Transcriber: Leonardo Silva Reviewer: Mile Živković
Recently, I received a message from the moderator of a Facebook group,
and it read, "Caroline McGraw, please inbox me.
I need to ask you something."
Now, of course, this was terrifying
because I assumed that I'd done something wrong,
that I had made a mistake.
I'm a recovering perfectionist.
I am scared of making mistakes.
Perfectionism and I go way back, back to the first grade.
I was a good student, but one day,
my teacher returned my paper with the words "See me"
writen in red ink on the top.
Back then, getting a "See me" meant lining up beside the teacher's desk,
and waiting your turn to talk to her privately, in front of everyone.
(Laughter)
For a girl like me, this was not a good system.
I thought getting a "See me" meant that I had screwed up,
and at six years old, I couldn't handle that,
nor could I hide that I couldn't handle that.
So, when my turn came, my teacher took one look at me and said,
"Caroline, honey, what's wrong?"
And I just handed her my paper, and waited for the death blow,
but then, she told me that I had done a great job,
and she just wanted to tell me so in person.
And that Facebook message,
the moderator wanted to invite me to speak at an event.
So, all that fear and all that worry,
all for nothing.
Perfectionists like me believe that, if we just try hard enough,
we can avoid all these situations that make us feel so vulnerable.
In fact, Anne Lamott says
that perfectionism is based on the obsessive belief
that, if you run carefully enough, hitting each stepping stone just right,
then you won't have to die.
(Laughter)
It sounds good, right?
She's talking about physical death,
but I think her point also applies to the metaphorical death
that I experienced in the first grade,
the death of that perfect student image that I had constructed.
But standing in the seamy line, I learned something valuable,
something that would have held true whether I did well on that assignment,
or if I did poorly, and it was this:
I could survive not being perfect.
That was the day I learned that the human spirit is a phoenix,
able to rise from terrible ashes.
So, here's the bad news about perfectionism:
it doesn't protect us.
We're vulnerable no matter how well we perform.
But the good news is that we are stronger than we know,
and our mistakes actually help us to see that
because they reveal our true selves,
the ones that endure when our false selves die.
Mistakes are actually what help perfectionists like me
to live into the secret of life, as defined by Eckhart Tolle:
"To die before you die, and find there is no death."
So, the next time you're scared to open an email, to talk to a teacher,
to even face the possibility of making a mistake or getting it wrong,
take a deep breath.
Remember that this is just another opportunity to learn and to let go,
because we're only human, we are far from perfect,
but we are strong, we are tenacious,
and we are meant to rise again.
Thank you.
(Applause) (Cheers)