Hey! So good to be back here again. I hope you’ve all been having a lovely, lovely week. I’ve been feeling so spoiled this week. So last month I’d sent an email to my newsletter, The Feel Good Tribe, with a story about my love for Rooibos Tea. A new found, newly discovered love from last year.
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A couple of days ago, I met my friend Shruti who’d been in the US for a few months. She came back and she said she has a surprise for me, and yeah, obviously you can guess the surprise now, but I wasn’t expecting it at all! Haha
I opened the box and there was this big pack of Rooibos Tea! I was so happy. Not just for the tea, which itself was lovely, but also because of her thoughtfulness. Reading that email I sent to my mailing list and then remembering me when she saw Rooibos and picking it up, it was so sweet and so thoughtful. Oh my god! So spoiled I felt.
And then another thing happened.
So remember I was telling you about my new podcast? The limited series one?
Vegan Business and Marketing Tips: for cafes, restaurants, cloud kitchens, home bakers and chefs.
If you don’t know about it, if you haven’t listened to the episode where I was talking about it, then search for “Vegan Business and Marketing Tips” on whichever podcast app you’re listening to this on.
I released it a few weeks ago, and it was quite exciting when it came out! It even went onto the Apple podcasts, top podcasts charts. I was so happy and everything!
Then this person from Nagpur, a girl called Ishita, she runs a whole foods plant-based cloud kitchen called Green-ish there, she messaged me. I didn’t know her before this, but she messaged me, and so sweet, she said, “I’ve been listening to your vegan business podcast. It’s been so useful. As a token of appreciation, I’d like to send you some cake and stuff”, and she sent it with a handwritten letter. Oh my god so sweet. Again, felt so spoiled.
By the way, if you’re in India and you’re a fan of healthy, clean, gluten-free (and vegan of course, obviously) then you have to check out Green-ish. Look for that plant-based bakery (the chef’s name is Ishita) and you have to try it out! Especially those Black Sesame Chocolate Chip Cookies. Very nice. So creative and so well made.
So yeah, that’s me being all spoiled and everything. Haha I wanted to share that with you before I start talking about what I wanted to talk to you about in this episode.
Today, I want to talk about perfection
This obsession we all have with perfection on some level. Even those of us who, like me, think we aren’t that obsessed with perfection, somewhere we tend to be, in some areas of our life, and we need to catch ourselves.
In early 2022 when word will came out I absolutely loved it like right of the back the moment I started playing it I’m like oh my god this is so awesome and I started playing it, and for months. I was playing it every single day without fail and there was this perfect world streak at a hundred percent. I got it right every time. Suddenly in April that streak broke. It’s not because I didn’t play it, it’s because I got a word wrong.
Months after playing and winning everyday, my perfect Wordle streak suddenly broke in April! It was one of those times where you get four letters right, but that darned fifth letter is elusive. By my second try, I had S_OUT. I felt super smug. Only one letter to guess correctly. No biggie.
STOUT…it’s wrong
SNOUT…nope
SPOUT…uh oh, only one turn left
SCOUT…wrong again!!!
😱 I’ve run out of turns. “NOOOOO”, I shouted! (Can you guess what the correct answer was? hehe)
I’m embarrassed to admit, I wallowed in wayyyyy more self pity than I should’ve
For the uninitiated, Wordle is a daily online word game where you need to guess a five letter word correctly within six tries. There’s only one word for each day (at midnight it gets reset to a new one), and everyone in the world plays for that same word. Sense of community, no addiction. Love it!
I started playing in early 2022, and for 75 days straight I managed to play and get the word right (averaging mostly on three guesses). My win percentage said “100%” and I was super proud of it!
On the 76th day when I lost, my perfect win streak fell to 99%. I was dejected! This was so unlike me, the girl who used to gleefully celebrate when I scored anything above 60% marks in my school tests. 😄
If I’d bloody got 99% in anything back then, I’d have danced and bounced off some roofs and done cartwheels all the way home or something! So why did I have this a dark cloud looming over my head because I lost one measly game of Wordle?
That’s the thing about perfection, once you get a taste for it, you’re in its hooks
No matter how unrealistic or difficult it is to maintain that state, you want to hold on to it. Ironically, the cost of being perfect always is having to be perfect all the time. Sheesh, who even wants that kind of pressure?! 👀
But once perfection is lost, it’s gone forever. You can never get it back. That means you never have to live up to that standard again. How incredibly freeing!
Without the expectation of perfection hanging over my head, the game became so much more fun for me
If I thought I was enjoying it before, it’s nothing compared to playing it now without the fear of marring my pure streak. The lack of pressure seems to have made my brain and my intuition significantly sharper. So funnily enough, once I stopped caring how well I performed, my performance went up a notch. Ha!
And honestly, I still don’t care. I’m just having fun with my daily game.
Here’s something for you to contemplate on
- Where in your life are you clutching on to perfection in some form?
- How is it turning something you should actually be enjoying into a chore?
- In what ways is the attachment to winning making you lose out on other things which are actually good for you?
I’ll leave you today thinking about all this.
And yeah, come join my newsletter for many more entertaining, interesting stories like this one, and to be a part of my tribe. Alright, talk to you again next week, take care!
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