This Is Not Letting You Live Your Creative Dreams
Getting rid of Perfectionist Paranoia
If given a chance, most people would want to rent an Airbnb in Bali or Antarctica.
If I had written this email five years back, most people would probably want to find a stable job. But times have changed. This is the time of creators.
This is the renaissance of creativity.
With so many options to monetize your interest, your skills, and your lifestyle — still, only a handful of people have managed to fulfill their dreams while creating content.
Business coaches and social media gurus will tell you that the problem is because you’re using the wrong tactics, posting at the wrong time or your content quality is not good.
They could be partially right on good days, but the real reason and the biggest obstacle you’ll face while chasing your creator dream is your ego.
As per Your Ego, You’re Not Good Enough
Your ego wants you to write like Seth Godin, who’s been writing every day for the last 20 years. Your ego wants to dance like Charlie De’melo from Tiktok when you’ve just started moving your butt.
Your ego doesn't care about where you’re coming on, and it doesn’t care about your story; it only cares about looking good.
Your ego only cares about looking good.
When it wants to look good, it takes routes that save you from embarrassment. It stops you from posting the raw version, the substantial pieces of content because all it wants is perfection.
Your ego doesn't have the intelligence to know that you won’t get to where it wants to see you now without trying and making an effort.
It wants you to play for NBA when you’re still playing college league.
Your Ego Doesn’t Think About Your Audience
If your ego doesn’t think about yourself, forget your audience.
It’s caught up in the show-off business to think about the actual business.
Your ego can become an obstacle to your work. If you start believing in your greatness, it is the death of your creativity.
— Marina Abramovic
The content and the audience, which should be your priority, become irrelevant, and the paranoia of perfection locks your creativity.
When I let ego become the driving force of my content creation journey, I faced self-worth issues and dealt with imposter syndrome. Even with years of writing on Quora and other platforms before I started writing on Medium, I felt like I had nothing to offer.
I knew I was hard-working and had a vision. I was sure if I worked on a plan and worked hard, I could live that vision and reach my highest potential. But one thing that kept me throwing off track; was my self-doubt which stemmed from my ego.
What Is Perfect, Anyway?
What is perfect for me could be trash for you.
What’s inadequate for you could be the best thing someone read that day.
There’s no global definition of perfect that works for everyone.
For your ego, it’s, however, the definition that feeds its supremacy. It wants to break all the records and look like a reincarnation of Leonardo da Vinci himself.
When we let our ego decide what content to post and whether it’s good enough, we forget that we’re creating it for our audience.
Our audience doesn’t want over-edited professional-looking videos or sharply edited books by Penguin or Westland. They want people to like them telling them how they overcame what they’re going through now.
They want vulnerability.
They want imperfection.
They want the real you.
The feeling of perfectionism will disappear if you focus on serving your audience and not feeding your ego. After that, it’s up to you to decide. You can either serve a purpose or look good and get lost in the sea of creators.
This Is How I Got Rid of Perfectionist Paranoia
Once I understood where this perfectionism fever was coming from, I decided to nail down my offering. I wrote down my mission statement on the first page of my journal and looked at it every day to reinforce it into my system.
All I wanted to do was share my journey and lessons as I continued as a creator and creative experimentalist.
I also started calling my projects Work in Progress.
It helped me to get rid of the perfectionist mindset and focus on growth instead. When I am stuck, I ask myself, what if it’s not perfect?
So what if I made a mistake?
Isn’t making mistakes a big part of growth?
As Michael Law, a medicine professor from UBC quotes
“At its root, perfectionism isn’t really about a deep love of being meticulous. It’s about fear. Fear of making a mistake. Fear of disappointing others. Fear of failure. Fear of success.”
The paranoia of perfectionism is the constant battle you have to make peace with every day. If you don’, you’ll not be able to publish anything.
And if you don’t publish, how will you serve more people and live your wildest dreams as a creator?
Lastly
The only person that can stop you from living your creator's dream is yourself. When you find yourself in such a situation, remember:
You’re creating it for our audience. People need to hear your story.
You are a work in progress, and improvement is directly proportional to how much you create.
You’re here to serve your purpose and not feed your ego.
The Internet has removed the pressure and the need to find a middle man.
You don’t need anyone’s permission to build your empire in the permission-less economy. You only have to tame your ego.
Ending this post with American astrophysicist Neil deGrasse Tyson words
“If your ego starts out, ‘I am important, I am big, I am special,’ you’re in for some disappointments when you look around at what we’ve discovered about the universe. No, you’re not big. No, you’re not. You’re small in time and in space. And you have this frail vessel called the human body that’s limited on Earth.”
Last Week’s Finds
Lesson of the week
It's more about your battles with yourself than with the world.Context: Making peace with your old philosophies, reinventing, re-learning.
Book of the week
I am doubling down on my creativity these days, and I had to read The Artist’s Way by Julia Cameroon. It’s exciting to see how different people talk about creativity, and we all do the same things unconsciously.
Video of the week
With everyone talking about productivity and capitalism, sometimes I feel like I am drowning in a materialistic dystopia. Nat, in this video, explained beautifully how we’d been brainwashed by self-help, similar to what I wrote about in the previous email about the 5 AM Club.
Quote of the week
“We should always be asking ourselves: “Is this something that is or is not, in my control?” -Epictetus
Song of the week
Bob Dylan’s Like a Rolling Stone still sounds fresh and bang on. Evergreen.
Creation of the week
I have started to combine my writing + design + philosophy in minimal pieces. I wanted to explain complex topics to a 5-year-old. It’s exciting because it makes me think and come to the source of that thought. Great exercise for my brain. Check it on my Instagram, and I’d love to get your feedback.
A lot of people ask about my favorite books. So I combined a list of 5 books that I have recommended over 100 times. You can check them here.
I hope you enjoyed this email as much as I enjoyed writing it :)
Do spread the word by sharing it with your friends and have fun.
Until next time.
Love and light
Shreya
I am creative so I know what you are saying about allowing your creativity to dominate your work, but I differ with this to an end. I know a graphic artist that are creative, but when employed, cannot allow their creativity to be unchallenged. If the 'boss' is not in love with your creation, be it ever so unique, there must be a compromise. Unless you are freelancing, your creativity is not always the " be all, end all". This, of course, is my opinion, but many talented creators are unemployed, repeatedly.
Thanks mam. As a content creator myself, got a lot of insights. I see where I lack and promise myself to bring improvement.