Missed Takes - An Exercise for Mindful Self-Compassion
Who doesn’t lament, cringe, or recoil when that memory pops up of those instances that went awry? Maybe we took a tumble for the public to witness, a breaking point led to an angry outburst, or our maturity was just totally MIA at the time.
And besides feeling ashamed, guilty, or remorseful, we may summarize these times as mistakes…
Yet by definition a mistake is described as “wrong.” Okay...1+1 = 3. Fine. That’s wrong because there are universal laws of arithmetics. But idyllic situations don’t have rules or a formula to calculate how to obtain them.
In the moment we have no choice but to be at the mercy of how our internal perfect storm converges together; the lightning quick neurons that decide to fire or not, the current tide of information and emotions that are rolling through, and the tornado of cumulative events that swirls us into new territory.
So why do we hold ourselves accountable to handling things well almost every time???
A great example of how hard it is to be flawless is how t.v. and films are made. Every scene has multiple takes and they’re working with a script that’s been pre-approved and studied for months, if not years, by an entire team of people.
Did you know Stanley Kubrick had Tom Cruise do 97 takes of just appearing in a doorway for Eyes Wide Shut1? Or that Charlie Chaplin had an actress repeat two simple words 342 times in City Lights2?
They had table reads and multiple rehearsals and yet they still needed numerous attempts to nail their performance!
We don’t have scripts to work with. We improvise every second of every day. Can we lighten up and give ourselves room to try as many takes or “missed-takes” as we need?
The more humor and forgiveness that we can find for our fumbles, helps us release the feelings of shame and regret and we get out of POG (Prison of Gloom) quicker.
No one taught us about err’ing well…
Our confidence is rooted in the opinions that we have of ourselves. When we’ve accumulated too much judgement and criticism for our imperfections, it fuels even the smallest insecurities which then causes nervous anxiety, depression, and we can tend to want to isolate away from society.
These “missed-take” moments is just the role of our humanity briefly taking center stage…
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Take
https://www.cnn.com/2013/12/10/showbiz/perfectionist-charlie-chaplin-342-takes/index.html