Hanging on to favourite ideas and trying to perfect them is like Groundhog Day. You’re just going round and round like a hamster on a wheel reliving the same old crap.
It feels like you’re making progress — but you’re really just running hard to stand still.
It feels like you’re choosing growth — but you’re actually clinging to stagnation.
Perfectionism is a fraud and a cheat. It tells you to clutch your creative ideas tightly to your chest forever — until you’re 100% sure they’ve fulfilled their purpose. Don’t listen. Let them dissolve and disappear even though you feel you’re not finished with them yet.
You can only access the full potential of the future once you’re willing to abandon what you have now. Let your present ideas go. Let the past ones go. Release them freely in full knowledge that you can’t control what happens next.
Some will fly free and never return.
Let them go.
Other ideas will eventually make their way back to you like homing pigeons — but these birds will inevitably be transformed by the trip. Sometimes it’s subtle: a slightly different plumage. Sometimes it’s a complete transformation like the phoenix reborn from the ashes.
Hanging onto the current idea kills all your future ones. You contract further and further in on yourself the more you want to hold onto your creative outputs and perfect them. When you’re intent on grasping what’s already there you miss the chance to experience each passing moment — to be truly present in the deep now.
Releasing your ideas to do their own thing gives them time to mature and creates the space for new ideas to come in.
Hi Mark,
I loved the way you described this process of releasing your ideas and not falling prey to contracting them in. Well said!