In the late 1980’s, my husband and I bought a house.  It was the first house we looked at with the Realtor, and we liked it, but we decided to keep looking just in case there was something better.  There wasn’t.  For a city spot, it had nearly a quarter acre of yard, was directly across from a picturesque golf course and nature park, and was well shaded.  It had enough space for the two of us and a pretty picture window in the front.  A bald eagle even perched himself atop some trees across in the distance.

We took a photo of me standing outside the front door on the day we moved in.

Everything, from the outside seemed perfect.

Inside, it was a different story.  The house was formerly owned by an elderly couple who had to move out due to health conditions.  They left everything, and I mean everything, behind:  furniture, clothes,  towels and sheets, beds and furniture, photos and books, an old “south pacific” looking mural on the dining room wall, layers of wallpaper throughout, old rugs, and closets filled with personal belongings.

It was far from perfect.  The outside was pretty, manicured, well-trimmed, with a good view.  The inside was havoc and left a lot of work to be done.

It was a year before I started practicing a martial art and a year before I realized the importance of perfection on the outside vs. perfection on the inside; not of a house, but of me.

I have one of those type-A personalities.  I like everything right from the get-go.  The house was a big project but I left no time to waste.  I dismantled bookshelves and piled all the stuff into bags for donations.  If I had it my way, I would have worked 24/7 to pull it all apart so I could start fresh.  With work and other responsibilities it took a little longer than that.  It was a tear down and rebuild; a beautiful exterior, but an interior of chaos.  This is exactly how I felt as a new martial artist. It was essentially a tear down and rebuild.  There was no way to “clean house” inside of my head quickly.  I could not rush the process.  Dusty cobwebs, like dirty closets in the house, had to be addressed.

Back then, in my perfection era, I thought that any mistakes were burdens and disasters, instead of what they really were:  powerful learning moments. I looked for perfection from every angle but quickly learned that perfection was a pretty difficult concept to grasp.  On the outside, I had good fitness under my belt. On the inside confidence and self-esteem were slowly erupting.  Just as when I was standing outside the front door of my new house, I felt like I was standing on the edge of something really important.

Perfection never really came to be. Desire to learn and get better happened instead.

When I started learning, and even today, I see how martial arts are so individual to the practitioner.  Who is right?  Who is wrong? You practice with the hope of understanding, for personal achievement and advancement, along with many, many other valid reasons.  There is only one way you can advance and that is to leave perfection behind.  They whole key is seeing past your desire for perfection, beyond its boundaries, to a place where there are no limits and where you are free to explore your personal potential and goals.

Just as I chose that awesome house and committed to picking up the pieces inside, so I laid claim to the same ideas for my life through martial arts. The outside of me held all the promise of a good martial artist in the making. The inside still held a lot of worry, and disbelief that I could ever be good at what I was learning.  The inside was still a chaotic assortment of emotions as I sorted out who I was really trying to be.  Don’t get me wrong.  My life was not riddled with mistakes or troubles or a mindset that was not fully positive.  These were the residual effects.  As I learned more about martial arts and about myself, I started to move further away from the thoughts that hindered my progress or my confidence. The desire for perfection can be stifling.  Instead of allowing you to become the best you can be, it thwarts your ability to focus, accept, and move forward.

I started to realize that my desire for perfection was really a fear about making a mistake.  One day my instructor told me, “Andrea, just keep going if you make a mistake.  The people in the audience will never know if you don’t show it and I’m not going to call you out on it in front of them, either.  Just keep going. ”  Wow! Really?  He was right.  I should have focused on practice and performance but not perfection. I should have centered myself on doing the absolute best that I could and not allow a small mistake in the big scheme of things throw me off course.

As I muddled my way through all the remaining personal items that were left in the house by the elderly couple, I felt like I was seeing their life flood before my eyes; a couple who had lived a good long time and surely learned a thing or two about perfection.  Nothing here was necessarily perfect for me; but for them, I bet this place was the most perfect place ever, and a place where they grew into old age loving each other and being happy with the view across the way.  Perfection has a lot to do with perspective and there are degrees of it. A perfect day. A perfect feeling. A perfect moment.  These happen, but they are subjective, aren’t they?  No one is grading you or scoring your test.  When suddenly you are being graded, your ideal moments vanish and worry impinges on your confidence.  Perhaps perfection is just a misguided interpretation of not how you want to be, but how you want others to see you.

That is where I am now many, many years later after starting my martial art journey.  I now try to focus on what is right, not what is wrong.  Am I perfect? No. Do I still have a lot of cleaning to do inside? Yes.  I can’t fool myself or anyone else. I’ll never be perfect, but I have a good sense of who I am as a martial artist on the inside and the outside.  Inside, I can apply all I’ve learned to my life.  On the outside, I am still learning, even delving into another style so I can keep myself physically engaged.  I still have high standards for myself.  I’m not going to be complacent or lackluster about martial arts or about anything I do. I am true to who I want to be and that might be as close to perfection that I ever get.

Cleaning out that house was a big chore.  When I was done, it looked great and I was happy to be there.  I lived there for eighteen years. I knew, when I spotted it initially, that it was the right place for me.   When we moved from that house, I cried.  It was eighteen years of cleaning and organizing, raising kids, varying careers, wonderful neighbors, and looking back, in hindsight, it was probably as perfect as any home could have been, because the only judge of that, is me.

What happens if you cannot achieve perfection in martial arts?

You join the ranks of thousands of others who realized the same and are now black belts, instructors, masters and grand masters.  You are now connected to a network of others who have come to understand their physical and mental processes when it comes to perfection.  To seek and to try, to practice and cultivate, to work diligently, give 100%, and understand and perform, are the elements that make up the masterful and powerful martial artist.  Cleaning out the garbage in your mind and deciding how to be the best that you can be, instead of trying to be perfect, is a start.  That is achievable and that is what will land you on the doorstep to the right house.

If you need any final words of advice about perfection, apply what I was told and you will never see it the same way again:  “No matter what, just keep going, even if you make a mistake.”

Andrea

 

 

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