S3 Ep09 - Embracing Imperfection

Welcome to the Zen Habits podcast, where we dive into how to work with uncertainty, resistance, and fear around our meaningful work. This is for anyone who wants to create an impact in the world and cares deeply enough to do the work. I'm your host, Leo Babauta, creator of the Zen Habits blog.

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Hi, my friends. So in today's episode, we're going to talk about embracing imperfection. So hear me out for a minute. I'd like to explain why this is such an important topic in the Zen of Productivity season. That's because this trips us up, and perfection can have us frozen or feeling really discouraged. But it is a part of everything that we're doing here in the season and in our meaningful work.

For some people, perfectionism is a protective mechanism. It's a way to keep ourselves from getting criticized or feeling really bad. So we use the idea of trying to get it just right or good enough so that people can't criticize it. But that really freezes us up, as you might know if you're a perfectionist. It makes things really hard. It means we work way harder than we need to, things take way longer, and often we don't put anything out there if we can't get to perfection—this bulletproof, uncriticizable kind of output.

That makes it really, really hard. But you might be someone who doesn't have perfectionism. There’s another way this shows up, which is that we will fail sometimes. We’ll make mistakes, look bad, not finish a project, or miss a deadline, and that failure can also really trip us up. It has us feeling bad about ourselves, criticizing ourselves, feeling discouraged, or like giving up. So whether you have perfectionism or not, the same kind of mechanisms play out.

What I’m encouraging in this episode, and we’ll dive into this further, is embracing the imperfection that's a part of everything we do. It's necessarily a part of learning, growing, taking on challenging work beyond what we already know how to do, stepping into the unknown, leadership, relationships, and more.

Let me talk about perfectionism because it shows us a little bit about what we’re talking about, and then we’ll talk about how to actually embrace that imperfection.

Perfectionism is a protection mechanism, right? It’s something people often learn from an early age because they got criticized or felt like they did something wrong. That was scary and felt unsafe. So, to keep themselves safe, they learned how to try and make good decisions—really good outputs. Like, doing an amazing job on that school report, getting really good grades, or creating artwork that's incredible.

And the way they often do that is by working really hard, spending a lot of time on it, and keeping at it until it gets to the point where it’s good enough that people can’t criticize it. Sometimes that gives them a lot of praise, so it actually serves them. They might get good grades in school, win awards, or get praised by people for doing an amazing job at certain things. But that doesn’t always help them because now they're like, "Oh, okay, I just need to work really hard, and then I’ll get that praise," right?

Then they work really hard, and maybe they’re not getting praised. Or maybe they are, but they’re afraid that next time they won’t. So they have to work harder and harder. This protection mechanism works to some degree and gets them a lot of benefits, which is why it gets reinforced. But then there’s the fear of those benefits going away if they fail.

At some point, they can’t get to that point anymore. Sometimes they're afraid. They're working on something and it’s like, "I actually can’t tell if this is going to be bulletproof, criticism-proof." When that happens, they just won’t do anything. Perfectionists will have something drag on for a really long time if they don’t know if it's good enough. If they're learning to do something they don’t already know how to do, that’s what happens—they won’t feel good enough.

Now, of course, they’ll do a lot of research and a lot of work to try and get there, but that will freeze them up. So perfectionists often end up with something that really matters to them, that has a lot of uncertainty and involves stepping into the unknown, but they can’t succeed at it, or they don’t know if they can. And so, they get frozen.

So what if you're not a perfectionist? Well, we can see some of the same things happening. You might say, "I don't need to be perfect, but I do need to try and not make mistakes for whatever reason." And then when you do make a mistake—which of course you will—you might put it out there. Unlike the perfectionist who wouldn’t have put it out there, you might put it out there and then it fails. You get criticized, you made a typo, you missed a deadline. This is going to happen if you're putting stuff out there when you don’t know exactly how to do something, which is all learning, all challenging and meaningful projects.

We’re going to fail at something because we’re stretching, reaching, and we don’t know how to do everything. It’s part of stepping into the unknown. And when we do, it’s going to feel really bad. This is why perfectionists have their protection mechanism in place so they don’t have to feel this. But if you don’t have that protection and you fail—which will happen—you’ll feel really bad about it.

So, what do we do about that? The effects of that are like, "I got burned, and I'm not going to try that again." Instead of perfectionism, you just don’t try. You don’t take on new things. You just give up.

So, what do we do about that? I’m going to share a little bit of a meditation you can do, a practice, and then I’m going to share some approaches.

The first thing is a meditation. Let’s imagine that you actually did something that failed, or you missed a deadline, or made a mistake—some kind of imperfection, right? I’d love for you to just take a moment—maybe this happened to you recently—and just sit. Close your eyes if you like, and breathe. Just sit with that mistake, missing a deadline, or whatever it is that you did. How does that feel in your body?

What you might notice is that it might be some fear, an ache of some kind, a tightening of some kind, maybe a little bit of hurt. It’s usually not that intense, but sometimes it can be. However intense it is though, it’s just a feeling—a set of sensations in the body. And what you can do is just allow yourself to feel them.

Imagine if it wasn’t such a bad thing. It’s just like an ache, or a tenderness, or a tightness—maybe all of those. If you breathe deeper and rest your attention on these sensations, this is what you might call "being with this feeling." Just keep breathing and imagine that this could be a spacious, peaceful experience in the middle of this.

Could you find something to love about this experience? That can be a challenge, so don’t worry if you don’t get there, but just keep practicing that. And that’s all—that’s the whole practice. So imagine you actually practiced that, or maybe you just did right now. Peaceful. You're sitting with the feeling. It’s not even, after a while, after you’ve done this five, 10, 15, 20 times, it becomes not such a big deal.

Maybe you’ve practiced it a hundred times. Imagine then—it’s not a big deal to feel this mistake. Like, "Ah, maybe there’s a sense of I messed up, a sense of inadequacy, a sense of I’m not good enough." And that’s okay. You can just let yourself be with that feeling, breathe, and it doesn’t have to be such a big deal. So that’s the first thing.

Now I want to talk about some approaches that I think are helpful. First, a lot of you might have heard of the Japanese term wabi-sabi. This is a Japanese cultural idea of imperfections being beautiful. Let’s say you had an aged desk, and there’s a stain from a drink from 10 years ago, and over here there’s another stain. There are scratches, and there’s a sense of imperfection to the desk. It’s not new and perfect, but aged and beautiful.

The idea is that things have chips and cracks in them, things have discoloration or wear, a sense that the person who made it didn’t do it in a factory-perfect way but by hand. These imperfections are actually quite beautiful. They add texture to an object.

But if we look beyond the idea of an object being imperfect but beautiful, we can see that everything can be like this. All of life has little chips and cracks, little aging and weathering, a little texture. We do, as people, and every experience does. That’s something to embrace because that experience becomes unique, not just rote. It’s a new experience that we can fully love. The same is true of every person. Every person has some kind of wear and tear or imperfection that makes them who they are, and we can learn to love that.

With that idea of wabi-sabi in Zen, what if we took that to our work? The work itself is going to have flaws, but it will be made more beautiful and unique because of those flaws. Of course, if we need to, we can fix those flaws and work on the messiness of it, but it isn’t ever going to be "perfect." In fact, it already is. That’s an idea that can help us embrace imperfection.

There’s another aspect of imperfection that’s important: this is how we learn. We stumble and fall, and we learn from those stumbles and falls. I think every one of us gets that intellectually—we know that’s true. We learn from our mistakes. But we don’t embrace that attitude as we’re in our learning process, which we’re always in. If you’re taking on a project, trying to change a habit, or trying to work with people, you are in a learning phase.

And that is how you’ll learn. What can we learn from all of these imperfections, these mistakes, all the things that happen? Think of it as part of your growth. I want to encourage that as well.

There’s wabi-sabi—that things are beautiful and unique because of their imperfections—and the idea that mistakes are things we can learn from. If we have these ideas, it’s okay to make mistakes. I’m going to try things, make mistakes, and fail sometimes, and then just learn to sit with the feeling of failure. But then, what can I learn from it? What beauty can I see in it?

Okay, so if you can take this approach, then everything you do—an email, a report you write, a blog post you write (if you're me)—you can do it and put it out there. I’m not saying don’t ever proofread, but it doesn’t have to have a lot of stress to get it perfect if you have that approach. Things start to flow. Your productivity and output start to flow. Your ability to respond to messages and emails starts to flow, and that becomes a much easier way of being if you can embrace the imperfection.

I'm going to share a couple of ideas that extend from this. One is the idea that we could bring play into our work, into our productivity. Play doesn’t have the idea of getting things right. Play is just like, "Let me try things. Let me have fun with it. Let me explore and be curious. Let me do this and see how it works, and that and see how it works, and try this because it feels fun." This is a way of working and working together that can be quite beautiful if we allow this idea that we don’t have to get things perfect. Embracing imperfection could be embracing play.

I want to also contrast play versus getting it right. Try and notice when you get stuck in the idea, "I need to do it the right way. I need to get it right. I need to do it so that it is right." That rightness that you're trying to get to is perfection. That's the ideal. That's your expectation. That's the ideal goal you're shooting for in the output. But what if you could shoot for that goal, but there is no "right" way to do it? You know, sometimes there might be, but for a lot of times, it’s like, "Let me just try it this way." If I were to write a blog post, is there a right way to write a blog post? I would argue no. There’s just a "Leo way" in this moment. That’s the way of writing that blog post, and there isn’t a right or wrong.

Instead of getting it right, which is one thing over here, I can just play. Another way to do it over here, instead of play, is just to choose from the heart. What would I like right now? How would I like to do this in a way that feels really nice for my heart? What do I want to do? What do I want to choose, versus needing to get it right?

Play and choosing from the heart are two things I want to contrast with getting it right. If we embrace imperfection, what that means is we can play, we can choose from the heart, without needing to get anything right.

Finally, if you're trying to stick to something long-term, like a habit or a long-term project, you will fall off the path. That’s an obvious one. It’s like, "Oh, I wanted to exercise five days a week, but last week I only exercised once for some reason, or I missed all of them because I was sick, or I traveled, or I had visitors, or whatever." Falling off the habit is a part of habit creation. It's part of it, but we think there's something wrong with that.

So, embracing imperfection in that case is just starting again and learning from the falling off, but then embracing the idea that, yeah, falling off is part of it. That’s true not only of habit change but also of our projects. If you're working on a project, falling off the project is a part of the project itself. Embracing imperfection means reminding yourself that falling off is a part of the process.

Okay, that’s what I’ve got for you today. I hope this was helpful. If you have any questions, please write to me at [email protected], or if you're watching the YouTube version of this, put a comment below. I'd love to hear questions, reflections, and ways you're working with this, or struggles that you have. All of it is welcome.

Thanks, my friends.

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