Mistakes are Under-Rated and Perfect is an Unhelpful Concept.
Took me a while to fully embrace that, and myself.
Hello Friends,
So I learn French for fun and for brain-stretching, and let me tell you it’s been a long, bumpy road of trying to arrive at some semblance of fluency. I’m still chipping away at the seemingly huge wall between being a permanent intermediate speaker with a good vocabulary, but little real skill, and an actual bi-lingual person.
One day I’ll get there…I am utterly determined. It may take living in a French speaking country but I’ll get there somehow.
Ever since I started learning a second language people have been telling me to just speak as much as possible and make loads of mistakes, saying that’s how you learn.
While I had no doubt they were speaking the truth, I struggled to be brave with it, blushing or lightly cringing each time I made an error or could not express myself accurately.
I’ve only just arrived at a place where my social anxiety is easing around speaking French, not gone, but going. I have apparently crossed a de-sensitisation thresh-hold, because over the past weeks in conversation group I’ve been able to laugh whole-heartedly at my misunderstandings without taking them to heart.
The best part has indeed been that by laughing at my mistakes, the lessons in the foul-ups have become memorable, so I’m less likely to make those exact mistakes again.
While I don’t recommend laughing at yourself in a mean way, I have definitely learned the value of genuine humour in retaining information.
Let me share some of my recent minor mix-ups.
The word bouchon can apparently be used for a bottle cork, a traffic jam (kind of a traffic bottle-neck, I think), or a bistro restaurant! So, when I was being asked about avoiding traffic jams, I thought I was being asked about avoiding flying champagne corks….
I also thought that a nearby French Restaurant called Le Bouchon was called The Cork, which kind of makes sense, right? Nope. It’s called The Bistro. Live and learn.
Later, I said we should ‘welcome some mushrooms’ because I confused a verb ‘to gather’ - recueillir, with ‘to welcome’ - accueillir. That got me some odd looks until the teacher made the connection and gave me the correction.
I’ve also mixed up phrases for romantic liking with platonic liking in French - which has been hilarious and thankfully harmless. It all came down to the difference between saying you like someone or you like them well, which of course doesn’t represent the same shades of meaning in English.
Differences like that highlight how much of language and communication is about sounds, cultural nuances and understandings. Language learning is so much more than grammar and words. A whole different way of life is within a foreign language.
After one of my gaffs, my teacher Remi asked me, “Well, now you will remember that, won’t you?”
He was right. I’m finally able to get past my embarrassment enough to use my errors for good. I’m even a tiny bit keener to make mistakes, so that I can store the corrections in my brain more sharply.
Do you think you make good use of your mistakes, small and large? Do you consciously learn from the times you screwed up, showing yourself compassion, good humour and embracing the lessons? Or do you generally drag yourself across the coals of imperfection!?
Of course, it’s easier to accept our faux-pas in something generally as harmless as language learning, than it is to find peace with our serious errors of judgment.
For me, it’s hard to think about how much time in life I must have wasted thinking about how I wasn’t good enough, wasn’t up to standard (!?), wasn’t close enough to getting things perfect, my ducks not being in a row, and all that.
Perfect is a horrible word for me
Perfect really is a very dangerous and horrible word to me, because I wielded it as a weapon of torture against myself for a long time. I never want to do that again. Lesson learned.
On the one hand, I feel immensely sad saying this, lamenting all the years I could have been more kind and gentle to myself, rather than losing myself in episodes of self-loathing and mental flagellation.
On the other hand I’m happy I realised how harsh a critic I was to myself and the impacts that had, so I could stop hurting myself with my lack of self-acceptance and inner kindness.
For clarity, my feelings of not-good-enough manifested in two main ways you might relate to:
As constant inner pressure and nagging to do better, be more, be different
As social anxiety.
Many times I avoided social situations or didn’t really enjoy them, because I was so worried what people would think of me. As a young adult, I didn’t wonder whether I would humiliate myself socially, only how and when.
I analysed every encounter, looking for how I might be seen as s**t. Sometimes I dropped contact with people completely, and later regretted it, because I felt I’d given the game away and they’d seen how imperfect I was. I believed they would surely reject me, so I got in first.
I know all of this sounds crazy if you haven’t been through it. I also know that many of you will relate to my brand of crazy, and that talking about it can help disempower it.
In short, for years I avoided emotional intimacy based on the misconception that if people saw the real me, I would be exposed as so ridiculously imperfect they would shun me.
Where did I get the unhelpful thinking, this self-derision? How do we end up like this?
Usually from a variety of places that all add up over our development, to form our self-concept. The world is extremely judgmental of us all, and you have to be made of very hard stuff to not take a bunch of it onboard.
Personally, I was naturally higher on the sensitivity side than some people, and lower on self-confidence than many. I was also extra vulnerable, looking for my faults due to one parent opting out of my life without explanation. Unconsciously, the undeveloped mind of a kid searches for the reasons we aren’t loved, attributing blame to ourselves. We find faults in ourselves, to try to explain things we actually had no part in, to try to make sense, prevent it from happening again.
Then the world comes in, other kids with their judgments, adults with theirs…and there you are…so far from perfect. There we all are.
Life continues to teach me that the best thing we can do when we’re struggling is to talk (or write) about it. Somebody else will get it, will understand you, even if it takes a while to find them. That for me, has been the secret to finding healing and self-acceptance - reveal enough of yourself to realise that you are not alone, not heinous, not perfect (whatever that even is), but also not supposed to be.
Love to you
I hear you, sister, and I feel your pain. Deep rooted learning of inadequacy has crippled me. I was confident but lacked self esteem. I developed trauma coping behaviours, including the hypervigilance of perfectionism, and I had no idea I did that until the last 12 months. I have busted my arse for everyone else only to find that those people were only prepared to tell me when I was not perfect, never to give a positive response. Rarely has my many skills and talents been acknowledged. At 63, or turning that in a couple weeks, my confidence is shot, having had a nervous breakdown earlier in the year. I do not know what my future holds. I can laugh at myself though, and have always been able to do that. I take what I do seriously but I don't take myself too seriously. I find the older you get there is great wisdom to learn from acknowledging ourselves with kind eyes and not judging through the eyes of someone else, who usually has their own sh*t to deal with. You go learn French, make mistakes and laugh heartily and flying corks bistros and everything else. It is to your credit that you are bothering to learn a language, or whatever challenge we choose to take on in our late middle years. This year I have learned to play the guitar, and can sing and play 2 songs. Next year I will learn 'bar chords' and learn more songs. I have also reacquainted myself with my creativity. Who knows what is ahead. I just came from visiting my 93 year old uncle, who has outlived all his family. I treat him like a king, as he was treated poorly all his life, by my father, their mother, he could possibly be on the autism spectrum except that was not a thing in 1930's Victoria. The joy I see in him, as I do simple things like giving him comfortable bedding and proper supportive shoes, makes up for the anger I am left with toward my reprehensible dead father and his lack of kindness and love, for his brother or myself. But I know my uncle Ron knows he is loved. I have that. I take that seriously, though it is hard because I can find flaws in how long it took me to sort out what his needs are. Anyway, we can only learn how to be kind to ourselves. If that bears any fruit then it flows on to those who love us. We can love us too. Go well into 2024, the French language and the kindness for yourself that I know is well and truly present. With respect and love to you Dr. Debra. Shelley