“HOW IN THE WORLD AM I SUPPOSED TO KEEP UP WITH THESE EXPECTATIONS?”
It was the first time I had said the words out loud to someone other than our cat, Gracie.
I was with my girlfriends, we were enjoying wine and cheese, and THIS had boiled to the surface.
‘I just can’t possibly keep this up… When did people start expecting SO MUCH?’
My girlfriend looked me in the eye and said, ‘My mother used to tell me that when it comes to things like this, it’s all about completion – not perfection.”
“Erin, you are so good at what you do, that your completion is another person’s perfection.”
The market we live in today has set high (sometimes unreasonably high) expectations for us wedding photographers, but that wasn’t my problem.
The problem was that I took a look at those expectations and then set EVEN HIGHER expectations of myself.
If the world was doing ‘X’, I would do ‘X times 2’. That was just how I had always operated.
Except that ‘X times 2’ is impossible to achieve.
So most of the time, I ended up doing nothing, because nothing I did was good enough.
Ever since that night over wine and cheese, I’ve had a sticky note on my laptop that says ‘Completion not Perfection.’
It’s become ugly and crumpled and stained with tea, and normally I would have taken it off long ago because it makes my workspace look messy…. but I kind of don’t care anymore.
Friends, I have felt more satisfied and fulfilled in my achievements over the last two months that I have in the past two years.
Let this be as freeing to you as it was to me – your completion is another person’s perfection.
Sometimes you just need to focus on getting it done instead of obsessing over making it perfect.
[clickToTweet tweet=”Sometimes you just need to focus on getting it done instead of obsessing over making it perfect.” quote=”Sometimes you just need to focus on getting it done instead of obsessing over making it perfect.”]
It will look pretty perfect to all of us!
Hugs,
Erin
