Why Letting Go is Crucial For Storytelling
Ten year-old Melanie's favorite part of school was weekly free-time.
When other kids would play games, read books, or braid each others' hair, I would sit with a newfangled typing device -- one step more technological than a typewriter, but not as equipped with editing or formatting functions as a laptop -- and write to my heart's content. I spent those 45 minutes every week working on my masterpiece -- a comedic whodunnit play of which I cannot remember the name. What started as a frivolous exercise to entertain my three best friends and me, soon became a class endeavor. I wrote bit parts for every one of my classmates -- with myself as the lead, of course. Not a popular kid by most objective standards (such that they are in elementary school), this newfound acclaim was groundbreaking. Not only did people want to hang out with me, they wanted to be a part of the play that I was writing.
The power was intoxicating.
After months of recess rehearsals, the interest in my little play dwindled and we never put on our debut performance. But, I was hooked. I found a sense of flow in writing that I hadn't experienced in many other subjects. Math required a right answer, as did spelling and geography, but writing could just be. I could go back and edit later. Though judging by a recent reread of my debut dramatic venture, I don't think I understood the concept of editing.
Why I judged my writing
I continued to write scripts throughout high school, spending hours scribbling in college-ruled composition notebooks, drawing connected webs of characters, storylines, and dramatic events that would alter the course of the series. I had no formal idea of what I was doing at the time, and my imagination ran wild. Because I had watched an obscene amount of sitcoms from a very young age, I had a working knowledge of story structure that allowed me to just write and be in flow. I wasn't judging what I wrote. I just wrote. However, now a slightly more mature writer, I did learn to go back and edit.
Somewhere between my high school late-night script sessions and my re-discovery of writing, I became self-conscious. I started taking creative writing classes, and I was aware of the rules. A consummate rule follower, I became acutely aware of all the mistakes I was making -- all of the ways my writing wasn't living up to the shows that I watched or articles I read, even though they were penned by people who had much more experience than I (a fact I conveniently chose to forget). This knowledge of the rules stifled my creativity and prevented me from sitting down at a keyboard for many years.
This sentiment didn't just impact my creative writing, but it crept into what I thought about myself as a brand strategist too. Recognizing what I didn't "know" (because I didn't have a degree that told me that I knew things) made me believe that I wasn't good enough to run my business, despite evidence to the contrary and lived experience.
The detriments of perfection
In Julia Cameron's book The Artist Way, she talks about the difference between perfection and creation. Julia explains,
"The perfectionist writes so many versions of scene one that she never gets to the rest of the play...Instead of enjoying the process, the perfectionist is constantly grading the result."
Yup. That hit. When I first fell in love with writing as a fourth grader, I was unaware of critiques. Sure, kids could be mean in other arenas, but I did what I wanted as a writer. I was in flow when I was writing because I wasn't trying to live up to rules or expectations. I could create, and my creations were pretty good (for a fourth grader, at least). When I decided to become a "writer," it immediately brought along the perfectionist critic. A critic that said, "you'll never be good enough, so why try to get there?"
When launching my business, this manifested in procrastination believing that if I couldn't get my messaging right, I shouldn't put it out there. So, I didn't publish my content and expected clients to come find me. Funny how things don't work that way.
Learning from "mistakes"
Of course, the reality that you don't realize when you're in the throes of self-admonishment is that anyone good at something has done it badly a million times first. It takes practice. When I was teaching, I used to tell my students to "Make Mistakes Boldly." It didn't matter if they got it wrong -- we'd fix it. It mattered that they tried. Mistakes were necessary for learning.
This is definitely true for branding. When you're starting out, it's very possible that you don't know who your target audience really is. You may think you know, but the people who end up responding to your message aren't who you initially pictured. That's why so many businesses need to revisit their brand story a year or two in. They now have some experience under their belt and they can refine their messaging based on the data of who is actually responding. This doesn't mean that the first year was a waste or that the messaging was a "mistake"; rather it means you need to pivot.
Iterating and making changes when necessary are crucial for business success (and life), so these pivots should be considered a marker of success and growth--not failure.
Get over being "right"
If you find yourself stuck on your brand messaging because you cannot find the "right" word or "right" concept, think of it as an opportunity to learn. Just write something down and see how it resonates. It may feel like it doesn't fit, but you'll be able to keep going. You can go back and edit it later. Words aren't precious -- they can be cut or changed as need be. An idea on a page is much better than an idea that never sees the light of day. You'll feel a sense of pride for doing something instead of the pang of regret for never trying it at all. Embrace the process and "make mistakes boldly"!
Have you struggled with perfectionism in your business? What has held you back? What are some things you do to remind yourself to move forward? I'd love to hear about your strategies in the comments!
