Embracing Our Flaws

Image Copyright Enoch Bolles

I have flip flops to design, books to review, emails to send, projects to make for my new book and yet...I feel like writing about something else today. So there, straw pile!

Tonia Davenport posted a provocative blog that got me thinking. I like to think, but it can be so distracting, can’t it? Tonia was discussing meeting ourselves where we are instead of comparing ourselves to others and I think that’s a point worth exploring.

It is easier to see the flaws in the tapestry than it is to grasp the beauty in the overall design. The key to success is in celebrating our strengths and more importantly in seeing the infinite potential in the things we perceive as weakness. The ‘flaws’ just might be the point and they definitely contribute something incredibly important to the totality of who we are.

The Impatient Crafter™ began in an email I sent to my husband when I finally and fully accepted that I am innately lazy. This laziness or impatience (or if I’m feeling like a Zen master-my desire to pursue the path of least resistance) deeply informs my creativity. If I can find a way to do something faster, easier and more simply, I will do it. If I can get there sooner and get on to the next idea but still have a rich and fulfilling journey and a worthwhile result, sign me up! So does that really make me lazy or does that make me innovative? Am I a sea slug or am I a visionary?

Does my not wanting to spend a month on one design make me impatient? Yes, yes it does.

Is that impatience a virtue? In my case, yes. Yes, it is.

Tonia brought up a great point and its one worth contemplating deeply. These things we see as personal flaws aren’t really flaws at all. In shifting our perspective we can see them as unique personal traits that can unlock opportunities.

We tend to be our own harshest critics and most failure to succeed begins with self flagellation that is followed by the failure to attempt. Many of us are far more afraid of the possibility of success than we are of the comfort of failure. If we create success...we are making a bigger splash in the pool and those splashes create waves and those waves create ripples and those ripples expand outward and make change. Change is scary.

If we don’t ever try...we won’t have to deal with the complications that result from succeeding.

Plus we all have that inner critic pecking away at our self esteem.

Next time the inner critic starts harping on you about something, see if there isn’t a gift disguised as a flaw in the topic of that diatribe. Crack the nut and see what’s inside. Turn that inner critic into your personal alarm bell for worthwhile possibilities.

The more we become ourselves without excuse or shame or fear, the richer and more fulfilling our journey will be. There are as many pathways to joy as there are people walking them.

Carpe Gaudium.

xoxo
Madge