What Would You Do If You Didn't Have to Do It Perfectly?

Episode 100 marks the end of the weekly run of Calm Your Caveman. In this milestone episode, I reflect on the journey of creating 100 episodes, the mistakes made along the way, and the surprising gift of imperfection.

We'll explore exercises for uncovering buried goals, examine why perfectionism keeps us stuck, and look at a powerful framework for understanding the true risks of pursuing our dreams.

What if the greatest failure isn't trying and failing? What if it's never trying at all?

We'll talk about:

• Lessons learned from creating 100 episodes 
• Why perfectionism creates anxiety and paralysis 
• An exercise for uncovering goals buried under your fears 
• The three possible outcomes of pursuing any dream 
• Why trying and failing can still be a success 
• The importance of sharing your imperfect gifts with the world

Stay subscribed for future bonus episodes.

⏱️ Timestamps

01:50 — What 100 Episodes Taught Me
04:39 — The Buried Goals Exercise
06:24 — The Three Possible Outcomes of Any Goal
10:29 — Why Not Trying Costs Us More
12:12 — Final Thoughts & Thank You

For full shownotes, including resources mentioned, go to: https://www.calmyourcaveman.com/episodes/what-would-you-do-if-you-didnt-have-to-do-it-perfectly

🌐 https://www.calmyourcaveman.com

Transcript

A lot of us end up burying different goals and things that we would like to accomplish underneath our fears, and sometimes it's for fear of doing it im- imperfectly. Sometimes it's for fear of failure. But I just wanna suggest to you that not trying out of fear is the only way to really fail, because that's the way that you don't grow from the experience, where you don't become the best version of yourself, where you don't learn the most that you can. There's something satisfying about having left your mark on the world in the best way that you knew how, even when it was imperfect, and even if you failed in some ways. 

Hi, everybody. Welcome back to the podcast, to episode 100. As I said last week, this is going to be the last of our weekly episodes because I'm gonna be moving on to , other things. I wanna thank everybody for your support in listening to this podcast, and please continue to stay subscribed because I'm going to continue to release podcast episodes from time to time, extra episodes. So you wanna be sure and be notified about those extra episodes. But just looking back on these hundred episodes, I want to use this last episode as a plug to encourage you to do your imperfect best, to share your imperfect gifts with the world. I hope that the imperfection of this podcast can inspire you to do that. Looking back on this podcast, I can say for sure that this journey has not been what I expected it would be, and this podcast has been full of mistakes, some episodes really embarrassingly so. I'm figuring some things out only in the end as I'm finishing up. I didn't know really how to advertise my podcast. I didn't know how best to approach that. I had to learn everything from zero. I'm not social media savvy. I have a incredibly talented daughter who worked as my artistic director and my, my editor and my publisher. But even with her help, , as a team of two, we found that we couldn't produce the content and market at the same time. So there's a lot of things that I didn't do perfectly, that I didn't do right. And it's not perfect, but it's something. And it leads to the question, well, is perfection the only worthwhile and meaningful thing? We've talked over and over again about how anxiety happens when your brain sees your demands and your resources, it's measuring them against each other, and it sees that the demands of the situation are too much for your resources. Well, when you're demanding perfection from yourself, your resources will never meet it. And it was hard for me to get started on this podcast because I knew it'd be, would be full of mistakes, and I was terribly embarrassed about showing my imperfect best to the World Wide Web. But I needed all of my experiences, especially my illness with long COVID and everything I learned, uh, about anxiety , through the combination of my illness and my doctoral research, I needed it to be for something, and I wanted to share my deliverance from anxiety with other people to help them understand how that might... how maybe they could get delivered from these same issues that I had. Because there's so much amazing research out, out there, but it tends to be buried in academic publications, and a lot of people don't know about it, don't have access to it, don't, don't know how to find it. And so I wanted to make it really accessible. So here it is, my imperfect 100 episodes You may remember an interview I did with my dad about a year ago where he shared a couple of his favorite quotes. One is, "A little something is better than a big nothing." Another is, "It's not enough, but do it anyway." So those were my, were my mantras as I was doing this podcast. I just kept telling myself, " A little something is a better, better than a big nothing," and, " It's not enough, but do it anyway. It's not gonna be good enough. It's not gonna be perfect enough, but do it anyway." it takes courage to offer your imperfect best knowing that it will never be enough. I decided not to set the goal of perfection. I decided to set the goal of just doing what I could, of sharing what I could.

So I think a lot of us end up burying different goals and things that we would like to accomplish underneath our fears, and sometimes it's for fear of doing it im- imperfectly. Sometimes it's for fear of failure. You might not even know what the goals are that you have that you would like to accomplish. There certainly was a point in my life where I was so beset by anxiety all of the time that I had no idea what I would like to do with my life, and I've coached people th- this way as well. W- when you ask them what they would like to do, what their goals are, they don't know. They don't know what they like. Here are some questions, though. These, these ideas come from a book called The Artist's Way, and I'll link that in the show notes. But some of these, if you're thinking about them and let yourself write about them, they might help get you started about what goals you might have buried underneath your own fears. So first of all

Can you list five hobbies that sound like they would be fun? You don't even need to bring it into your own personal sphere. You don't need to say five hobbies that I would like to do, just five hobbies that sound fun. Now list five classes that sound like they would be fun to take. How about five things that you would personally never do that sound fun? How about five skills that would be fun to have? Five things that you used to enjoy doing. Five silly things that you would like to try once in your life. And then last of all, five things that if you did not have to do them perfectly, you would try. 

The book The Happiness Trap by Russ Harris that we talked about several times before has some interesting ideas. He talks about how a lot of times when we're thinking about pursuing a goal that we might fail at, that we're afraid of pursuing because we might fa-fail, it helps to think through the three different scenarios that there are in relation to this goal. So first of all, we could try... We could pursue the goal and we could succeed. That's one scenario. Another scenario is we could pursue the goal and we could fail. And a third scenario is we could not even try. And he encourages us to think through the different emotional experiences that would come with each one of those outcomes. So the first one that you try the g- the goal and you succeed, of course, there's a lot of positives there, right? Because life is wonderful, you succeed. You attempted your goal and you succeeded. But not only that, you had an adventurous journey, you learned new skills, you faced challenges, you experienced personal growth, all of that in the service of pursuing your goal. So we already knew that was all positive. That's not the one we're afraid of. The second scenario where we try and fail, this is the one that really a lot of us are mostly afraid of. So with this one, if you try and fail, you will feel n- disappointed probably. That's inescapable. But there's also satisfaction in knowing that you tried, and you don't have to catch yourself thinking years later, " Well, if only I had tried." instead, you can look back and say, "Hey, I, I gave it my best shot. I did the very best, best that I knew how to do." And you can still benefit from the journey if you don't reach your destination Because the process of facing new challenges and facing your fears gives you personal growth, teaches you new skills.

It gives you new adventures. It, it gives you the satisfaction of acting on what's important to you. So there's scenario two. What about scenario three, which is the one that we often just sort of by default end up in, which is that we don't even try to reach our goal? Well, we save ourselves the disappointment, the emotional disappointment, but we have no adventurous journey, no new skills, no personal growth from facing your fears. So of these three, which seems like the best bet? It's a risk for sure, but which one is the best risk? To attempt your goal even though you might fail, or to give up without even trying? If you attempt it, the best case scenario is that you will feel fantastic because you will reach your goal. The worst case scenario is that you'll feel disappointed, but you can still be satisfied that you tried and that you took a meaningful journey and you experienced personal growth. And if you don't even try, you'll sa- spare yourself the disappointment of having failed, but you might still feel disappointed that you didn't even try, and there's no personal growth involved in that scenario. So when we worry about failure, we don't take risks, And when we don't take risks, then we're not able to be creative and interested in new things, new discoveries, curious. And without people taking risks, then no new cures for diseases would be found, and artists wouldn't share their work, and great , leaders wouldn't have the courage to voice their ideas.

So these are just some thoughts about the benefits of pursuing your goals and sharing your gifts even though they're flawed. It's true that there is fault and weakness in everything we do because we're human, but that doesn't mean that it's worthless or meaningless. There's something satisfying about having left your mark on the world in the best way that you knew how, even when it was imperfect, and even if you failed in some ways.

 So I did this exercise that I talked about at the beginning where you're listing hobbies and classes and things that you would never do that sound fun, and skills that y- that would be fun to have, and silly things you'd like to try once, and things that I would do if I didn't have to do them perfectly. And I came up with a lot of things that I have not been doing because I have been afraid of doing them per- imperfectly. And, uh, that's gonna be one of my goals going forward is working on these. I found out that, you know, one of the things that I would like to do if I didn't have to do it perfectly was, um, to learn dancing, to try painting, to start a new language, and to just be better at communicating with important people in my life. I think a lot of times I think that I have to make the perfect phone call or the perfect email. Maybe it's better just to make the effort. So there's all different levels of ways that we are sabotaging ourselves by believing that it has to be perfect before we can do it or being afraid of failing at it. But I just wanna suggest to you that not trying out of fear is the only way to really fail, because that's the way that you don't grow from the experience, where you don't become the best version of yourself, where you don't learn the most that you can. And to keep struggling and trying, to not give up, to keep trying to keep-- to do better, to keep seeking, to keep learning, these can be your definition of success. That's all that any human can ever do. There's benefits to doing that even when it involves imperfection and failure along the way. I hope this podcast is evidence of that for you. I hope that even though it hasn't been perfect, that it has been beneficial, and I want to thank everyone who has given me feedback, who has talked to me about how this podcast has helped them. It has meant a tremendous amount to me. I want to thank everyone who has shared this podcast with other people 'cause I've really depended on organic growth. As I said, I didn't know how to advertise, and so I really appreciate everyone who has shared this podcast, and I w- would love it if you would continue to do s- do that. So thanks for your support. Thanks for your comments. Thanks for your feedback. Please stay subscribed. Please keep sharing. And please keep offering your imperfect best to the world. I won't see you next week 'cause as I said, this is the end of the weekly episodes, but I will see you on our future episodes that'll pop up, so that's why it's good to stay subscribed. It's been a wonderful journey, a wonderful experience for me. Please do message me. You can email me at calmyourcaveman@gmail.com if you have any specific topics that you would like me to address in my extra episodes that I'll be putting out from time to time. I love to hear from listeners. I love to hear about what your specific concerns or problems are or comments. So please send me a note. Tell me what you, what you'd like me to talk on. If there's anything that you'd like specific help with, a specific scenario that you've been struggling with that has to do with emotion regulation or anxiety. I'd love to give you my thoughts on that. And so thanks, and we'll see you from time to time from here on out. Thanks so much. Bye-bye.