Letting Go Of Perfectionism

Good morning. I hope you are doing well today. Today I’ll talk about a concept that I think is important if you want to grow anything. And that is letting go of perfectionism. I know so many musicians who are way more talented and skilled than me, who I believe make music that a lot of people would love. But they keep it to themselves and are afraid to share it. Let’s be honest here, it’s fear. Nothing else. And I get it. I think everyone is trying to portray perfection online all the time. And that can have a negative impact on self-perception. And make someone think they need to be successful at something from the first try. And if they’re not, they shouldn’t even bother trying.

My Story

I was the king of not daring to share my work. I was always creating something, though. I remember, back in the Soundcloud days, I would always upload something, and then take it down again. Upload, and take it down. Especially if it didn’t get enough likes. I was trying to control what people thought about me. When actually, nobody probably thought anything about me. I made stories in my head, but you can’t know what people think about you. Unless they literally tell you. But then still, how much should you care?

But I felt that people had to like my beats, because if they didn’t.. They didn’t like me. I wasted a lot of energy on this. There were even people telling me that they really liked my beats. And no-one ever actually told me that they hated them. I let my feeling about how good something was be determined by outside validation. And you know what this can do? It can make you change the stuff you make. To make it more like stuff you think people would like. And what you think they would like, is completely made up by you. You are trying to control other people’s opinions about your work, conceptually. Which is a waste of time and energy. Because you can’t. It’s subjective.

On the technical side, there is usually clearer room for improvement. But that just takes many repetitions. And there you should pay attention to people’s feedback on your work. But how do you gather that feedback? There’s only one way. You have to share it. I didn’t really accept that I was a beginner. I was looking at other people who made better beats than me. Not necessarily conceptually, but technically better.

If I would’ve just accepted that I was a beginner, and I am still nowhere near the level of skill that some of my friends have. If I would’ve focused on the next thing immediately after I released something I would’ve been able to have a much bigger output. And improve much faster. And I wouldn’t have time to make stories about how people perceived me.

Do you recognise this? Here are some ideas that helped me battle perfectionism:

1. I Might Suck And That’s OK, No One Cares

When I was starting out, obviously my work wasn’t of the highest quality. And like I said, it’s not like I’m the best producer in the world now but I’ve gotten so much better at it over the years. But being a beginner and my work being not that good, also meant that not many people paid attention to it. I see this as an amazing thing now. It creates time and space to improve in a relatively safe environment to do some reps and make mistakes. I used to be very worried about opinions of people from high school or my family who follow me online but have absolutely nothing to do with my life. I was afraid of judgement and didn’t want people see me try this thing that wasn’t a gigantic success yet. But then I took a step back, took a good look at what it is that I wanted and what I needed to do for that. And I decided that it’s more important to me that I take a shot at what I want than that no-one thinks I’m weird. And now, every time I start something new, I still feel that fear. But it’s gotten much easier to go for what I want anyway.

2. I Am Not A Celebrity

I see this a lot with starting musicians, where they release one song in a year and have a perfectly styled picture for it. And everything is perfect. And then the rest of the year.. you hear nothing. I’m guilty of this too, I tried to be very calculating about what I showed people online to stay cool and mysterious. But what that did is it made me look exactly like everything that already exists and the strategy of being cool and mysterious only works if a lot of people already care if you already have a reputation. It only works if you have a whole marketing army. And when I realised that I wasn’t a celebrity and that trying to protect a not existent image was stopping me from doing the actions that would get me somewhere. Stopped trying to look cool. I decided that I’d rather die knowing that I really went for something than that I’d die and all I did was look cool.

3. I Am Doing The World A Disservice By Not Sharing

When I just started putting my music and later my content out there. Every now and then, someone would just randomly DM me and go out of their way to tell me that they appreciated what I was doing. And I got this appreciation for things that I didn’t really thought were cool or whatever. And what that made me realise is that, if you never share your work, you are withholding it from people who might actually enjoy it. It’s like you cook someone a meal, but then don’t give it to them. Maybe you don’t realise that a lot of your work has value way earlier than you might think. For example, most people will not hear the difference between a perfectly mastered song and a song that’s mastered just ok. Perfection is not where the value lies for most people. A song that is mixed poorly could still strike that emotional chord that people look for in a song. If you want everything to be perfect before you share it, you are withholding your gift to the world.

4. I Am Showing My Growth

Now I strongly believe this because I listened to many online guru’s. So I still need to see if it’s actually true for me in let’s say five years. But when you share your work from the beginning. You give people the chance to grow with you. It’s way more relatable to see someone get better at something than to look at or listen to something perfect. People who care about your direction will care more when you share your process, your roadblocks, what you’ve learned. People will celebrate your successes with you way harder if they were there from the start. And people who don’t care about your path will unfollow you, which is an amazing thing, because they are not interested in what you want to do with your life. A lot of people unfollowed me at first as well when I started to make more content, and I thank them. Because they didn’t want to see me try what I was trying. Which is a decision they are completely free to make. I’m not mad at those people, I try to not ruminate over why they left. They are just not into it, so it’s better that they left.

These were my thoughts about perfectionism. And that allowing yourself to make mistakes means allowing yourself to grow. I hope this can be of value to someone who struggles with perfectionism or insecurity about their work. Thank you, I hope you have a great day. Much Love!