Perfectionism and What You Really Mean By Saying “I can’t”

Thu, Jan 8, 2009

A Passionate Career, Creating Success, Emotional Freedom, Law of Attraction

Limiting Belief

I can’t write a hundred blog posts!

Positive Affirmation

Even though I can’t write a hundred blog posts, because if I can’t be perfect at it then why bother, I deeply and completely love and accept myself anyway. I’m willing to let go of my need to be perfect. I choose to move forward and share my writing with others who may benefit from it, just the way it is.

One of the desires I want to manifest for myself is to have 100 blog posts up on SqooshYourCritic.

That means I will have written anywhere between 100 to 200 pages of words. That’s equivalent to the length of a few ebooks or at least one published book.

So far I have published 15 blog posts (not including the positive affirmations posted on my “Asides” mini-blog located on the right hand sidebar).

Today I was frustrated with this concept of knowing I can write more articles than I’ve actually produced, so what’s the hold up?

I’ve been working on writing a review for The Artist’s Way: A Spiritual Path to Higher Creativity [10th Anniversary Edition], and found Cameron’s blurb on taking risks and perfectionism:

“QUESTION: What would I do if I didn’t have to do it perfectly?

ANSWER: A great deal more than I am.”

I laughed out loud about this and admitted I have some work to do regarding perfectionism, an addiction I’m still in rehab for.

Julia Cameron explains in her book that,

“In order to risk, we must jettison our accepted limits. We must break through ‘I can’t because…’ Usually, when we say we can’t do something, what we mean is that we won’t do something unless we can guarantee that we’ll do it perfectly. With that as an unspoken demand, a great many things remain outside our sphere of possibility.”

So this week I’m going to repeat the positive affirmation I wrote at the top of this post and take it easy on the rewrites

Feel free to tweak the affirmation to work for you.

I’ve also been listing off reasons why I believe I need to constantly edit while I write. I think that bringing these fears into the light will help me sort through which ones have been blown out of proportion by irrationality and a wandering mind that is sometimes attracted to drama.