On letting yourself mess up

The past few weeks I've been working hard to learn a new Christmas hymn to play in church this Sunday. I think I've mentioned it before, but I'm not a very good pianist, and I promise I'm not just being modest. I'm mostly self-taught, besides a handful of piano lessons years ago. Somehow I got called to be the pianist in the Spanish-speaking branch of our church that we attend... and it's a struggle. I'm trying hard to learn more songs so we can have a little variety. We pretty much sing the same songs over and over. It's a good thing everyone in the branch is so sweet and patient!

Anyway, while I was practicing said Christmas song a few days ago, I finally got to the point where I was pretty sure I will at least keep the melody going for the whole song when playing in church. I thought to myself, "Hopefully I'll get better, but even if I don't it's okay since it doesn't have to be perfect."

And then I had an epiphany: I think I'm finally learning how to make mistakes. 

I don't think I've ever made it through an entire church service playing every song perfectly. Not once. I make mistakes every week, and that used to bother me so much. I would come home from church feeling like a failure because I couldn't even play familiar hymns perfectly, thanks in part to the anxiety that flares up when I have an audience. 

I've always been a bit of a perfectionist. Now, this is rather problematic. Being a perfectionist means you are just setting yourself up for a lot of frustration since, in reality, life is messy and imperfect. You're never going to have everything go 100% your way. I've beaten myself up too much in the past because of failures, both real and imagined.

Personally, I tend to be at one extreme or another on the perfection spectrum. Either I throw myself into something wholeheartedly (going a little insane in the process) with perfection as my only acceptable result, or I let myself get discouraged and don't even try. I haven't been good at finding a happy medium. At least, not until recently. 

Maybe it's a combination of being pregnant and having a couple of derriere-kicking church callings that have forced me to have more realistic expectations of myself, yet also don't allow me to give up trying. I'm grateful for that.

Moral of the story: Don't set unrealistic expectations for yourself, and be nice to yourself when you mess up.