[m12k]

At one point I had a big realization that perfectionism was keeping me from ever going outside my comfort zone. This meant that for decades I had only really been growing in areas where I was naturally gifted and experienced (logic, math and similar) but failed to grow much in areas where I wasn't (e.g. emotional intelligence and interpersonal skills) because that way I never really had to fear failure, or challenge my self-image as 'someone who always succeeds'. I realized just how skewed that had made me - like a bodybuilder pumping iron with his strong arm, while the other arm hangs weakly by his side, atrophying. I realized how arrogant I had been to try to justify this neglect by thinking of the areas that I was bad at as less important than the ones I'm good at (they're not). And I realized how cowardly I had been to be so fearful of failure, how much it had hurt my mental health to tie up my self-worth with that self-image of someone that always succeeds. So I ate some humble pie, finally confronted my perfectionism, started focusing on strengthening my weak side, and adopted a new mantra: "If you never fail, you're not being ambitious enough". To this day, I still struggle to live up to this, but at least now I know what I'm up against, and what I'm trying to achieve - the clarity really helps.

[bougiefever]

There's an old saying that whatever is worth doing is worth doing badly. So true. When I was in Germany, they have a saying that you start with "something to hate". Already knowing that what you're about to do is going to be crap makes it easy to get going. Then you set about fixing your crappy beginning. It gets you unstuck.

[m12k]

That reminds me of a saying I heard when starting to learn the game Go: "Lose your first 50 games quickly"

[agentwiggles]

I've heard a similar saying regarding songwriting, "your first 50 songs will suck, so get them out of the way quickly"

[sul_tasto]

if you don’t mind me asking, what’s the expression in German?