Hello and welcome to Five Minutes in Nature with me Liz Scott and it's a very cool day for June,
Grey and overcast and you might hear the wind in the trees above me.
It's quite blowy today.
I've got a coat on and I've got my hood up and I'm feeling quite chilled and I'm just dawdling waiting for my dear old elderly dog as he has a good old sniff and the truth is I just want to march up this hill and get warm and today the reflection is one that I've just been reflecting on today for myself so I thought I'd share it with you and it's the curse of perfectionism,
The curse of perfectionism and I wonder if this resonates for you.
I mean as I walk up this lane here on either side of me the hedgerows are full of plants growing and they're in full leaf.
They're all at different stages of growing into flowers or just the leaves or seeding or lots of different things going on and as I look at each individual plant I can see that the leaves are a mixture of colours and textures and shapes.
Some are mottled,
Some have been a little bit eaten maybe by caterpillars and insects,
Some are a bit brown around the edges and one of the things that is worth looking at when you look at all these leaves and all these different plants and trees and shrubs that are thick in the hedgerows as I walk up this lane is that the leaves just come out and do their thing without being too concerned about how good they are.
They're not checking whether they are the best leaf in the world,
The best that they can possibly be,
They just come out and do their thing and I think we could learn a lot from leaves because there are many people in life that hold back because they have this what I call a curse of perfectionism and what it means is that they feel as though they don't want to share something in the world because they fear it's not good enough.
Now I know lots of people like this.
I've got a friend who is a brilliant writer who writes so beautifully,
Much much better than I do,
Much more proficient than I am and yet for her she doesn't put things out in the world because it's not good enough.
I know somebody else who's a fabulous artist.
She creates beautiful works of art and yet she only keeps them in her notebook because she doesn't like to share them because she doesn't think they're good enough and I was having this really lovely conversation with a friend yesterday and she was talking about her son and she said do you know what I think he's actually got the right attitude to life.
She said when I was growing up,
When I was a student,
She said I tried so hard.
I worked so hard.
I was always trying,
Trying,
Trying to be the best I possibly could and she said my son is actually quite happy with being a C grade student.
So I don't know how the grading system goes these days but certainly in our day you'd be A was the best then B then C then D then E and then a fail and C was just distinctly average and I just love this because I realised that what she was saying is she could really see the value in him just doing what he can do to pass his exams,
Get through school,
Get through his education without getting too stressed about it all.
She said he's so much more chill than I ever was as a child growing up.
I think he's got the right attitude.
I think he's got the right attitude that being a C grade student is good enough and that reminded me of someone else who I spoke to and he creates great music and he often finds it quite hard to put things out in the world because he judges himself.
He doesn't think it's good enough and yet he was the one that told me of something that he felt was really inspiring for him which was a quote from one of his mentors and the mentor said 80% is good enough.
80% is good enough.
You see when we're striving for 100% or an A grade what we might do is not put our creations out into the world and what a shame that is.
So today the reflection is about just asking yourself am I a perfectionist?
Is it serving me well?
What about if I could just put my creations out in the world?
What if rather than striving to be an A grade student I could realise that a C grade was good enough?
