Scenic Route, Social Change and Mental Health for Tired Perfectionists

Why “Getting Your Life Together” Might Be Making You Less Resilient

• Jennifer Walter • Season 7 • Episode 110

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The Words You Need to Hear When Perfectionism Is Running Your Life
Ever find yourself thinking: “I should be further along by now”?
Our society is so OBSESSED with finishing things… what if strength lives in what’s still taking shape?

I’ve been taking an adult learning programme on resilience at my old university, University College Cork,  and spending more time in my friend Juli’s clay studio. There, I noticed: the clay pieces I tried to make perfect felt lifeless. The ones with flaws felt alive. This naturally led me back into the world of Wabi‑sabi — the Japanese aesthetic of imperfection, impermanence, and incompleteness — and how it mirrors resilience.

In this episode, I walk you through:

  • The cultural myth of “completion” and why we still chase it
  • How wabi-sabi challenges that myth
  • What resilience really is — and how it shows up in softness not hardness
  • A short practice you can use this week to lean into being unfinished


If you felt even a flicker of recognition in this episode, share it with someone who might need a reminder that perfection isn’t the point — being alive is.

And if you’re ready to lean into being imperfect and resilient, head to my site and check out my coaching options → jenniferwalter.me/coaching

Send me a DM

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Visit jenniferwalter.me – your cosy corner where recovering perfectionists, tired minds, and those done pretending to be fine find space to breathe, dream, and create real change.


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Jennifer Walter:

Let's be honest for a second, okay? How often do you feel behind? Behind in work? Behind in I don't know, your bikini figure? Behind in healing yourself, or simply becoming who you should be by now. And welcome to the fucking club. You're not alone. We live in a world that's obsessed with being finished. But what if real strength lives in what's still taking shape? I don't know. I've been thinking about a lot about this. I'm currently taking a course on building resilience at my old university. And I was at my friend Yuli's pottery studio the other day. I noticed something. Every time I tried to make my clay pieces smooth and perfect, they felt kind of eh. But the ones with the uneven edges and the imperfect glaze, they felt so alive and much more like me. And that's the essence of wobbizabi. And it's also resilience. So today we'll explore how to build resilience by embracing wobbizabi. So stay on to hear my mad take on this and how it just really makes sense. Grab your hot beverage of joy. Choice. Of joy and of choice. I like that. And clench your jaw. And let's take the scenic route. There's a different way to think about mental health. And it starts with slowing down. Sometimes the longest way around is the shortest way home. And that's exactly where we're taking the scenic route. Hi, I'm Jennifer Walter, host of the Scenic Route Podcast. Think of me as your sociologist's sister in arms and rebel with many causes. Together, we're blending critical thinking with compassion, mental health with a dash of rebellion, and personal healing with collective change. We're trading perfectionism for possibility and toxic positivity for messy growth. Each week, we're exploring the path to better mental health and social transformation. And yes, by the way, pretty crystals are totally optional. You ready to take the scenic route? Let's walk this path together. It's no surprise, right? We live in a culture that worships the finished project. The tidy timeline, the neat ending, the clear identity. But it's worth noting to kinda like ask yourself, where does this obsession come from? I mean, and I get it, right? Neat endings can be measured. KPIs, job done, not done. Tidy timelines may give you an illusion of control. And a sharp defined identity. No, that's something we can brand, package, and sell to others and to ourselves. And again, it's really worth to look at where does this come from? Always worth looking at the past to not repeat the same shit over and over again. So um so Silentist Max Weber in his book that came out in 1905, uh, the Protestant Ethic and the Spirit of Capitalism traced this mindset to early industrialization. Work was once a calling, a sort of spiritual practice, but um as capitalism grew, that calling lost its soul. We were left with what Weber called the Iron Cage, a world where efficiency and control replace creativity and autonomy to such a degree that we aren't, or that it's increasingly hard, or we're left unable to think of something else than what is. And we had industrialization where factories turned people into productivity metrics, how many pieces per minute. Um and the cruel thing is that this logic didn't necessarily just stay in the factories, it spread um into how we measure our days, our progress, and even our worth as human beings. Um completion stopped being craftsmanship. It became proof of worthiness. Finish the project, close the deal, transform yourself. All the while the goalposts of the end keep moving and the pressure to reach to reach the gold end is increasing. And um psychologist Thomas Curran and Andrew Hill did an interesting study. They looked at um over 4,000 uh university studies students um from I think Canada, UK, and the US, um spanning from the 80s to 2016 or so. Um their research shows that perfectionism has risen dramatically by over 30%, um, especially the kind driven by what others expect of us. As they put it, neoliberal culture rewards competitive individualism. And boy, we have internalized this. We have turned ourselves into products to perfect and perform. And perfectionism might look like control, but underneath it's fear. Fear of being judged, fear of being left behind, fear that if something is not finished, it means we're not enough. And of course, underneath fear sits our very old friend shame. If that sounds familiar, congratulations. And yes, you have been on a cine ground a few times with me because we're keep on coming back to shame. Um but if you want to look more into shame, go back, uh listen to the episode from last week. But um here, what if incompleteness in itself isn't a problem to fix, but a truth to embrace? What if imperfection isn't a failure, but the very texture of being alive? And that's um how I want you to introduce or reintroduce you to the concept of wabi-sabi. So I don't see the English or German language uh as to have an ideal translation of this term. Rustic or rustikal might be used as the closest one when it comes to describe its appearance. But the connotation of rustical I don't really like. Um so in uh his 1994 book, Wabi Zabi for artists, designers, poets, and philosophers, Leonard Koren defines it beautifully. Wabi Zabi can be, in its fullest expression, be a way of life. At the very least, it's a particular type of beauty. He goes on to express that Wabi Zabi is a beauty of things imperfect, impermanent, and incomplete. It's a beauty of things modest and humble, it's a beauty of things unconventional. And that's really fascinating when and and like how counter-cultural this is to Western philosophy. Um yeah, so what we don't I don't know, I should probably should have said that before that it has Japanese origins. But anyway, no, you know. But uh it's interesting how counter-cultural this is to Western philosophy, right? Where Plato searched for perfect eternal forms, or um Descartes sought certainty through reason. Bobisabi embraces what would also maybe Alan Watts explored in his book The Wisdom of Insecurity, the understanding that stability is an illusion and peace comes from accepting uncertainty rather than resisting it. And this isn't, I don't know, Eastern mysticism or something. That in itself is valid enough, right? It's increasingly supported by modern science as well. Uh we have Stuart Kaufman who describes living system as existing at the edge of chaos, that dynamic space between rigid order and complete disorder, chaos, where adaptation and innovation actually flourish. So then sweet spot between and I always think of it this way atoms atoms themselves are structured, yet dynamic, right? Each atom holds a stable form. Protons, neutrons in the nucleus, electrons orbiting in defined probability class, I think they're called. I don't know, not not not a min scientist, but not a STEM researcher. But like there's enough movement and flexibility within that structure to for interaction to occur. If atoms were completely static, no chemical bonds would form and life would be impossible. If there were pure chaos flying apart without constraint, the same would be true. So Kaufmann's edge of chaos is that sweet spot, the balance between stability and fluidity. Just as atoms need both order and motion to connect and create, living systems from ecosystems to human minds thrive when there's enough structure to hold coherence, yet enough openness to allow change. Too much rigidity leads to stagnation, too much chaos leads to collapse. Life, intelligence, creativity all enfold in a space in between. And that space, I think, interestingly enough, is also where resilience lives. And resilience in itself is a term that has many, many different different definitions. Um in research, um we have uh Fisher, Luther, and Van Holf go on about how resilience isn't about staying on bent. It's more about bending well and generally understood as the process of positive adaption to adversity. So true resilience isn't really about being unbreakable, it's about the elasticity, the ability to bend without losing yourself. Like imagine like a rubber brand a rubber band and you stretch it and release it. It finds shape again. It's hard. The rubber is hard, but it's also flexible. Like it wouldn't find its shape again if it were if it were too hard. That's also what Wabi Sabi teaches us, right? Strength isn't in perfection or permanence, but in the graceful return after the stretch. The willingness to move with life, not against it. Um psychologist psychologists taught Cashton has this term that uh he called or he coined um psychological flexibility, the ability to remain open, present, guided by your values, even when things sh when things don't go in your don't go your way. And in Robizabi terms, the this could be the art of holding steady when shit hit the fan. Without pretending that the shit isn't there. Because that's not helpful. We all know this. Like if you just brush your shit under the under under the carpet, it will start to stink at some point. So think of your nervous system as a rubber band, like when life pulls True, I don't know, uncertainty, loss, change, whatever. Your ability to stretch and recover depends on whether you can stay soft enough to move and strong enough to hold shape. Too much rigidity and you snap too little structure, you lose coherence. And when we practice wabbi zabi, we're actually strengthening that muscle. We're saying I can live with the cracks, I can breathe through uncertainty, I can find peace in the not yet. That's why I also off so often talk about the soft life as a term, as an idea, not as an indulgence, but as a strategy for resilience. We need to soften in order to adapt well. And I said this before, I always think of like Serena Williams playing tennis. How could she react so quickly on the court if like her knees and her whole body was locked tight? Her power comes from a certain degree of softness. It makes her more ready. And and speaking of the body, right? We have um uh Brazil Thunder Koch's extensive work on trauma. Um and the book I think a lot of you have read, um, The Body Keeps the Score, where he goes on where he goes on on the rigidity is often a symptom of an overwhelmed nervous system. We've been hurt, we contract, we try to control, we demand predictability and completion. Like that that whole we've been hurt, we contract, we are a submarine, and we're diving under. Boy, that's surely my modus operandi. I'm like a little little yellow submarine. So but again, but coming back to healing happens when we can soften again, when we can tolerate the incomplete, the unresolving, the still unfolding. So maybe the project you started two years ago that's still sitting on your Google Drive going ha ha ha every time you're opening it, or I don't know, maybe the conversation you meant to have, but you but it hasn't happened yet for whatever reason. Or maybe the healing you thought you would have done by now. It's okay. Incomplete doesn't mean broken or not working, unworthy, whatever. It just means a life, becoming. So Wabi's obvi gives us the permission to hold things tenderly, more tenderly, to honor the beauty of in process, to stop waiting for the perfect moment to begin and to start appreciating the moment we're in. This also aligns with what philosopher William James called pragmatism. The idea that truth isn't static and eternal, but rather what proves useful and helpful um uh you and like it helps us to live more fully in practice. And incompleteness works, it keeps us curious, humble, and growing. The research on resilience tells us that the same thing, whabizabi has been whispering for centuries. You don't need to be finished to be whole, you don't need to bounce back to the same place you were before. You just need to keep moving, flexible, adaptive, open. And that's that's resilience. That's wabizabi, that's being human. We can pull a lot of labels on it. Um, so that's what that was kind of like where where my head went while doing pottery um and being enrolled in a course. Those things happen, and it's always very interesting moments, and there's always I think all these ideas they often come to you in a moment where like they come to you in a particular moment for a reason. So there we go. And there's something, there's a small practice you can do with this, and I really want you to try this this week. It's simple, and I think it really brings together softening and wobbi zombian resilience. So pick one thing in your life that feels unfinished to you, whatever it is, like it can be something that's really unfinished, but like something that's been unfinished for a while. Like maybe you have like a half-knitted sweater somewhere, or you started writing a book a long time ago, or you had this recipe book that you always wanted to try, I don't know, whatever it is. Pick one thing, a project you keep postponing, a dream that's still half-formed, a conversation you haven't found the right words yet. And so pick pick it up, and instead of trying to fix it or finish it, take a moment to soften around it, like quite literally, right? Find your breath, unclench your jaw, drop your shoulders, let your belly expand as you exhale. Now bring that unfinished thing to mind again, or pick it up even when you when you get when it's something you have close by. And observe, notice how it feels in your body when you stop trying to resolve shit. When you just let it be here as is. Notice and see if there's a small beauty hidden in that pause. A lesson, a tenderness, a quiet spark of a kind. This is also what Tara Bra, for example, calls radical acceptance. Not giving up, but gently meeting what is. When we combine awareness with softness, our body learn learns that incompleteness is safe. That we don't have to rush towards closure to be okay. And that for my newly probably diagnosed ADHD brain, that's both a relief and a fret. Like, I am torn about this. Like, comment in the comments and help me sort this one out, please. So, but let that be your wobbi zobi moment this week. Take one thing that feels rough, cracked, incomplete, and a brief softness into it. Right? Because that breath, that willingness to stay open, it it this is how resilience begins to build. So maybe this week when you catch yourself thinking, I should be further along, I should have finished this by now. Shit, shit, shit, shit, shit all over yourself. Pause. Think of the softening exercise. And remember, all things are imperfect, all things are incomplete, all things are impermanent. That's not a reason to despair, that's a reason to exhale. Because you, me, everyone we're allowed to be unfinished. And that's a good thing. And if this so if this episode landed with you, share it with someone who needs a little reminder that done isn't the goal. Fucking being alive is. Bye. And just like that, we've reached the end of another journey together on the scenic group podcast. Thank you for spending time with us. Curious for more stories or in search of the resources mentioned in today's episode. Visit us at scenigrootpodcast.com for everything you need. And if you're ready to embrace your scenic group, I have got something special for you. Step off the beaten path with my scenic root affirmation card deck. It's crafted for those moments when you're seeking courage, yearning to trust your inner voice and eager to carve out a path authentically, unmistakably yours. Pick your scenic root affirmation today and let it support you. Excited about where your journey might lead? I certainly am. Remember, the scenic route is not just about a destination, but the experiences, learnings, and joy we discover along the way. Thank you for being here, and I look forward to seeing you on the scenic route again.

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Jennifer Walter | Swiss Sociologist & Mental Health Advocat

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