Excellence. Perfection. They’re things we’re all striving for or at least dreaming about. We want to be masterful, powerful, sensational. We want to do something difficult and make it look effortless.
And maybe you’ve found your thing, something you latched onto and poured yourself into until one day you discovered you were really quite excellent. But now you might be feeling a little bit bored or a little bit stuck because excellence, you’ve discovered, is not enough. You need to keep stretching, you need to keep growing, and you need to master other things in order to keep moving forward.
Maybe your paintings are divine, but you haven’t a clue how to sell them. Maybe your poems are exquisite, but you don’t know how to get them published. Your blog could have some dandy posts, but no one’s reading them because you’re completely lost when it comes to helping people find you.
It feels so good to be excellent. You’d just as soon keep doing this thing that you’ve mastered. You’d prefer to continue gracefully skating your perfect figure eights until the end of time, but you know there’s more to this creative life than that. You need something new in your old bag of tricks, but you can’t stand the thought of beginning again.
But begin you must if you wish to go further, and in order to begin you may need a break from being excellent. You may have to set aside your wizard’s wand, whatever that may be, and pick up a broom or a hammer instead. Of course, you won’t abandon your magic, but you may have to walk amid mortals for a time before you can take things to a whole new level.
Katheryn Bieber, the untamed force behind Embracing Your Creative Spirit, has been working through and writing about this very thing. She shared in a note on her Facebook profile that blogging made her feel like trying on ugly prom dresses. She’s a master at making things with her hands, but a novice at making things with a mouse and keyboard. But in order to share her imagination, spirit, and amazing mastery of things hand made, she had to take on the role of a beginner. Instead of skating perfect figure eights, she became the awkward kid doing everything she could just to stand up without holding onto the railing.
I applaud Katheryn and anyone else who takes a break from being excellent in order to become something more. I think of comedian Steve Martin laying down his trademark bunny ears in order to act in movies and then taking a break from that in order to write books and then taking a break from that in order to record an album of banjo music. I admire him and Katheryn and all the others like them for the example they set. It’s absolutely excellent.
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Yikes…Thank you. I really appreciate that today. It’s hard to go back to baby steps when you’ve been dancing through life with complete abandon..pLus I really like being considered an untamed force…Now that is a prom dress that fits!
Another great post. Bravo!
Ummm this is so totally true for me too. I struggle with doing things badly, I *hate* that!! It’s so embarrassing. Almost painful in my body. But it’s why I have studied improv acting and why I am now taking a beginning drawing class: practice being bad at something and (kind of) feeling ok about it! And too, over time we get better and discover we can pick up skill if we allow ourselves to begin where we are and then take small steps forward. Kind of like blogging. (Or anything new. You gotta start with baby steps.) LOL
Trying to ‘maintain’ equates with resting on one’s laurels. And that just never works. Eventually, excellence maintained becomes stale — and therefore, no longer excellent.
Taking on the role of the beginner is one reason literally learning something new can have positive effects on other areas of our lives. For one thing, we have to get back to humility and being okay not knowing what we’re doing and being fairly certain we’re not doing it right.
(And yes, I’ve just begun learning how to swim.)
All the best!
deb
This was a great post. I really think, even if we are great at something like drawing, writing, or blogging…we must step away and find balance with other things in life. Too much of a good thing, I believe, can be bad. The reason? It becomes mundane. We must take time away or a “break” as you say and maybe mix in other things.
Thank you again!
Dayne
You always make me think! I love being in the “excellent” phase – then I get a new inspiration, try it, fumble, get frustrated, realize I’m having fun and (sometimes) get excellent at something totally new. Great adventure, this life.
You’re right that excellence is “not enough”. I found that out after writing a few blogs that only my mother would read.
It took a blog challenge on Twitter to get me inspired to do a little more. I learned how to connect the blog to Twitter, use photos to enhance the blog (and what “creative commons” is), and create tiny URLs. More people are stopping by to read it now, and I’m posting much more often. Stretching and growing, I’ve found, increases confidence.
Carrie ´s last blog ..Best Project (#best09 blog challenge)
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