We should strive to make progress and not be perfect.
For a long time, I was never happy with my blog posts. No matter how much effort I put into writing them, they never felt perfect. Whenever I re-read my drafts, they sounded flat, awkward, or just not like me. It didn't feel like they were my voice.
I wrote one sentence and revised it a few times before moving on to the next one. Then I would go back to the first sentence, tweak it a bit, and change the second sentence because it was no longer coherent.
To me, my sentences were never good. I was caught in a cycle of endlessly correcting and recorrecting my sentences.
Why? I was chasing perfection.
I didn't want to settle for mediocrity. I wanted to progress and become better at what I did. But somewhere along the way, striving to improve left me little room to learn, make mistakes, correct them and move on.
To be honest, I have not fully recovered from it. Striving for excellence can push me forward, but when it crosses a certain line, it does the opposite. It discourages me.
I won't call it a bad habit, but rather a deeply ingrained pattern of thinking that I developed through the education system in my native country, Mauritius. I am not blaming the system, but we've been taught to compete with our peers for progress. In the 80's we had what we called C.P.E which stands for Certificate of Primary Education. It was the final exam students had to sit before moving on to secondary school.
At that time, it was crucial because the result determined whether we would be promoted to a five-star school, which is a kind of elite school. The thought of securing a seat in a five-star secondary school motivated students to study extremely hard.
The shaping and moulding started at a very early stage, the moment a child started their first primary class. We were all fed this thought, and it somehow put pressure on us students. No one was immune. Slowly, the system affected how we believed and how competition developed. At the time, this was simply the education system I knew. Looking back, I can see how deeply that environment influenced the way I came to measure achievement.
Drawing on my own experience, I can say that my drive to excel began there. It felt as though we had to learn to be perfect. Mistakes felt almost like a sin; make one, and punishment and frustration could follow.
Poor academic performance could leave you feeling like a failure. Then came the advice and criticism from teachers and parents, and the look from some students who simply looked down on those who did not perform well academically. For me, what followed was shame, shyness, and worry, along with the growing fear that I simply wasn't good enough.
The system was more powerful than I was. I wanted to thrive within that system and therefore embraced the idea that I had no room for mistakes.
The way of thinking followed me for years. It emerged like a hidden monster in anything I undertook, even blogging, whispering: "You are not good enough. It's mediocre. Your work has to be flawless."
Another big mistake I made was comparing my work to others'. When writing a blog post, I remember browsing the internet for similar posts to see what their take on the matter was. Each time I did that, I was disappointed with my own work and thought that mine was not good at all. Thoughts of mediocrity crept in, and I never pushed back. I failed to understand that I was comparing my beginning to someone else's experience that had reached a few miles ahead of me. Besides, they were writing from lived experience; I was writing without any purpose.
I began to lose trust, or maybe I never trusted myself and became doubtful whether anyone would read my blog. All sorts of negative thoughts crippled my mind, hindering my progress.
And so I became trapped in the perfection cycle.
Always striving
Never satisfied
And never publishing
Even as I am writing this chapter, the temptation is still there. I read a sentence and think it could be better. I change it, read it again and want to change once more. The difference is that this time, I keep writing.
This chapter may not be perfect, but it is finished.
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