The art of making mistakes

And some advice from a recovering perfectionist

Hi friend!

I hope that the end of the year is not too hectic for you and that, wherever you are, you are allowed some space and peace of mind.

This month, a lot of my thoughts have focused on the idea of expectations. It's something I've been working on in therapy for years, but the theme of it has become emboldened and more colorful over the last two months, especially with the backdrop of the Iranian revolution.

I was griping to my therapist a few days ago that I feel torn. On the one hand, I would like to keep living my life since, as we all learned throughout the global pandemic, time does not actually stop and is never returned to us.  On the other hand, the 1401 Revolution, though ongoing, has already changed who I am. I don't think I've ever believed in anything as much as I believe in this revolution, and doing work for it doesn't feel like a strain. It feels necessary.

My therapist, wise as always, asked me why I can't be both types of persons at the same time. The question, posed ever-so pragmatically, robbed me of my breath. Why couldn't I allow these opposing yet very valid parts of myself take turns in existing?

For me, and I suspect for a lot of other people born and raised as women, it is the weight of expectations that represent most of the hurdles of becoming ourselves. Of course, this isn't a generalized formula; everyone has different circumstances which set the rich stage of their lives, but I am simply making the point that non-intentional expectations tend to present roadblocks in the path of self-discovery and growth.

Because I don't love generalizing experiences, I'll stick to my own journey here. People-pleasing has long been a chronic and, quite frankly, a toxic trait of mine. Mingled with perfectionism, it creates stagnancy due to the debilitating fear of doing the wrong thing. I lived in this mindset many years. I only did things I was good at for a very long time, and I chafed at anything that wasn't immediately within my ability to do. This, in turn, created a deep sense of insecurity and kept me in a reactionary and defensive mode; I kept trying to eliminate anything that was even remotely uncomfortable to me, especially in the creative or professional spaces.

I'm seeing now that this mindset and getting stuck in that loop were only possible because of not trusting or believing in my own personhood. In hindsight, this was a very dangerous space to be in because it allowed for others with less-than-stellar intentions to prey on my time, money, energy, and other resources. I undermined my own instincts on several occasions, and it landed me in situations where I could not undo the damage it caused me, and worse, other people.

This last year has clarified the burden of both these personal and societal expectations. Both my Iranian and American cultures expect a lot of things from me as an AFAB (assigned female at birth), and though these cultural expectations have a lot in common at times, they usually conflict in nature.

This isn't really the space where I want to get into cultural expectations, though. There are many of them, and most of us have to interface with them on a daily basis. But none of them are worst, I think, that the expectations we unknowingly put on ourselves.

For as long as I can remember, ambition has been a close friend of mine. Ever since being a little kid, I've always wanted to leave my mark on the world. And, really, there's really nothing wrong with that. Healthy ambition can be a great motivator, serving both as a spark for creativity and the steady fire that sustains it. But too much of anything can be a bad thing, and in my case, my big ambitious dreams have a tendency to turn into oversized expectations.

I don't really have a silver bullet with regards to how to tame these expectations, but there are some things that have worked for me which might be worth sharing (hence this blog post!).

First and foremost, as with many things in life, managing expectations is a practice. It's taken me most of the last three years to intentionally work through it. It might take other people longer or shorter depending on their circumstances and specific traumas, but the point is that there is a light at the end of the tunnel. It is possible to do this work, and I'm a living example of that.

Secondly, the best antidote to expectations is making mistakes and also making them often. I'm not talking about "investing a lot of money into the stock market and losing it overnight" sort of mistakes (though there is certainly a lesson to learn from that as well). I'm more talking about low-stake mistakes, like getting the answer wrong on a daily Duolingo practice or writing a messy first draft of a poem. The advantage of making low-key mistakes is two-fold: I'm able to see that making them is not the end of the world while also emphasizing the point that mistakes are part of the process, especially within the world of creativity.

I've decided to enact this on a daily basis, so I've set to change my writing process. I've been trying really, really hard not to be too critical of myself when I'm behind the keyboard while drafting. One of the ways I've been doing that is to set a ten or fifteen minute timer and to do some free-form writing which I've fondly been calling a "brain dump." During brain dump sessions, I talk to myself about all my insecurities, process my day, and basically allow myself to write about whatever is at the forefront of my mind, especially things that bother me. At the end of it, I return to my manuscript and, depending on my energy levels, just draft for two or three sprints. And if my brain tells me, "Hey, you're tired," I either take a break before coming back to a few more sprints or I stop for the night.

This has actually been a really enjoyable process, because I love challenging myself to write as fast as possible with no real goal in mind; it actually might be one of my favorite writing exercises to get me into the mindset of drafting. But most importantly, I've been pleasantly surprised that I'm as excited as I am to come back every night to tell myself the rest of my story.  It's interesting too, because objectively, I've been producing a lot of messiness and a story that is not even remotely ready for another person's eye. But I am way more satisfied with what I've been able to create because of giving myself this freedom to not create the most perfect thing on my first try.

I know this is age-old advice us writers hear time and time again, but hearing it and enacting it are two very different things. I've only implemented this method for the last month or so, but I hope it's sustainable enough that I can use it to draft a little more efficiently but also, more importantly, not hate every single part of the drafting process. At the end of the day, writing is a very important and vital outlet and what I use to process the world at large. It would be a shame if I estranged myself from it.