Challenging all perfectionists: are you hurting your creativity and fitness?

“I’m a perfectionist,” you say with a touch of pride mingled with shyness. But is your perfectionism holding you back? Quite possibly. You see, a perfectionist won’t try anything new unless they can be ‘perfect’ at it. We are quite literally embarrassed by our own imperfections.

When we try doing a new type of exercise we’re thinking: “Oh heavens. Am I doing this right? Why is that guy looking at me? I’m making a fool of myself! Maybe I should just do what I’m good at”.

It’s even worse when it comes to creative projects. We stand poised, paintbrush, pen or musical instrument in hand and what’s going through our heads? “What if I mess up? Is anyone watching me? How should I even start this? What if it turns out mediocre?” Often, the fear overcomes us. We put the pen and paper, guitar or canvas aside and tell ourselves we’re waiting for inspiration. Yeah, right!

But we know that perfection doesn’t exist!

We’ll even say that perfection is boring. It is. So what’s with the fear of imperfection? We don’t expect others to be perfect – why should we be so unkind to ourselves? We’ll even have a preference for handmade items BECAUSE they’re a bit wonky and interesting. But when it comes to our own work, our desire for perfection paralyses us. We daren’t even try.

It’s good to aim high but…

Don’t get me wrong, it’s good to aim high, but if things don’t come out just as you planned, you also don’t need to flog yourself. I battle with my perfectionism. And I see I’m not the only one. I found a research paper

on perfectionism that says we perfectionists get depressed and stressed out easily.

Once, I knocked off a quick mood painting with black watercolour. I was just messing around. The brush strokes are rough, the proportions are all wrong. I try to keep it hidden. One day, a friend was flipping through my sketchbook.

“I love this”! She cried.

“Say what?” I was incredulous.

Yup! My most imperfect effort was the single thing in my sketchbook that really impressed her. Why? Well here’s the odd thing. She loved it because it was imperfect. It had character, it had spontaneity. Perfection? No. Personality? Yes!

Wabi-Sabi: the art of imperfection

The Japanese celebrate imperfection in the creative philosophy known as wabi-sabi. The story of its origin goes like this:

A young man wanted to become a tea master, so he approached a master and asked to be his apprentice. The tea master said that the young man should tidy his yard and if he did a good job, he might be given the opportunity to learn.

The young man went to work, raking up every fallen leaf and tidying everything until it was perfect. When he was finished, he stopped to survey the results. It didn’t look right to him. So he went over to a blooming cherry tree and shook it so that some blossoms would fall randomly to the ground.

And so, legend has it, the art of imperfection known as wabi-sabi was born. 

Wabi-sabi celebrates transience, imperfection and the incomplete. It’s a rebellion against perfection, and in that sense, it is a ‘perfect’ and beautiful revolution in the way we think.

Which brings us to this week’s challenge

Here’s your brief. Create something imperfect, transient and incomplete – or any one of these three things. Do it on purpose. If by some nearly impossible chance you create something that’s perfect, mess it up a bit.

Your project can cover a few minutes, a few hours or even a few days. The scale of what you do is up to you. Work with any medium: arrange a few flowers, make a wonky earthenware pot, go hunting for a twisted and gnarled piece of wood or a stained and rusted bit of metal, daub out a painting with a few exuberant brush strokes.

Don’t go looking at Japanese examples and try to emulate them (unless you want to). Be completely free and uninhibited.

As for your fitness program, try something new. Take on a class where others will see your imperfections and tell yourself you don’t care. Go to yoga and be the stiffest person in the class. Whatever you always wanted to try and were afraid to look bad at – tackle it. If you’re low on inspiration, go and turn some cartwheels in the back yard. Laugh at your beautiful imperfection!

Whatever your project, I challenge you to be perfectly imperfect. Good luck!

Daily Routines Will Determine The Following 24 Hours

Have you ever reached the end of yet another busy day only to find that you didn’t achieve any of the things that you really wanted to get done? Life’s like that. We get really busy, and the time just sleets past. Does that mean that you have to give up on your goals? Definitely not! Millionaires, successful entrepreneurs, serious athletes and the like always start their day the same way. The key to gaining control over your life lies in your morning and evening routines.

Routines make it easier to keep your decisions positive

Decisions, decisions, decisions. Every day is packed full of decisions: should I have eggs for breakfast or settle for just coffee? Should I answer my email or work on that report my boss wants? Psychologists say that all these decisions wear us out, making us more prone to take easy options. We lose out on will-power. But if the positive things we want to achieve become part of our daily routines, they happen on auto, and there are no pesky decisions to throw us off track. You don’t choose to work out in the mornings. You just do it because that’s how you start your day.

Staying sane

Not all routines are good for us. Lighting a cigarette the moment you wake up or routinely staying up too late at night are examples, but positive routines are liberating. They’re also comforting. It’s nice to know that we’re doing something positive for ourselves, and that we do it every day at around about the same time. According to psychologists, good routines help to reduce stress and doctors say that stress causes all sorts of ailments, so your positive routine will have multiple benefits.

Decide what’s important to you and incorporate it into your morning or evening routine

Most of us have pretty full days. Our only ‘quiet’ times are the times when we are beginning or ending off our day. Whether you decide to choose mornings or evenings for specific things you want to do for yourself depends on you, but most of us are pretty tired by the end of the day, so more energetic activities are usually best undertaken in the mornings.

Morning get-up-and-go

Let’s say you really want to work out and get fit, but you aren’t getting round to exercising. Get up an hour earlier and start your day with some exercise. Exercising in the morning has loads of benefits. The ‘after-burn’ of calories you get after exercising carries on through the day, and researchers say that morning exercise improves your sleep patterns at night and normalizes your appetite. Plus you’ll be much more alert than your co-workers or classmates!

Chilled out evenings

Evenings are good for the more sedentary activities you’d love to get around to. If you want to get creative with arts or crafts, keep a journal or read a book, make special times in the evenings that are devoted to these activities.

Tips for creating effective morning and evening routines

Are you ready to adopt a constructive routine? It’s what incredibly successful people do, and you want to be incredibly successful in achieving your own goals too. Let’s get started!

• Choose your activities by looking at your goals.
• Prepare a schedule, write it down and stick to it.
• Get up at the same time every morning and go to bed at the same time every night.
• Have fixed times for the other activities you want to fit in.
• Review your routine regularly and check that it’s still in line with your goals.

Now it’s just a matter of getting those things done! Using your ‘you’ time constructively is the first step towards achieving all the things you wanted to do, but never got around to!

Thanks for reading.

www.sleepingottersstudio.com

Mindset and Motivation To Increase Your Drive For Fitness

Mind-set and motivation – the keys that unlock your fitness potential

Have you ever struggled to maintain your drive to attain your fitness goals? Whether your goal is to run faster, be stronger or get leaner - just like our friend Meathead, it's mindset that will help you reach it. Ok, admittedly you still want to keep the grey matter – but it’s actually the grey matter that helps Meathead stay so meaty. Ladies, increasing muscle mass is for you too. Lean muscle may weigh more than fat, but it’s a darned sight more appealing to look at! So how do you get that bundle of neurons that makes up your brain working in your favor? You know the saying “A healthy mind in a healthy body”. Let’s get hat brain working towards a healthier happier you!

Meathead hitting the double bi flex!

Think about your goals: do you really want to achieve them?

The first thing you need is the right mind-set. Just thinking “That sounds cool” isn’t enough. You need to be hungry for those achievements. So what are your fitness goals? A beautifully toned body? Extra energy and get up and go? Improved immunity from illness? Washboard abs? Be real about your goals. Own them. Choose goals that you really want to achieve rather than going with something someone said you ought to want. 

So before you get up and start working out, do a bit of a brain workout. What do YOU want to achieve? What will you have to do to get there? Be realistic. You aren’t going to get bulging biceps or perfect pecs in a week or two. You aren’t going to shed excess flab just because you went for a run. It takes commitment. It takes patience, and it will take hard work. Sometimes, you simply aren’t going to be ‘in the mood’. What can get you through the mental block? Commitment. Dedication. And you’re not going to get there unless you take 100% ownership of the goals you’re striving to achieve.

Get SMART

Your goal can be as big as you like, but getting there will be a journey. Let’s say you’re doing a long road-trip. How do you measure your progress? There will be towns along the way, won’t there? Every time you pass through one, you feel a sense of achievement. You’re getting closer to your destination. 

Your journey towards your fitness goals is very similar. If you’ve set an ambitious goal, you need milestones to measure your progress, or you’ll soon become discouraged – even if you have been making great progress.

Goals should be SMART:

Specific: Define what you want to achieve.

Measurable: How far do you want to run? How much weight do you want to lose? What percentage body fat are you aiming for?

Achievable: Setting an impossible goal is like setting yourself up for failure. If you’re only 5ft tall, you’ll never be 6 footer. If you’re an endomorph, you’ll never be an exomorph. Choose goals that you can achieve.

Realistic: Maybe it isn’t going to happen in two weeks, maybe weighing 110lb would actually be bad for you – even if you could achieve it. Be realistic about what you can and cannot do.

Time bound: With realism as your guideline, what can you achieve by when? What milestones will you pass on route to your destination and when can you realistically expect to reach them? Remember to celebrate those achievements, and be ready to move your goalposts if you see that you haven’t been realistic!

Staying Motivated

Once you’ve set your SMART goals, you should already be feeling more motivated. You’ve planned your journey, and you know how long it will take you to reach your destination. You really want to achieve those goals, right? But you need something more if you want to stay motivated. There are going to be days when you just don’t feel like making the necessary effort, and when your goals aren’t going to be enough to keep you going.

Be mindful: Try and determine where your mental block is coming from. Is it time-pressure? But your workout doesn’t take all that long to complete – how much difference can that time really make in the scheme of things? Are you feeling tired and worn out? Perhaps you haven’t been eating or sleeping properly, or you might even be overtraining. Find out why you feel demotivated and discover ways to eliminate these negative factors.

Be your own cheerleader: Having a conversation with yourself might sound a bit nutty, but it can really help. Remember how the encouragement of your friends, coach and team mates kept you motivated on the sports field? Become your own cheerleader: tell yourself that you can do it. Demand that little bit of extra effort: just two more reps, just one more set, just that little bit of extra exertion. You’ll thank yourself for the positive self-talk later on!

Stay positive: If you’re not reaching your milestones, you may become discouraged, but perhaps the problem isn’t you as much as the goals you set. Are they really realistic? Perhaps they could use a little revision. If you’re finding it really hard to set realistic goals, you may want to consult a fitness professional to get them back on track.  It’s all too easy to ask the impossible of yourself and then give up altogether when things don’t work out as planned. Taking a bit longer to get where you want to be is better than giving up altogether.

Set a routine and stick to it: Remember, it’s going to be 20% inspiration and 80% perspiration. The best way to develop stick-to-it-ness is to give yourself a schedule to stick to. Your run, walk or workout happens on certain days of the week and at certain times. Get into the routine, and you’ll soon notice a sense of unease – something ‘missing’ – when you break your routine.

Apply your mental muscle

Who’s really driving that body of yours? You are! Take charge. Be masterful. Know what you can and cannot do, and understand why you sometimes develop a mental block that threatens to derail your efforts. Most of all, have fun. Isn’t it great being able to walk, run, bend and stretch? Don’t you love that feeling of having challenged your body? That feeling of drive, motivation and energy you get after exercise is worth maintaining, and when all’s said, you’re the boss.

Thanks for reading. 

www.sleepingottersstudio.com