Best Self / Truest Self

Hello, dear readers—it's been a while. Since I last blogged, I've graduated from United Theological Seminary of the Twin Cities with my Master of Arts in Leadership in Spiritual Direction. In July, my partner and I bought a house. I finished the last of my classes in August, and have since been decompressing and rediscovering beloved hobbies that had taken a backseat while I was in school—I've been doing a fair bit of knitting and crocheting, and am also getting back to songwriting. In fact, about a month ago, I had the following realizations:

1. I had written over 300 songs since 2012, and had released exactly none of them.
2. Perfect is the enemy of done.
3. If not now (**gestures broadly at the state of the world**)...when?

So I decided to start releasing some song demos into the world. I've released 7 songs so far. None of them are perfect; it's such a relief to have shared them. (For the curious: they can be found under Alyxander James on Bandcamp, Spotify, Apple Music, and Tidal.)

But that's not exactly why I'm writing today (although writing as a hobby I'm getting back to in general is part of what's brought me here). The point above of "perfect is the enemy of done" is related to what I'd like to take a little time to explore.

I wrote a bit in my last post about my tendency toward perfectionism. It's been a lifelong struggle, amplified by trauma and complicated by neurodivergence.

Something I see asked a lot by well-meaning people on the internet (and elsewhere), when someone is faced with some sort of challenge, is, "What would your best self do?" And for some people, that may be a genuinely helpful question to ponder.

For me, though, what it tends to do is trigger the perfectionist in me:

• What would I do if I could do it the right way?
• What would I do if I was a person who never made mistakes?
• What would I do if I was a better person than the person I am now?

It tends to turn me into a bit of a self-flagellating mess.

I realized in therapy a while back (and it came up again in therapy last week, which is probably why I'm thinking about it now) that a more helpful question, for me at least, is, "What would your truest self do?"

My best self is a perfectionist who's only goal is to do something the "right" way, a future state that feels always out of reach. My truest self is the me who shows up authentically, fully myself in the present moment, acting from my most closely held values.

I'll give you a practical example of how these selves approach situations differently.

In therapy last week, I was talking through some frustrations I was feeling around the seemingly endless work that needed to be done to get the house tidy and organized. My therapist asked me how my best self would deal with the situation, which eventually led to me articulating the difference in my head between best self and truest self:

• My best self wouldn't complain about the amount of work. They'd just do what needed to be done (as defined by some externally-derived metric of what a house is "supposed" to look like). They'd have the energy to get up early or stay up later to clean when they weren't working. In other words, my best self would be a different person.
• My truest self actually has an internally-derived reason for wanting to tidy the house, and that's to make their home a welcoming space for anyone who is invited in. They recognize their limitations and know when they need to ask for help—they believe in the importance of community for not only surviving but thriving.

When we talked about my truest self, I realized that what I really needed in order to make progress was to call in other resources, rather than trying to do everything alone and then beating myself up when I got overwhelmed. So I invited my parents to come over on Friday night after I was done with work, while my partner was working late, to body double with me while I worked on tidying our living room. I was a little nervous about it going in, but it actually ended up being both effective and enjoyable—my Mom knit and my Dad kept the dog occupied and we chatted while I picked things up and put them away, and I made more progress in two hours than I'd managed in the previous two weeks or more.

When I think of how I want to show up in the world, I don't really want to be perfect. I want to be human, in all of the messiness that humanity entails. I want to be able to learn and play and change and grow. Perfection is a sort of stasis, which sounds terribly dull. What I do want is to show up in a way that reflects who I am and what I value most.

So I'm trying to lean into that. When I start getting really in my head about doing something the "right" way, I try to stop and ask myself why. What's really the
motivation here? And how do I actually want to show up in the world today?

Some post-script notes:

1. This past week I moved my website for my spiritual companionship practice over here to Ghost. (Squarespace was fine, but expensive, and it seemed silly to be paying for two websites.) If you're reading this in your browser, take a look around!
2. On that note, now that my brain is starting to recover from grad school, I am looking to add a few more clients to my practice. Much like if I was a therapist, I can't work directly with family or friends, but if you know anyone who might be interested in exploring what spirituality means to them and making meaning out of their own Big Life Stuff, feel free to send them my way!
3. As always, I'd love to hear any thoughts that this post sparked for you, and welcome any comments or replies you might feel like sending my way. I hope you're all hanging in there in this ever-increasingly wild timeline we're living in.