Anything worth doing is worth doing poorly.

When was the last time you did something perfectly? I propose that you have never done anything perfectly in your life and you never will. Think for a moment... could what you think you have done perfectly been improved on in some way or manner, and made a little more perfect, or a little bit better? Obviously the answer is 'yes.'

This is my new philosophy in life though I'm not a very consistent person so I don't plan on doing this right, in fact I plan on doing this rather poorly, which i guess would be doing it right after all.

This principle is also a principle in Taoism called WUWei which means action with action or action with strife which means doing things without any concern of the out come. Which is exactly what doing things poorly means.

When trying to do thing right, or perfect, or up to standard (and just who's standards are up thing to live up to anyway because for the majority of us, our standards, likes and dislikes are not owned behaviors and beliefs but simply something that was given to us by mom and dad, our friends, our loved ones, the TV, the internet, the magazines, the commercialism and Media of our society. In psychology they call this interjected beliefs. We all have them. Some of them are useful like not touching fire. You don't have to run a scientific experiment to prove or disapprove that touching fire will burn you, all someone has to do is put the bliefe in you and its done.

But for all of us who buy into the belief that making mistakes is wrong, that doing things poorly is wrong, that we have to get it right, we have to get it perfect, and we have to do it on the first time well guess what, you are wrong.

By not putting so much pressure on what you do and simply do them in a relaxed manner then you are free to be more creative and really enjoy what you are doing rather than killing yourself or worse yet freezing up and not be able to do what you want to do at all.

This is how i lived my whole creative life. Writing books and stories was something that i wanted to do but perfectionism would never let me get passed the idea stage. I have always compared myself to others. Always believing what the books tell you, you have to be the best. Well this striving to be the best killed my darlings. It killed my passion to write and enjoy writing, it killed my love and passion for music, and well it hasn't gotten to my photography just yet but sometimes I feel it creeping up on me.