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When I took off my mask, I made two decisions. The first one was to show myself how I really was. I’ve already talked to you about that. The second decision I made was to stop trying to be perfect, because I had done that a lot the months before that and as you now know to some extent, I ended up being a complete disaster by doing that.

I believe that these decisions were subconscious. The only two things I could think about at this moment were „You are okay the way you are“ and „Flaws are allowed“. Anyway for some reason it was so clear to me all of a sudden that I was allowed to be imperfect and that was the best feeling in the world.

The gentleness I felt that day really lifted a burden from my shoulders, because I stopped trying to come up to a standard that was simply impossible to come up to and started believing that I was already okay and that beauty arises from the very things that won’t ever make me perfect, the things I tried to hide for so long: my rough edges.

There is that beautiful line in the song „Anthem“ by Leonard Cohen:

„There is a crack in everything, that’s how the light gets in.“

This quote is now officially Andy-approved, because it’s just so fucking true. And when you think about it, perfectionism really fucks everything up that can be fucked up.

Perfectionism is the reason why we are so obsessed with doing everything right when we interact with another person that in the end we lose them, because we are trying way too hard and we alter ourselves, because we believe that that’s what they want and with every rejection we try harder. Because it’s not nature’s fault for us two not fitting together, it’s always our own fault for not being perfect enough, right? Right.

Perfectionism is the reason why our piece of art will never be finished or even considered good by ourselves, because we only compare ourselves and our work to pieces that are already finished and we’re probably putting them on a pedestal, which then leads to us always thinking that we’re worse than that artist by default. Because these artists were good in what they were doing from the get go and never had to live through the journey of learning their craft and it’s just us who are not talented enough, right? Right.

Perfectionism is the reason why we will always be unhappy with our bodies, because there’s always that one person who looks a little bit better, who is a little bit thinner, a little bit more ripped or a little bit taller. And while they have an absolutely stunning face, we, ourselves, look pretty average. And that’s a bad thing, because every person on the planet is attracted to the same perfect body shapes and we’re just unlucky that we don’t have them and so we have to do everything to get them and to finally be lovable, right? Right.

Perfectionism is the reason why „Duke Nukem Forever“ became such a shitty game. Really, they should have brought it out in 2001 rather than changing stuff all the time and releasing it in 2011. But to be fair, the fact that you have to pee on the final boss after defeating him is pretty rad.

But the biggest problem that comes with perfectionism is that unless it’s a school test with a defined number of points that you can get, you can’t measure it. You just don’t know, when it’s perfect. And what does „perfect“ mean anyways? Your „perfect“ doesn’t have to be my „perfect“ and my „perfect“ is different from my best friend’s „perfect“.

And that means that even if somehow something was so good that I called it perfect, it wouldn’t be perfect for you. Maybe extraordinarily good, but not perfect. It just wouldn’t, which in turn would result in that thing not being perfect in general.

You can do anything you want, but you are definitely not going to reach perfection.

But why do we even want to be perfect so badly? Why are we so hostile to our own mistakes and flaws? And if we don’t know when it is enough, because of perfection not being measurable, when will we stop then? Is the problem really something superficial like our looks or our skillset?

If you’re so desperately trying to avoid mistakes and thus any room for critique on your work, your body or even yourself, aren’t you just running away from something?

I, myself am the master of perfectionism. In fact, three years after saying „Fuck you, perfectionism!“ for the first time, I’m still fighting with it and perfectionism is a recurring theme that comes up over and over again in my therapy sessions.

When I get to know a girl I am interested in, then usually there are two scenarios that can happen: Either she is able to show her interest in me very well and I notice it, or she is not able to show it so well, if she is interested in me or not.

If she is able to show her interest in me, then I feel very comfortable in my skin, but then I am so tempted to check this girl for every tiniest detail that might be a problem, because I want to have the most perfect girl of perfect girls. I always have to fucking remind myself then that this will never happen and I have to ask myself, if this really bothers me or if it is just stupid bullshit my brain wants me to believe. Both has been the case before.

I don’t know the exact reason why I’m looking for perfection here. It might be the feeling that there is always someone better out there that is connected with a fear of getting to know that certain somebody and having to hurt the „less perfect“ person, because of that. As if it was so easy, right? As if feelings could be so easily deleted and persons so easily replaced, right? Hahaha. Fuck me.

If however she is not so good in showing her interest in me clearly, or if she isn’t interested in me at all, then I get very insecure and tend to overthink a little bit … much. Like „What if she doesn’t think that I am attractive?“, „I can’t hit on her or kiss her, she’s definitely not interested in me. She would hate me if I did.", "She probably doesn’t like me anyway.“, „She probably likes somebody else and I can do nothing then, because I’m not special enough.“, „I’m not good enough for her. I need to be perfect to be liked by anybody, but I am not.“, "I don't deserve her", „I am a failure“.

And these thoughts are a brief glimpse of the complexes I’ve been fighting against since I was 14 years old, my very own demons I carry with me. You can imagine how paralysed I am in situations like that and you can imagine how shit scared I am of these situations and how much I try to prevent them from happening. Of course in the end it’s also just stupid bullshit my brain wants me to believe, but it’s much harder to fight back.

I know that these are the results of a huge fear of being rejected by people I somehow care about. And my fear of being rejected is so big that I sometimes really try to be perfect instead of being myself, because I take a very short-term view. And thus I try to avoid my flaws and that makes me feel pretty uncomfortable. And that can’t be the solution.

In situations like that I think it’s important to be completely compassionate with yourself and tell yourself that no matter what happens, it’s okay and you’re okay, because otherwise your demons will drag you down pretty quickly.

It’s okay to show your interest in another person and it’s okay to at least wish for them to think the same about you. It’s okay if somebody doesn’t like you, because nobody is liked by everyone and that’s pretty much impossible. And it’s okay to feel stuff, because that is what makes you a human after all.

And thus it’s okay to have flaws, because everyone has them and the right people will like them, if you decide to show them. And no matter what happens: You are still lovable enough the way you are.

Personally for me, these are very hard things to say sometimes and I would be lying if I told you that I’ve already got the hang out of it, because I don’t. But I know that if I don’t fight back somehow, my demons will always win. And the way you fight back is through self-compassion.

Another big perfectionism-problem of mine is my music and not only composing my music, but my music-career in general. When I write songs, I sometimes could sit on just one part for hours. I think about every note, every possible dissonance and oh my god let’s not start with transitions between song-parts. But many of these problems are now problems of the past, since I get better and better everyday.

Where I really tend to procrastinate and overthink stuff is on the business site of my career, since I’ve never ever done a thing like this before. I want to have the perfect solution, the perfect business-plan, the perfect content, the perfect website. I just want to be so over-prepared without well actually moving forward. Just so you get an idea of how bad it is: I started writing my album in the summer of 2013, It was finished a year later in 2014, it was recorded in early 2015 and when did it come out? The summer of 2016.

I just wasn’t ready yet. I had to do this before and that before and learn this and learn that and read something about this and that. I was soooo scared of doing anything wrong, because I didn’t want to live on the streets and starve to death.

A week before I made my website public basically everything outside of my texts was written in a strange marketing way and I would never ever speak like that normally. I thought that that was what I had to articulate myself like, even though it just sounded boring, generic and fake. Fortunately I changed my mind and I am now trying to get across as natural as possible.

So yeah, basically I was just scared of doing something new and failing at something new, believing that if I did so, I wouldn’t have a second chance. I’m also pretty bad at dealing with uncertainty as you might have guessed by what I told you in the previous example. And just by telling you all this I believe I might have come up with a fraction of a solution to all perfectionism-problems:

Your urge to be perfect can be weakened by giving up control every once in a while and embracing uncertainty.

Because when you strive to be perfect, you want to control something you will never be able to control and that's the real reason why you will never be finished. You can’t control who likes you or finds you attractive. You can’t control who enjoys your art or your business or how everything will play out in the long run. You can’t control how others look in relation to you.

And because you can’t control that, you will not know. And you can either be scared by that simple fact or you can be excited by it. But I believe that anybody should learn how to deal with surprises of all kinds — no matter if bad or good or small or big ones — because if you’re always paranoid about what bad thing might happen next, then you will never be able to settle and enjoy something. You could just as well look forward to the next good thing that might happen next and embrace uncertainty.

But enough talk about perfection! Let’s talk about where the beauty comes from: imperfection.
So we can’t be perfect. Never ever. That means that we’re imperfect. For me, being imperfect was like hell for a long time. I was really really really obsessed with being perfect. Now I know - and you as well - that I’ve been running away from my fears and complexes and partly still am.

But what I’ve discovered is how relieving it can be to gather the courage to be imperfect. How do you reach imperfection? By stopping to care about being perfect. How do you stop caring about being perfect? By showing compassion towards your own flaws and by embracing uncertainty and accepting that life in itself is unpredictable.

And when you start letting your flaws happen, you will discover that your own flaws are pretty much unique. Maybe your nose has not the best shape and somebody might have a similar nose, but maybe it marries up with their face better. Maybe you and somebody else are insecure about the same thing, but the cause behind that insecurity is a completely different one and so you get insecure in completely different situations.

And this uniqueness in flaws makes every single person even more unique. And that is the reason why imperfection results in individuality and why individuality results in beauty.

Many people take the perfection approach when it comes to individuality. They follow certain rulebooks and guides in order to set themselves apart from everybody else, but they forget that many others are using the same guidelines. And so everybody tries to be different, but they’re all doing the same, because they think it’s the right thing to do, while I, a grey-haired guy am just standing there in my mom jeans and my taylor swift shirt shaking my head (AND SHAKING IT OFF WHOOP).

But your own individuality is only determined by your own flaws, your own feelings, your own desires, your own taste and your own decisions. Let me give you a few examples why these things are not necessarily bad:

My former orchestration teacher told me that when he writes a melody and can’t decide between two notes that would both sound good, then he just stops over thinking about which one sounds better and just takes one of the two and moves on without caring. He makes a living with his music and is probably the smartest musician I know personally.

Modest Mussorgsky’s „Pictures at an exhibition“ is one of the most well known piano works and has become a showpiece for virtuoso pianists. It also got rearranged and orchestrated by many other composers, even though Mussorgsky made many mistakes from a music theoretical point of view unlike many others back in his day. But maybe it’s exactly this fact that makes his music interesting and beautiful.

Maybe you’re struggling with your body shape and think that you are too big for example and you want to be much thinner than you are right now. Let me tell you then that not everybody on this planet is attracted to thin people. Some people really love people of your shape. You’re not unattractive because society or somebody else says so. In the contrary, even if you want to lose weight, there is nothing more attractive than being comfortable with your body and showing it. Maybe that’s the best diet one could be on.

When I communicate my flaws and my emotions in a natural way with others I’m putting myself out there. But I also give others the chance to connect with me and to like me, because they can relate to what I’m going through right now. And of course it’s the other way round as well. Had I remained silent about these things, then I wouldn’t have had nearly as many deep and meaningful connections and conversations as I have today and every single one of them feels special in their own way.

So be brave and accept your flaws as a part of yourself, because you already have everything that makes you an interesting and individual human-being. And there will always be people who will like exactly these things about you the most: That weird sounding passage of your song, that particular quirk you tried to hide way too long, this particular part of your body you’re not that comfortable with or your big project you’re working on, even if it’s not 100% ready, but maybe 85% or 25%.

Because being perfect is exhausting and being perfect is boring because it’s so predictable and dull. Being perfect is impossible, so stop being perfect and have the courage to be different. Because it’s our flaws that make us beautiful.

However, if you don’t do that, you will eventually find yourself in the center of the earth. Just as I did …