you need to do things badly, on purpose

I’m sitting here in my apartment. It’s the middle of (self-employment) tax season and my place is an absolute wreck. My bathroom sink badly needs to be scrubbed. My vase of tulips needs water. My dresser needs organizing. I have books, clothes, and receipts all over the counter, couch, and floor. My hair needs to be washed. And I have a full schedule today: first I’ll have a few client calls, write their nutrition protocols, and then I’ll head to my second job that helps me pay my rent while my business is still in her toddler stages. It’s safe to say that life is busy right now. Maybe (definitely) even a little hectic.

And despite all this, I will still eat lunch today.

In today’s piece, I’m talking about:

🌀 how following wellness influencers for inspo can actually make you do less, not more

🌀 why you’re stuck in the wheel of do a lot, or nothing at all

🌀 the best advice I ever received on how to actually break free from the claws of perfectionism so you can stay consistent and reach your goals

I have a Pinterest board, just like you. I search “summer style inspo” and “healthy eating aesthetic,” and I do my best to curate a space that feels nice to look at. Easy on the eyes, easy on the mind.

But lately, I find myself becoming guilty of not doing something if it doesn’t look the way I want it to. Sometimes I feel like if it’s not perfect — the way I imagined it — it’s not worth doing. And definitely not worth sharing. And if I’m feeling that way, I wonder if you are too.

Wellness has become a bit of a performance. A beauty contest. A competition over who can make it look the easiest, cutest, and most aesthetically pleasing.

Trust me, I follow those influencers too — the ones with the white kitchens and the monochrome appliances and the matching pastel-coloured workout sets and the beautiful dinner plates.

The ones who film their get ready with me videos, but their before video looks like you after you’ve put your makeup on.

They create this perfect life for us to aspire to and dream of. Picturing ourselves in these perfect worlds is like an escape from whatever messiness we’re dealing with in our own lives. Yes, I watch them too — and I’m not saying that anyone is doing anything wrong here.

With that said, I can’t help but wonder how these curated feeds are impacting our ability to take action in our own lives. Our Pinterest boards have convinced us that nourishment must be beautiful, or not at all. The clean girl aesthetic has hammered it into our brains that there is a specific way to practice being healthy: crisp and clean and pretty and soft.

Meanwhile, most of us aren’t actually living that way. Real wellness is often incredibly unglamorous.

We have dishes in the sink.

We’re letting our pans soak for days at a time because the scrambled egg crust just isn’t coming off this time.

We’re prepping chia puddings in (clean) leftover, mismatched pickle jars.

We’re sneaking in a 10-minute walk, still in our PJs from working from home, on our lunch break because that’s the only time we had, and sheeeeeesh it sure feels good to get some sun on our faces, especially because this is the first time we’ve actually been outside today.

Do we see any of that being posted to socials, though? Is that what comes up when we search “wellness girl” on IG?

There are a lot of people on the internet who have gotten really good at the performance of wellness. They put on a great show about how to become a wellness girly. And their performance creates a lot of entertainment, escape, and inspiration for anyone looking for guidance.

But have you ever tried to copy the aesthetic wellness lifestyle you see online, only to feel like a complete fraud or failure, because you just can’t seem to match what you see in her reels?

I’m not sure how well the performance translates to the actual practice of wellness.

I wonder whether you’re guilty of this too (performing wellness, but not actually practicing it at its core). Some examples that come to mind are:

☁️ saving yet another recipe to your recipes folder on IG, but never actually trying any of them

☁️ waiting for the “perfect” grocery haul before making a single change

☁️ buying more supplements, but still skipping meals

☁️ organizing aesthetically pleasing wellness inspiration, instead of practicing wellness itself in a messy way

☁️ trying to optimize everything before you’ve built any semblance of consistency

I’m definitely guilty of this sometimes.

Like I mentioned, this week was busy for me. Tax season just is.

On my busiest day this week, I almost didn’t post my unaesthetic lunch.

Well, actually, first I almost didn’t even eat my unaesthetic lunch. Not because I was intentionally trying to skip a meal or something (you wouldn’t catch me dead skipping a meal), but because I wasn’t sure if I had the “right” food in the house.

I didn’t have my usual meal-prepped, balanced plate. I didn’t have a colourful grain bowl. I didn’t have a cute drink or a pretty cutting board or nice lighting.

What I did have was tinned fish (hello sardine girl), broken crackers, a slightly bruised pear, some leftover sliced veggies, and some hummus.

So I threw it all onto a plate and ate it at my messy kitchen counter, surrounded by tax receipts and half-finished client notes.

And it nourished me just the same as something pretty and story-worthy.

Most healthy habits are a lot messier than you’ve been made to believe. They don’t always happen during the perfect Sunday reset, or the colourful grocery haul, and they definitely don’t only happen when life is calm and easy.

They’re built and maintained in between meetings. During stressful seasons. While your dishes pile up in the sink in tiny apartments that definitely aren’t your dream home, or with roommates or family around.

Which means that if you only allow yourself to practice wellness when conditions are ideal, you’ll spend most of your life waiting. And planning. And waiting. And still not feeling your best.

In a world that convinces us all that we need to have it all curated and figured out before we can start, I challenge you to start before you feel ready.

In a world that convinces us that it must be perfect or not at all, I challenge you to take messy action.

In a world that convinces us to skip lunch in favour of productivity, I encourage you to make time to eat anyway.

Eat the weird lunch. Go on the short walk. Do the lite version.

Get scrappy with it.

My introduction to the idea of “getting scrappy with it” came from Fabienne Gordon (@dolifework), a holistic life coach here in Vancouver, BC. She does incredible work and I highly recommend following her.

The whole idea here is that while perfect routines and curated feeds are motivating and nice to have, you absolutely cannot have it together all the time. Life is simply too unpredictable and messy to realistically expect yourself to hold everything and have a perfectly balanced, aesthetically-pleasing life at all times.

But, you also can’t let your healthy habits go out the window whenever life throws you a curveball. Quitting when things become slightly unpredictable is not conducive to having the fulfilling life you want long-term.

Getting scrappy with it means that, when life gets hard, instead of abandoning your healthy habits altogether, you have permission to do them in a scrappy way: less aesthetically pleasing, less time-consuming, maybe even less productive than usual.

Getting scrappy with it means that you’re still finding a way to meet your needs and move in the direction of your goals — but just maybe not in the most optimized fashion. And that’s okay.

This method can sometimes mean that you focus on maintaining what you’ve already built, rather than pushing for growth. And that’s completely cool, because at least it means you’re not actively regressing and letting things crumble around you.

Some of my own examples of getting scrappy with it look like:

🌀 doing the “lite” version of my bedtime routine instead of the full everything shower production

🌀 wearing a slick-backed bun or braids for days because making time to eat breakfast in the morning is more important than washing my hair

🌀 sardine snack plates on repeat instead of elaborate lunches

🌀 meal prepping in batches, in mismatched containers, and eating things cold out of the tupperware

🌀 biking to work and counting that as my movement for the day

🌀 doing a 30-minute workout instead of skipping exercise entirely because I can’t do my ideal routine

🌀 sending friends quick voice notes while walking instead of waiting until I have time for a full catch-up

I hesitated to post that lunch, purely because I thought it looked kind of weird.

It wasn’t necessarily a recipe, and it definitely wasn’t styled. But heck, was it ever nourishing. And you all loved it.

I think everyone’s tired of feeling like they’re failing because their life doesn’t look pretty enough.

I went on a bit of a rant on my Instagram stories (classic Naomi) afterward about how putting nourishment on the back burner in favour of working more or helping others actually helps nobody — not you, not your hormones, not your nervous system, not your productivity, and certainly not the people who depend on you. You can’t help anyone if you’re operating at 30%.

Your body does not care if your lunch was aesthetic. It cares whether or not you made the time to eat.

You actually benefit more from consistently doing a little, rather than inconsistently doing a lot.

Read that again.

We think we need to have it all planned and curated in order for it to work. But we don’t.

We think it needs to be big and extravagant for it to count. But it doesn’t.

I know you know this already — “progress over perfection” isn’t a new idea. I’m not writing gospel here. But I’m willing to bet you still need to hear the reminder.

Which brings me to some of the best advice I’ve ever received…

Personally, my goals are not specific to wellness right now, but rather focused on writing and business. I’m looking for ways to improve in these areas.

Some of the best advice I got on writing was to start by writing badly, on purpose. Not “just write anyway, even if it’s not perfect!!!”

No, when I asked this person (who I’m willing to bet is reading this right now — hi!!) for advice on getting started on writing more long-form, she told me to write badly. On purpose.

And this has stuck with me ever since.

I think the reason this has been so influential is that, for me and my fellow perfectionists, we’re really good at being good at something. So when you tell us to just be okay with the messiness of beginning, yes we’ll hear you and all the reasons why it’s okay to be a beginner, but we won’t really believe you. And there will always be this small part of us that isn’t okay with being bad at first. We know the real goal is to get good at it, so before that happens, we feel like we’re not succeeding.

But when you reverse it — when you tell us that the goal is to actually do it poorly — suddenly the beginner stage becomes really enticing.

You know that episode of Friends when Chandler tells Monica she gives the Best Bad Massages? Yeah, that.

I’m so good at following instructions. So you’re telling me you want me to write poorly? Not just that it’s okay if it’s bad, but that it actually should be bad? Say less.

This mindset has made me really excited to complete my goals in an intentionally scrappy way. I feel pulled to get bad words on paper for my first drafts of my writing pieces. And guess what? I’m writing way more consistently than ever. And remember what happens when we do something small, over and over again?

So I wonder whether you can adopt this mindset in your wellness habits — or whatever it is you’re trying to do right now.

Take the messy action. Get scrappy with it. Do something small consistently instead of something big inconsistently. And do it badly, on purpose.

You’re worth taking care of, even when you don’t do it beautifully.

Lots of love,

Naomi

Share

I’m a Registered Holistic Nutritionist & writer based in Vancouver, BC who helps you change your life by changing what you eat. You can learn more about me here.

instagram | tiktok | book a free call | website | buy me a coffee