thought process that actually prevents us from starting our creative work, acting on our dreams or taking risks in our lives that can fuel our growth. If we are even able to start something, often perfectionism stops us dead in our tracks as we begin second-guessing and diminishing our budding efforts in the relentless pursuit of the often unattainable results we are after. 

The results we seek can seem truly monumental, a grand vision, a huge self-imposed expectation. This alone sets us up for struggle and potential defeat – we literally don’t have much of a chance of making any progress towards our goals.

If instead we could allow ourselves to simply make small, incremental steps towards our goals for ourselves, for our art, we would recognize that we’re actually getting things done, and we’re getting feedback along the way that can help us.

The idea of beginning a painting – or a project – and knowing the outcome and all the necessary twists and turns along the way is flawed and burdens us with a fixed approach, rather than a growth-focussed one. 

As Marie Forleo says in her book, ‘Everything is Figureoutable’, we succeed and grow when we focus on progress over perfection. When we bring awareness to our approach to making our art, we can begin to notice and work with our tendencies rather than against them – even use our perfectionism as a powerful tool for making progress.

If perfectionism is stopping you from either beginning or moving forward in your creative work, then what I have discovered through my research, by working with coaching clients, and in my own experience of being a self-proclaimed perfectionist, may be helpful.

I’ve always had a need to get things “right”, perform well, please others, and competently accomplish whatever I am working on. I’ve often said that I am driven by my feelings of responsibility. I believed this to be a core strength and something to be proud of. I don’t do a half-assed job of something, I go above and beyond what’s expected, required or asked. 

I’ve also responded to my own choices and commitments – once fully made – with the same vigorous attention to making everything I chose to do important to get just “right.”

As an artist I have bumped up against the two-sides of my perfectionist tendencies. On the one hand I have been able to present myself and my work well, I always followed through on my commitments, delivered on time, and maintained quality in my relationships. Gallerists love that in their artists – as did anyone I worked with or for, or so I believed. I now understand that may not always have been the case.  

So while that attention to the details and focus on honouring my commitments has served me well in that aspect of my artist’s life, what could possibly be the problem? 

Well, truthfully, the perfectionism that may have aided the business aspects of being an artist was not serving my creative aspects – at all. At least not in the way I was utilizing these tendencies. 

In my art-making, perfectionism was a limitation and a pitfall when it came to making the work, as it would also be when creating a new venture or moving forward on a dream project. Perfectionism does not like risk or growth. It does not allow the messiness of the creative process to be what it is. It turns out perfectionism actually robs us of our authenticity and prevents us from making our best art.

These two paragraphs from the book ‘The Heart to Start’ by David Kadavy really describes the mechanics of how perfectionism cheats us from making our art.

“We dream beyond our current skill level so we can convince ourselves we’re not ready to start. We tell ourselves we don’t have time. We take pride in our identity as perfectionists. All these create valid reasons to not get started. All of these let us feel good about ourselves in the meantime.”

“This self-deception is driven by the conflict between the ego and the self. Remember the ego is trying to protect us. It will convince us that we aren’t procrastinating, while at the same time allowing us to reap the benefits of that procrastination. In the short run, we have to do less real work, but in the long run, we end up never starting.”

It’s a harsh truth, I know. But when we set ourselves up to better manage these ego-based challenges and tendencies, we can find a work-around that will serve us better – helping us make the progress we’re after.

One strategy is to recognize that we may have to trick ourselves into taking action. When we place in front of ourselves a huge, daunting commitment – like, I’m going to paint every day for a minimum of five hours a day – then our ego seizes that opportunity, deeming it too much of a demand, convincing us to do something else instead, thus avoiding working at all. 

The internal voices of our ego – the inner critic – become emboldened when we attempt something so monumental and demanding. These voices tell us a convincing story of how important this is and how much it’s going to require of us, and – most importantly – how much pain we’re going to feel when we fail.

The feelings of discomfort and fear arrive like a landslide, and the need to protect our self-image becomes so overwhelming. We tell ourselves, “It’s best not to go there now, I’m just not up for it.”

To prevent this from happening, we have to find a way to begin and take action – any action – towards our vision.

A useful approach is to make a smaller, more manageable commitment. Perhaps commit to working on your art for only 20 minutes a day...and the time spent could be making small changes or big changes to what you’re working on. Or engage with some aspect of your creative practice – drawing, collage work, small studies. Any form of engagement counts, as long as you do it for a full 20 minutes without stopping and without distractions – otherwise known as avoidance strategies. 

In ‘The Heart to Start’, David Kadavy suggests:

“You have to apply just the right amount of force in your commitments. If you make too small a commitment, you won’t gain enough momentum to keep moving. If you make too big of a commitment, you’ll just end up cheating yourself.”

So there is a sweet spot for yourself that you’ll need to find and work with. We also need to be aware that cheating ourselves is actually very easy for us to do. We all cheat ourselves a little when given the opportunity, and studies have shown that we will cheat only to the level that allows us to maintain a positive self-image – so we can still feel good about ourselves. 

But here is the thing. Our perfectionism can actually work for us. We can harness some of that relentless drive to get it right and enlist our ego to help us start our creative work and continue to move forward.

With awareness we can notice when we’re monumentalizing and being overly demanding on ourselves. If we can then take that pressure off and give ourselves permission to just start, to play, to fail – to just make work even if it’s bad – we can then use our inner perfectionist to keep us moving towards improvement – making progress, not striving for perfection. 

So the idea is to let your perfectionist drive the “progress bus.” Let success be found in the incremental, consistent practice of engagement with your creative work. That is where your perfectionism can flourish – moving you along and working consistently at improving. 

When we make our work about the practice itself, and stop binding ourselves to making absolutely everything a successful outcome – meaning we invite failure and radical experimentation along the way – the process leads us to the good work, our authentic and most personal work. 

There simply is no other way to get there. 

If perfectionism is preventing you from even starting, or causing you to stop along the way, you’ll most certainly never get better at making your art. When we accept that to make good art we need to make lots of bad art, we give ourselves a fighting chance. 

With the right mindset and a ton of self-compassion, we can use our natural tendencies in ways that support that process. If you’re a perfectionist, know that the standards you apply to achieving good results can be redirected in a way that fuels your creative process. 

Let your perfectionist loose on staying consistent, on working more often and for shorter periods of time, thus allowing you to push at your boundaries and growing edges – all the way to the point of failure.

This is the work that will get you there.

I’ll leave you with this quote from Kadavy as an idea to consider. It definitely stopped me in my tracks as I reflected on my own relationship to perfectionism – as I have often proclaimed my perfectionism as competency and worn it as a badge of honour.  

“It feels good to believe you have high standards. I feels good to believe you have good taste. It feels good to believe that you won’t sacrifice your dignity by doing sub-par work.

But often times, perfectionism is what keeps us from getting started. As our ego cradles us in the warm blanket of our high standards, days and years melt by. We get ever closer to dying with our art still inside us.”