Episode 21: Be Willing to Show Up Mediocre

Transcript:
[00:00:01] Good morning, friends. I am Sara, and this is the Raising Resilience podcast. And today I wanted to talk a little bit about how funny I think it is . . . Like people keep telling me that they are really proud of me for starting this podcast.

[00:00:17] And I keep thinking to myself, "well, I appreciate that and I don't know what I'm doing." Like, I didn't start this with any real intention in mind. And when I see people talking about starting podcasts, there's so much that goes into their thought process. There's so much equipment that they talk about needing and so much research that goes into finding guests and topics and researching things.

[00:00:55] And here I am . . . . doing this with a free platform called Anchor and, you know, a remote [I meant microphone, jeez chemobrain] that my partner already had. And I'm not really planning things out.

[00:01:10] I am doing this because the only difference between you and I is that I seem to have some kind of willingness to just show up and be mediocre. And I'm not really sure why I'm doing that. I just felt like I needed to. And so what I wanted to talk to you about today is that willingness to show up and be mediocre and what that means and why it's kind of how I live my life. So I grew up being a little bit of a perfectionist when I was younger. I found that that basically was an excuse not to get things done.

[00:01:53] And I would obsess over projects and never release them and never get anywhere with anything until one day I realized, like, I could either sit here and try to make this perfect or I could just get it done. And that became kind of the mantra for my life: done is better than perfect. Because perfect means that it might never get done. Nothing is ever going to be perfect. None of us are perfect. None of the things that we create are perfect. They can be our best work, but they're still not going to be perfect. So why not release it and start the conversation and start getting the word out about what you're doing and what your goals are and the impact that you want to make in the world, and . . . Get started.

[00:02:52] Because the truth is, I've asked people what they would like for me to talk about, and they're already giving me great feedback. And that's all I need to go forward and produce something that's going to be helpful to people . . Is go forward and get feedback and just make it even if it is not professional. This video for YouTube is shot on my iPhone. I don't have fancy stuff. I'm just doing it. And again, I don't know what for. I guess I'm doing it because I feel like I've learned a lot from all the horrible stuff that has happened, and if I can share any of my lessons with people and have them help, you know, then that is what I'm here for, is to take the crappy stuff that's happened to me and hopefully make it easier for the people that come after me.

[00:03:44] So I just wanted to share that little tidbit with you today. I hope that you will think about the fact that you don't need to be perfect, that you just need to do stuff sometimes. When I started my company, Mighty and Bright, I started it with . . . Now that I look back on it, I'm like, oh my gosh. The first product was just like, not good. But basically I started it with these laminated calendars that were printed off on a printer and then laminated and then you could stick them on your refrigerator. And I bought like a hand cranked magnet machine and I would just make the magnets for these calendars that I made. And they were so simple, but it was the concept behind them that made them work. It wasn't so much that they were perfect products. It was that they they did what they needed to do. They showed kids when they were going to see each parent, when their parents had just divorced. And that relieved their anxiety. And so they were popular because they wanted to provide that sense of safety for their kids, right?

[00:04:56] Had I waited for them to be perfect, I probably never would have launched them. I certainly wouldn't have had the product that I have today, which if you're on YouTube, you can see is behind me, that thing is awesome, OK? It will just last forever. It sticks on refrigerators. It sticks on walls. It's super sturdy. I could not have come up with that when I launched this company. I just didn't know what was important. So I did it anyway.

[00:05:25] And that's kind of what I'm doing with this podcast. Who knows? A hundred episodes from now, maybe I'll figure out, "Oh, my actual message for people is X, Y, Z." Maybe in a hundred episodes, I'll realize I shouldn't be doing short 5 to 15 minute episodes. Maybe I need to be doing 25 minutes or an hour and a half! Like, who knows?! But if I don't start now, talking about the things that I think are important for you to know, then you won't know to tell me what you actually need to know and then it would never have gotten out there.

[00:06:04] So. This has now been five minutes, and that's all I needed to share with you, was how to show up, how to be mediocre and how to not wait for things to be perfect. I hope that's been helpful and you can apply it to your life in some way. Thanks for sitting with me! Bye.

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