Hey, hey, welcome to the Brown Girls self-care podcast. My name is Bri Mitchell. I am the host of the show as well as the founder of Brown Girls self-care this platform, this space, this community is for black women that are looking to get to where the healing resides.

Let's go ahead and get into today's episode where I want to talk about this whole idea that practice makes perfect, especially in regards to self-care, right?

Practice makes perfect. Most of us grew up hearing that story, that I guess I don't even want to say proverb, but let's just say proverb, that idea that proverb, that the more you practice, the more you push, the more you keep doing these certain skills and habits, the better you're going to be to the point where you're able to make it perfect, right?

I want to talk about that. I want to talk about how harmful that is, at least to me. Let's just talk about self-care. Before I get into today's episode, though, I want to give a special thank you and shout out to every single one of you that support the podcast on Patreon.

You have no idea how much your support means. Also, if you have sent me a kind email, if you've left a rating and review on iTunes, if you've shared the show, like whatever you've done, I just want to make sure that I acknowledge you.

I want to let you know that I appreciate you, and I'm just so glad that you are in community with me as we move forward in embracing what it means to acknowledge our worth and to feel whole and to be healthy.

I do not have my water, so my throat is going to be a little parched in this episode, so I just want to let you know that upfront.

Let's go ahead and get into it. First of all, like I said, I want to talk about just this whole idea of this narrative that practice makes perfect.

What is practice? Practice is about deepening your understanding by applying ideas and methods versus just, I guess, just like thinking about them.

That's what the definition of practice more or less was when I looked it up on Google University.

In regards to self-care, I think of it as the beliefs and habits and rhythms and rituals that we put into motion on a regular basis that allow us to deepen our understanding of who we are and what we need and then applying that understanding consistently in a way that helps you feel whole.

So back to that whole saying that practice makes perfect.

I don't agree with that statement. I no longer am in solidarity or agreement with the saying that practice makes perfect.

Perfect to me. Perfect means free from flaws. It's exactly right. It's exactly precise.

This thing that you've done is the best, it's ever going to be nothing can enhance it any further.

It's flawless, like I said, and it's as good as it's going to get and everything is like 0.100% and for those meetings alone, I don't believe that this would be a phrase that our ancestors would have used.

I can't imagine our ancestors saying practice makes perfect, at least not before we became enslaved.

And I feel like that's because the concept of perfection as we use it, it's just a colonized way of thinking.

And I can tell you that our proverbs, and I even look to see for proverbs that I wasn't familiar with, our proverbs are not filled with stories about how everything needs to be perfect or how doing something like this means that we can eventually make it perfect.

Our proverbs and stories are usually like filled with lessons and love and stories and animals and food and all those kind of things like handed down from one generation to the next.

And I have, like I said, I have yet to see any proverb and someone please, if there is one, please correct me because I am not too, you know, I, I love to learn.

So if there is a proverb that says what I'm talking about here, from our people that let us us to know, but I did not come across it while I was researching, but like, I have yet to see a proverb that says doing things for the sake of perfection is like that that's the end goal.

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