I’m currently reading two books –

​Pema Chödrön’s Start Where You Are​: A Guide to Compassionate Living and

​Mind Management, Not Time Management: Productivity When Creativity Matters by David Kadavy​

These books are helping me journey through the theme we’re exploring in Get Messy: enough. I highly recommend both and am quite happy with my start to this reading year.

Pema’s book talks about accepting all of life – the good, the bad, the mess. That the mess is actually the perfect starting point for beautiful things.

David’s book is about accepting that we are humans and not machines. We’re taught to productivise everything – including our own creativity – but allowing ourselves to be unproductive is where the magic is.

Both are about knowing that our greatest weaknesses are our greatest strengths. Seeing the beauty in the mess because we know that’s where the best bits come from. The mess is fertile.

The mess is the manure that created the journals that are on my vintage Dutch tea trolley. To be fair, the mess is what led to every single one of my journal pages. Sure some of them came from pure, unbridled celebration and gratitude, but the reason for that enthusiasm was always the mess.

There’s something to be said for embracing the mess, and even getting a little bit excited about it (because you know what’s going to come from it).

I say this as a (recovering) perfectionist. I don’t have it all figured out, and am definitely not standing with confetti and balloons each time life throws me a curve ball. Heaven knows that I’ll turn even a mild inconvenience into a mountain.

I’m not at my zen monk stage of breaking up with perfection (yet?). But I can tell you that I’m more comfortable with it. I’m constantly giving myself permission to screen Perfection’s calls.

Don’t demand perfection of yourself.
Give yourself the permission to experiment, to try.
It’s not perfect the first go around.
You have to be comfortable getting better as you go.
– Ryan Holiday

This week I’d like to encourage you to make a list of practical ways you can sit in the mess. When you’re covered in muck, when life is a lot, when your perfectionist self is struggling because your ducks are not in a row.

My list at the moment includes:

• written journaling
• watch art vlogs on YouTube while cuddling my 2kg pooch, Griffin
• paint nails
• drink tea without scrolling
• slow mornings
• make gentle art
• be gentle

What’s on your list? How can you sit in the mess until the magic happens again?