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One of the most valuable things I think I've ever learned - and I think I've only actually started learning it in the past year or so - is that imperfection and mistakes do not equal failure or regression. If you treat them instead as growth, surprise surprise: you tend to grow.
This applies to everything - work, hobbies, art, skills, interpersonal relationships. And it seems like such a basic thing, but for a neurotic and anxious perfectionist it's taken a while to figure it out, and I still often need reminding.
But I've been noticing recently that I've been looking upon imperfections not as a failure of the entire thing I've been working on, but simply as opportunities to do better next time - to hone and improve. Weirdly, Cognitive Behavioural Therapy had something to do with this:
The idea of acknowledging the feelings of anxiety or depression or disappointment without letting it overwhelm me translates really well to other parts of my life - acknowledging mistakes and then improving, rather than letting the mistakes overwhelm any progress or success.
Basically I've been noticing I do this more often and it's something that gives me a lot of joy and peace and I'm quite chuffed. Thanks for coming to my TED talk, please stay home and hydrated.
