Stop Trying To Be Perfect ► Explained With Dark Souls
One of the biggest lies we tell ourselves is that we just need a little more time, just a little more preparation and then we’ll finally be ready. But then you get stuck because the weight of the expectations placed on the thing you want to do has become so large that if it’s not perfect, exactly the way you want it, you’ll feel like a total failure. And so instead of ever acting, you just keep your ideas in your head. That way you’ll
Never have to disappoint anyone. And the longer you wait, the bigger and scarier it becomes in your head. It’s a loop of delaying the inevitable and then being extremely stressed about it later. But I started noticing something strange. It felt like the harder I tried to force the perfect outcome, the further away it seemed to get. And weirdly enough, it was the game Dark Souls that helped me understand why. Because think about it, like in Dark Souls, when you’re in a boss fight,
It almost feels like a dance. You learn the boss’s moves, you know which direction to roll and when to attack. And eventually, enough times doing the same dance and recognizing the boss’s moves to act accordingly, you line it up just perfectly to finally beat the boss. >> HOORAY! HOORAY FOR ME! >> I love Dark Souls and I personally cherish that feeling. >> Yes! >> And if you’ve ever played the game for yourself, you know exactly what I’m
Talking about. That feeling of getting every timing and every dodge just right so that you don’t even take any damage during the fight. It’s extremely satisfying. But notice what I said. Before you have the ability to have that flawless >> hitless run, you have to earn it through being messy. I can’t even tell you how many times I’ve died to some of these bosses, too many. I remember I was playing Dark Souls 3 and it took me like
An entire day to beat this guy called the Nameless King. So many deaths, so much sweat on the controller. But then suddenly, after so many repetitions of doing it the ugly, messy way, trying my best to wait for his attacks patiently even when I was under pressure, and not getting too greedy when I finally I my chance. Everything I learned came together into the one run where I finally beat him. And you know what? For me, the Nameless King was not one of
Those times I had a perfect hitless final fight. But I did finally beat him. And isn’t that kind of perfection itself? To have the victory, be the winner. Imagine if I was demanding that if I can’t beat the Nameless King flawlessly on this next attempt, then I’m done. That would be ridiculous, right? But that’s what a lot of us do in real life. We don’t start something or talk to the girl because it won’t be perfect. Every decision feels way more
Important than it actually is. Every conversation has to be the perfect productive conversation. Every attempt has to be the perfect attempt. But when I was fighting the Nameless King, I wasn’t thinking about any of that. I was just trying to survive the next attack. And then the next one, and then the next one. We’re demanding the flawless run before we’ve even learned the boss fight. But you actually have to earn the right to get to perfection by being
Imperfect and messy. You just keep going, regardless of how long it takes or if it’s messy or chaotic. Just do the thing that’s directly in front of you. The last two videos I’ve posted on this channel have done pretty well. But now I have this fear that I’m going to screw it all up. If I don’t come up with an awesome video idea that matches up to the last two I’ve posted, then I’m a failure and my life is over. It needs
To be the perfect video idea or else I just won’t even start anything at all. And so I got really stuck in my own head trying to think of something to outperform myself, and I ended up not doing anything at all. But the problem with this way of thinking is that it has flaws. A theoretically perfect video title and idea doesn’t automatically mean that the outcome will be perfect. Because I’ve seen it time and time again. A video on YouTube by someone
Else will blow up and get like a million views. And then a bunch of other people will copy the exact same title and even thumbnail and even content of the video and not get nearly as many views as the original. And that’s what finally made me realize something. A lot of the time, perfectionism isn’t really about getting a better outcome. It’s about avoiding the possibility of a bad one. And to be fair, the reason perfectionism is so tempting is because
It feels productive. You want to set yourself up for the best possible chance of winning, right? You’re sitting there thinking, planning, optimizing, researching, and rewriting everything. But none of those things actually expose you to failure. The moment you upload the video or talk to the girl or step through the fog gate, now you can actually lose. So, perfectionism becomes like a hiding place. It’s like the situation where you want to talk to a girl, but you feel like you need to have
Something better to say to get her to like you. So, you spend weeks and months thinking about the perfect thing to say. And then by the time you finally feel somewhat ready, you find out she got a boyfriend. And you just don’t even know what to do at that point. You can’t be angry at her or the boyfriend or really anyone except yourself, because you were the one who wasn’t ready. But none of that overthinking and
Planning matters if you never actually talked to her. And even if you do say the perfect thing, who’s to say if she’ll even like you? You can’t think your way into a perfect outcome. All you can do is make the attempt. If you think about Dark Souls, the entire game is built around failure. We die constantly. Fall off cliffs, get cursed, get destroyed by bosses, make mistakes. Yet somehow we still become the hero anyway. The chosen undead is the chosen undead
Because he doesn’t quit. Not because he’s perfect, because he’s not perfect. How many times has he died already? He’s definitely not perfect. He’s only special because he doesn’t quit. Honestly, I didn’t really expect my last two videos to do very well, because I thought I was just doing the same that I always do for all the rest of my videos. In fact, I feel like these recent videos were not even the ones I’d spent the most time on. I’ve spent way
More time on other videos, finding the perfect title, trying to make the best thumbnail, and trying my best to optimize the editing and the script and everything involved in the video making process. And those videos were just forgotten. And I think what that taught me is that I don’t actually know what the perfect video is. Because if I did, every one of my videos would have succeeded. Sometimes the thing I think will fail does well, and sometimes
The thing I think will do amazing gets ignored. So instead of trying to predict the perfect outcome, I realized it’s better to just keep going and let the outcome decide for itself. Trying to skip the failure and the messy part is what’s stopping you from reaching the perfection you actually want. Perfection is earned through imperfection. So my advice to you is just keep moving forward. Don’t give up just because things are not perfect, because even when they are technically
Perfect, it doesn’t guarantee that the outcome will be what you wanted it to be. Sure, you can take some time to try to help things to turn out better and not just leave it to the luck of the universe or God or whatever. But don’t let the fear of being not perfect stop you from actually doing anything altogether. You don’t know what the outcome will be. The only thing you can control is continuing to do more
Attempts. Treat real life like it’s Dark Souls. Learn the dance to beat the boss. It might take you some time, and honestly, it might be a little hectic, but you’ll get closer to that perfection you wanted so badly by being imperfect. Stop trying to be perfect. Just move your feet forward, try your best, and even be prepared to fail. Because with enough failures, you’ll build yourself up to eventually have your one perfect run. Thank you guys so much for all of
Your support. We’re almost at 40,000 subscribers. If you like Dark Souls and self-improvement, I have a free community that you can join. It’s just going to be the link in the description. I also have a course called how to genuinely fix your life explained with Dark Souls. So if that sounds interesting to you, there’ll be a second link in the description for that, too. No pressure for either of them. Just check them out if you want, all right?
You take care, guys. Don’t you dare go hollow.