I have to admit, I’m a bit of a perfectionist. After finishing a task, I always see something that could have bee done better. Do you recognize it? A big advantage is, that you keep improving yourself. Once you manage a certain task, you put the bar higher and higher. Next time you will do it better. You challenge yourself with everything you do.
With this attitude, I found it difficult to relax during holiday. I not only wanted to improve things in the house, even when staying in a luxurious hotel, I thought about improvements for the hotel staff. It’s difficult to chill when you see possible improvements everywhere. When good isn’t good enough anymore, you really have to learn to relax again!
“A painting is never finished – it simply stops in interesting places.” (Paul Gardner)
I guess that’s true for songs and performing too. For every song, you can think of improvements. If you keep insisting in this line of thoughts, you will never be able to ‘finish’ or to perform a song. With music you also have to ‘stop at interesting places’. At a certain point, good is good enough, even if it could be better. You still have the choice to keep it as it is, or to continue with improvements.
In holiday I learned again that good is OK and that I don’t have to improve everything. I learned to take things as they come. That’s what relaxing is about.