Why You Don’t Need to Be Perfect

How many times have you heard someone tell you “practise makes perfect?”

It’s the musician’s mantra. It was the one piece of advice that my music teachers repeated to me over and over again. I might as well have tattooed it on.

And even though nowadays we now encourage everyone, especially young kids to embrace failure and stop chasing perfection, musicians still get taught the opposite.

Even when your teacher says it's okay to make mistakes, there’s still that voice in your head telling you that you must play flawlessly, give the perfect performance, never slip up.

Sometimes that voice is your own who tells you have to be better.
Sometimes it's your parents who really just want the best for you.
Sometimes it's the ghosts of past musicians who built their lives around being perfect.

And this might sound controversial, but I don’t think striving for perfection is wrong.
Not at first. I still tell my students to go for it if they want to be perfect.

It only becomes dangerous when it consumes you.
When it becomes the only reason you play.
When it makes you paranoid about mistakes that aren't even there.
When it spreads to the rest of your life.

Because perfection is meant to bring the best out of you but it can also crush your confidence. It’s that unattainable hope you chase until it breaks you.

When I first started filming guitar videos for YouTube, I’d do hundreds of takes.
I’d nitpick tiny imperfections.

Sometimes I’d convince myself that I mucked up when in reality there was nothing wrong with the recording because I always thought I could do better.

There was one week in 2019 sums up how I went about this.

I locked myself in the rumpus room at my parents’ place. There was no air-con in that room, and I never turned the fan on because it was too noisy. This was during March in Sydney it was still well over 30 degrees celcius every day. 

I’d wake up at 9am, grab my coffee, walk into that room, and stay there until 11pm.
I’d only come out for occasional bathroom breaks, and I’d bring my lunch and dinner into the room, nibbling in between takes. 

By the end of each day I’d changed my shirt three or four times from the sweat. My skin had shrivelled up so much like a sausage that had been microwaved several times.

Guess how many takes I did that week? Have a guess before you scroll down.

So how many takes do you think I did that week? 

If you guessed somewhere near a husband, you’d be so far off.

I did 1149 takes. 

That was the last video I recorded before a 3 year hiatus in between uploading on YouTube. 

(P.S. When I look back, my performance turned out pretty well. But that week scarred me for three years! I was afraid I was going to do 10000 takes the next time!)

—

You might think one would settle down and think “gee I went a bit over the top there…just a wee bit…” 

But no. My chase for perfection turned into an obsession and bled into other parts of my life away from music.

Every day before bed, I’d write down everything that I did wrong that day. It could be with how I was not happy with the way I taught one of my students, how I spoke to my girlfriend or someone, how I was not happy with how I cooked my fried rice, or how I was not happy with my exercise. 

On the bottom of the page I would write down “Don’t do this tomorrow.”

Often I punished myself with running. If I felt the day was a disappointment, I’d run an extra 2km the next day. There were days where I’d run non stop for 2 hours, not because I was training for a marathon, but because I was so angry at myself for making mistakes. 

I wouldn’t allow myself to sleep some days, instead I’d be writing down what I needed to improve on. 

It was all about trying to improve myself…well at least I thought it was.

When I look back, it’s easier now for me to say just how damaging my behaviour was. it’s what led to me having two seizures, insomnia, depression and anxiety.

At the time, I thought I was doing the right thing. I thought I was chasing something meaningful.

But I have to admit I had no idea what I was chasing. I just convinced myself that if I achieved something every minute or every day, then I was worth something.

And even though it took for me to completely break to finally understand this, things became clearer when I started noticing my students doing this as well.

Some of my students, aged 16, would be so worried about not being the perfect student, getting straight As, or playing the perfect tennis match, or giving the most captivating speech for their debating team. It was painful. Because I knew exactly how that felt and I’d be terrified about the path they were on.

I don’t know if my 16-year-old self would’ve listened, but here’s what I tell my students now:

“You have a long life ahead of them. Sure life can be short, and things seem to move faster as you get older.

But being perfect, is perhaps all about going through life, trying your best, doing the things you love, and getting to the end.

As a musician, maybe it’s all about having fun. It’s all about picking up your instrument, learning or writing a song that makes you feel something, and learning something about yourself, the world, and sharing that with someone.

There’s always going to be opportunities that come your way.

They could be as big as being asked to play for the Sydney Symphony Orchestra, or as small as playing for your church group. Whatever you do, even if it doesn’t turn out the way you wanted it to, there’s always going to be something beautiful. Sometimes it’s pretty obvious, and other times it may not reveal itself until later on.

You don’t need to try make everything perfect because you’ll get another chance to do it again tomorrow.

And trust me when I say this: even if you do reach perfection, you’ll never notice it.
That’s the paradox.
That’s why you have to let it go.”

I wish I could sit here and tell you my life has changed so much since I let go of my need to be perfect. That I wake up relaxed, sip coffee while listening to birds, and float through the day, meditating in a mindfulness bliss like I’m on top of the Himalayas.

But life doesn’t work that way.

I still battle the need to be perfect.
Some days, perfection looks like sitting on the couch with my girlfriend.
Other days it looks like me sprinting through my to-do list like the Flash at mach 7.

Even on good days, I still go to sleep thinking, “ahh…hmm I could’ve done that better…ugh.”

But accepting this has made me kinder to myself.
The voice that once ripped me apart is quieter. He might come back, but for now, even he has resigned to the fact that he’s no longer as powerful as he once was.

Now when I go and play my guitar, record a video or write this newsletter, I’m not trying to give the performance of my life. I’m just…giving a performance.

So I’ll end on this note. It’s a little cliche but I hope it reminds you of something that you may have lost somewhere down the road:

As artists, we look at the world around us and try to make sense of it with the art we create. Some things seem perfect — like Finland being the happiest country in the world. Some things are painfully wrong — like the wars in the Middle East.

Without one, you can’t appreciate the other.
And without both, you can’t appreciate the perfect moments that do appear.

We can only try and use our musical gifts to understand what’s going on around us and to make them easier to accept.

For the person inside, maybe it’s just about understanding ourselves better than anyone else. And if we have to make a few mistakes to get there, then it’s worth it.

Thank you for taking 10 minutes to read today’s newsletter. It means a lot.

I’d love to about your relationship with perfection and if you’ve struggled with chasing it or you’ve accepted that making mistakes is a part of life. Please don’t hesitate to send me an email, I’ll do my best to reply but I’ll definitely read your email.

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📹 You can also check out my latest YouTube video where I share what I would say to my 17 younger self after I was diagnosed with depression: