(Chorus: “Hi, Michelle.”)

If Control Freaks Anonymous existed, I would SO be a member.

So this post is as much a reminder to myself as a message to you.

I kind of have this long-standing beef with technology and so-called “progress.” It seems like there is just so much to keep up with these days, and it’s getting worse, not better.

Okay, so I do like modern-day conveniences like…oh, say electricity. And indoor plumbing. But I must confess that there are many, many days when I long for a simpler life, without all the cars and cell phones and fancy office equipment and high-tech gizmos and and and…

Because while they are all conveniences, too, they carry with them an underlying assumption which remains largely unquestioned in our collective mind—the assumption that we must use them, or we’re somehow less efficient, less in control.

We believe, without thinking much about it, that we must keep pace with our own technology.

However, the pace of technological change over the past 100 years in particular has been so exponential that our grandparents truly would not have believed what they saw if they’d been able, as children, to time-travel to today.

Biological change happens over the course of centuries and millennia. Our technology has so far outpaced our biology, it’s not even funny. Yet we just assume that we need to keep up with it all.

Why?

Because we see everyone else doing it.

What we often don’t see, though, is that most folks are feeling as desperate as we are, looking around at all the things that other (equally anxious) people accomplish in a day and taking it for granted  that they need to measure up, too.

It’s a frantic race in which each of us believes we’re the only one who doesn’t have it all together, so we allow ourselves to be drawn into sprints and long-distance events which are either illusory to begin with (you must bake the best cookies ever for your third-grader’s class party or you’re a failure as a mom), or real but not at all in line with our personal values (you’ve got to work a bunch of 60-hour weeks, be a stranger to your family, and prove your worth to your employer to get that promotion).

The irony is that by trying so hard to remain in control, we lose it.

Don’t you hate irony?

And the grand delusion is that there is a finish line to this race. So you just keep pushing, aiming for the day you can finally stop and relax, but meanwhile trying to control all the flailing octopus arms of your life while running at top speed.

Not a great way to keep your balance. Or your sanity.

Of course you want to feel in control. Nothing wrong with that—we all do. The tricky part, though, is deciding what you really want so that you can give up on the notion of having to manage everything else.

In a society that pushes us to “realize our full potential,” “be all that we can be,” and “live our dreams,” it takes conscious effort and real courage to choose the path of aiming for less.

I’m going to repeat that, because it’s so important.

It takes conscious effort and real courage to choose the path of aiming for less.

But aiming for less, and doing that as well as we can, is the real way to live the dream. To make a difference. To feel truly satisfied with what we accomplish.

We need to realize that by trying to meet someone else’s outer standards of accomplishment, we give up our control.

We begin to take it back when we decide what we want from our lives.

For the past few years I’ve focused on scaling back and simplifying my life. I had to. I was depressed, exhausted, and completely burned out.

Now I’ve got several things going on that I’m genuinely excited about. The challenge, for me, is moving forward without getting into that “all or nothing” headspace which has been my lifelong companion.

I make lists of everything I need and want to do. At first this feels great—it clears my head and lets me relax because I don’t have to worry about dropping any balls—it’s all there on paper where I can see it.

Then the lists undergo mitosis, sometimes often within seconds or minutes of being created. They subdivide from nice, clean rows of words into huge, unwieldy, overwhelming deposits of impossible.

I create and revise the lists again and again, knowing darn well there isn’t enough time for it all.

The best I’ve done so far is to realize that I have utterly ludicrous expectations of myself. I haven’t yet figured out how to stop myself from having them. I might have to accept that I never will.

So I’m (slowly, gradually) learning to do something that’s incredibly difficult for me.

I’m admitting—through clenched teeth because I soooooooo much don’t want it to be true—that I won’t ever accomplish everything that I want to.

Whew. I typed it. And my stomach just tied itself in a knot.

Because oh, my God, if I can’t accomplish everything, then I’m a failure! I’ll die with regrets! People won’t respect me! I will Be Less Than I Could Have Been! And that (*gasp!*) is a mortal sin against my life’s very purpose, whatever it is!

(Did I say something further up about all-or-nothing thinking?)

I will type it again, with emphasis.

I WILL NEVER ACCOMPLISH EVERYTHING I WANT TO DO IN MY LIFE.

I am mortal. I have a finite amount of time on this earth. I can only do so much. I need to breathe deep and let that fact sink deeply into my bones.

The first thing I experience when I do is an increased sense of desperation. If that’s true, then every single minute is precious! I shouldn’t waste any of it!

The second thing I feel is the arising of a quieter, steadier part of myself. She tells me that the real waste is allowing the time to fly by unnoticed as I obsess about the future. That if I accept that there is only so much I can accomplish, then I should be as fully present as I can in each moment, to make clear, intentional choices about how I spend my time.

She also says that living in the moment, as clichéd as that sounds, is the way to fully savor my life. This, she gently reminds me, also includes the not-so-pleasant feelings. Because even though chocolate and cheesecake taste mighty fine, I’d quickly get tired of them if that was all I ever ate.

We need the contrast to know when we have it good.

So I’m learning to catch myself in the act of engaging with old patterns—the ones that keep me fantasizing without taking action, making plans with unrealistic timelines, buying products that I keep hoping will be the “magic bullet” to solving this or that problem and not using them, and driving myself into the ground through obsessive workaholism and perfectionism.

Interestingly, I’ve noticed that I keep getting the same amount of frustrated even though I continue to expect different results. Funny, that.

So even if I simply notice that I’ve gone down my usual trail toward the murk and overwhelm, I’m trying to consider that a success, because you can’t change a pattern—especially one as ingrained as this—without first being aware of when you’re doing it.

Like I said at the beginning, there are no clear-cut answers here. But there is a growing awareness.

I’m thinking that’s a good first step.

Okay, metaphorically. But it still got a pretty good kick.

If you’re a writer, an artist, a person with creative goals of any kind, or an aspiring any-one-of-those, read on. I won’t kick you, promise.

But this other author might.

I’ve finished Steven Pressfield’s phenomenal book The War of Art, and the most difficult part of writing about it will be to NOT quote most of the book. It’s that good.

It’s also intense. Scary intense. Hardcore in the way that taking a good honest look at yourself—and then doing something real about it—is hardcore. This isn’t feel-good self-help, folks. This is gut-wrenchingly honest stuff. And that’s why it’s so fantastic.

The title is a clever reversal of Sun Tzu’s The Art of War, the classic military treatise. The book itself is about the enemy every creative person (which, yes, really means every person) faces on the battlefield of life—resistance. Pressfield considers it important enough to capitalize.

Most of us have two lives. The life we live, and the unlived life within us. Between the two stands Resistance.

Have you ever brought home a treadmill and let it gather dust in the attic? Ever quit a diet, a course of yoga, a meditation practice? . . . Are you a writer who doesn’t write, a painter who doesn’t paint, an entrepreneur who never starts a venture? Then you know what Resistance is.

Got your number there? Mine, too.

I will now give you a micro-synopsis of the book, which, if you are human and breathing and have aspirations toward a better life in any way at all, I urge you to read as soon as possible. It’s fairly short and (hallelujah!) well-designed, but every page is pithy. Many statements are epigrammatic enough to crochet into samplers or emblazon across shields.

Book One defines Resistance, and discusses its many manifestations. (You’ll recognize most if not all of them.) Book Two talks about “turning pro”—the conscious, willful decision to give something your all regardless of the outcome. Book Three discusses the muse, life and death, the ego and the larger self, and other equally daunting yet relevant subjects.

The novel for which Steven Pressfield is probably best known (yep, because of the movie) is The Legend of Bagger Vance, which is a modern reimagining of the Hindu Bhagavad Gita. There are many parallels between those and The War of Art as well, but this post is long enough already. More on that if you want it . . . let me know in the comments!

I came away from The War of Art inspired—and also scared. Pressfield says this is good.

If you find yourself asking yourself (or your friends), “Am I really a writer? Am I really an artist?” chances are you are. The counterfeit innovator is wildly self-confident. The real one is scared to death.

The book feels like a clarion call to me—a clear ringing of trumpets urging me to rise to my highest potential. Very compelling.

But that’s what scares me. I recognize those trumpets. They tend to bring on countless iterations of the “passionately inspired – giving 110% – burning out” cycle, and now that I’ve become aware of my perfectionistic tendencies, I’m careful about anything that might send me spiraling recklessly down that path again.

So I skimmed through the book once more. And I found this:

Resistance outwits the amateur with the oldest trick in the book. It uses his own enthusiasm against him. Resistance gets us to plunge into a project with an overambitious and unrealistic timetable for its completion.

(Sound familiar, anyone?)

The professional, on the other hand, understands delayed gratification. He . . . steels himself at the start of a project, reminding himself he is in the Iditarod, not the sixty-yard dash. He conserves his energy. He prepares his mind for the long haul. He sustains himself with the knowledge that if he can just keep those huskies mushing, sooner or later the sled will pull into Nome.

From one perspective, how depressing! I want to read that success is possible by this time next month, dammit! Don’t talk to me about the long slog through the ice and snow. I’ve been slogging long enough already.

But there it is again. Wanting the magic bullet, the quick fix. Often combined with clever marketers trying to sell me on the latest weight-dropping, muscle-toning, productivity-boosting, time-managing, power-focusing product, service, or package, which is “the last thing you’ll ever need to buy to solve this problem!!!” until the next one comes along to weight down my bookshelf, clutter up my living room, or fill up my hard drive.

But.

There’s another perspective we can take.

What if we all simply started implementing the knowledge and systems we already have? What if we quietly, steadily, without fanfare, just started doing The Work (whatever that means for each of us)?

Difficult, yes. Every day we will face our own stuckness. But Pressfield (rightly, I think) tells us that

Resistance will unfailingly point to true North—meaning that calling or action it most wants to stop us from doing. . . . We can navigate by Resistance, letting it guide us to that calling or action that we must follow before all others.

If we can calmly face down Resistance every day (or at least keep showing up and giving it our best), how freeing! To not have to care about how good something is . . . to let it just pour out of us, trusting that it will gradually, naturally perfect itself over time?

That’s a mighty soft pillow for a sore butt to rest on.

Josiane writes about having a major epiphany: “I know one of the reasons why I don’t get around to doing some of the things I want to do is that as long as they remain undone, they retain the potential of being perfect.”

This is a huge realization. HUGE.

For a very long time I was unaware, as many people are, of the direct link between perfectionism and procrastination. In fact, it seems contradictory. Someone who strives so hard to be absolutely faultless would be sure to include following schedules and meeting timelines in that, wouldn’t they?

But that ignores how deep the perceived need to be superhuman can go. And that need is based on fear, one of our most primal emotions. Which is linked to our basic biological drive for survival. So yeah, perfectionism carries some serious oomph.

To describe what can happen, I am hereby coining a word of my own.

Procrastifectionism (noun):  Delaying action out of the fear, either conscious or unconscious, of not performing to the unreasonably high standards one desires to meet.

It works like this.

You want or need to do something that feels high-stakes for you. (It doesn’t have to look high-stakes to anyone else—it only needs to feel that way to you.) It’s so important, it absolutely has to be good. And today you just don’t have it in you to give it the amount of time, energy, or concentration that it needs to be that good.

So you put it off until tomorrow. Or Monday. Or the first of the month. Because you’ll be ready then.

Except you’re not. You can’t be, because you’re still just as intimidated about how overwhelming the project seems and how perfectly you need to do it.

So you start feeling bad about your ability to get the job done. If you can’t even get started, how will it ever be good? Your self-esteem sinks, and you don’t feel ready to tackle the task. Again.

Rinse and repeat. It’s a vicious cycle.

Until you realize, like Josiane did, that

The form in which that imagined potential of perfection exists . . . it is not what I want. That potential perfection, even if it was actualised, is deeply flawed. It is flawed, and for a very simple reason: there is no “me” in that (potentially or actually) perfect thing – it is not in any way infused with my essence, my me-ness.

Hmm. Interesting. I kept reading. Then she pretty much blew me away with this bit:

Those things I don’t create . . . can’t be infused with my essence so long as they remain within me. As long as they’re only within me, I am not within them; they have to come out of me in order to take with them – and contain within them – some of what I am.

It reminds me of when we learned about the two types of energy way back in grade school—potential and kinetic. Kinetic energy is energy in motion—acting on the world and doing things. Potential energy contains power, but doesn’t unleash it. It just sits there, pregnant with possibilities, but giving birth to none of them.

Okay, so I’m anthropomorphizing basic physics. But you get the point.

As you go through the next few days or weeks, check in with yourself from time to time and ask yourself which type of energy you’re embodying. There’s no right or wrong—this is about just noticing, so you can make more self-aware choices.

And check out the rest of Josiane’s blog post. She’s one smart woman.

It’s been a long, long time…hasn’t it?*

*huge props to anyone who can identify the lyrical reference–leave a comment below if you can and you’ll be enthusiastically celebrated.

I haven’t posted in quite a while, because I’ve been thinking Deep Thoughts about where I want this blog to go. You should be seeing me post with some regularity again.

In the meantime, I’ve started off the new year differently than I have in the past, thanks to Cairene MacDonald, who recently hosted a teleclass with her own coach Laura Burkey on choosing a theme for the year, rather than goals or resolutions. Because you know how the latter usually works—you set yourself up for failure, with the best of intentions. If you’re lucky, maybe you even last a whole month. (Me? Not even that long.) Then you spend the rest of the year berating yourself for not keeping your resolutions or not working more diligently toward your goals, slipping further and further into resignation and self-criticism.

Fun fact! I just went to my favorite online anagram creator (be warned—it’s highly addictive), plugged in the word “resolutions,” and one of the anagrams it came up with was “onerous list.” How fitting is that?

I’m tired of that whole resolve-and-fail pattern…but I have some definite directions I want to take this year. So a theme seems like a great idea. According to Laura, a theme gives you a point of focus, but it doesn’t have any specific “action steps,” and you cannot ever be failing at your theme. To a recovering perfectionist like me, that’s important.

Here are the four main concepts to consider when creating your theme for the year. I feel okay sharing this with you because Laura offered them to us for free on the call. I’ve also rephrased some of them a bit, so it’s a mix of her words and mine.

• Your theme should reflect the emergence of your true self. It’s not about changing yourself—it’s about adding to or improving on who you already are and always have been. Some aids to thinking about this are phrases like “What I have always…” and “As a kid, I always…”.
• Your theme must be timely and relevant to you right now. Whatever words you use to express it will speak volumes to you, and resonate with your heart, mind, and even your physical body.
• Your theme should require a daily, healthy stretch. Not to stress you out, but more as a call to yourself from yourself to extend yourself in new ways that you want. Not because of internalized “shoulds,” but because you have chosen this direction for yourself.
• Your theme must “stick.” Its words should really pack a punch and be catchy and memorable to you. Personal.

I’ve chosen a theme for the year. Wanna hear it?

::whistles::

Oh, you do? Okay, then.

My personal theme for 2010 is “Nourish my life, claim my power.”

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Nourishing my life is partly about physical nourishment. Because I have some serious and deep-seated issues with food. I don’t eat well, I never really learned how to cook or enjoy healthy food, and I’m starting to suffer from this. The irony is that I’m probably severely malnourished at the same time that I’m significantly overweight.

This year I want to focus on nourishing myself with food and movement, rather than restricting myself to foods that I don’t enjoy and forcing myself to exercise. I’m not going to say “I can’t have that” or “I must do this.” Instead, I’m going to experiment with “What do I want that would nourish me?” and “What ways of moving would give my body pleasure?” So nothing is out, but I’m looking for more of what I want in.

But the concept of nourishment goes deeper than that. I’ve spent my entire life being a people-pleaser, and now that I’ve decided I want to live life on my own terms at last, I’m having trouble figuring out what those terms are. It seems that somewhere along the way, I forgot how to have fun in ways that don’t require winning the lottery to finance. When someone recently asked me the question “What would you do if you had today entirely at your disposal?” I had to honestly answer, “I don’t know.” That’s heartbreaking and more than a little frightening.

So as a first step, I’ve created a list entitled “Ways to Nourish Myself” and stuck it in my planner so I always have it at hand. It has some incredibly simple things on it like “breathe deeply” and “stretch,” which I can do anywhere, plus things that are more location-based (“cuddle with my cats”) and some that are mini-projects (“try a new recipe”) or longer-term ones (“grow plants”). I’ll add to it as I think of more things, but already this list gives me something to turn to if I’m at a loose end and want to do something to steady myself and experience some pleasure.

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Claiming my power is about stepping into a place of more confidence. For instance, I want to launch a business this year. (Stay tuned!) For the past year or so, I’ve been in learning mode, taking in books and recordings and advice from others so that now I can picture myself as a “solopreneur.” (Which just means being in business for myself, without having employees. Gotta love clever terminology.) But when I look back on last year, I realize I took on the role of the apprentice in my own mind.

I’ll never stop learning, growing, and asking for help and advice, but I need to stop seeing myself as an apprentice now. I need to trust that I have legitimate skills and wisdom to offer, and move out of information-gathering mode into implementation mode. Every entrepreneur I know says they didn’t know what they were doing when they launched their businesses—they just jumped in, started doing things, and noticed what worked and what didn’t. It’s time for me to stop reading about how to swim and dive in already, trusting that I’ll figure it out as I go along and that I have people on my team who will support me in all kinds of ways.

I also want to claim my power in the realm of personal relationships. I’ve gotten much better at stating my wants and needs clearly, and understanding that they’re as valid as anyone else’s—but I’d like to develop that even further. I want to be able to communicate openly and directly, but without anger or violence, in a way that affirms what I want but also seeks to understand what the other person (or people) want. I want to get better at finding win-win situations, and at making conscious choices to walk away from situations that become too toxic for me.

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So…it should be a very interesting year for me. I’ll keep you posted on my progress from time to time.

What about you? Have you made any promises to yourself this year, and if so, how are you doing so far? (And how are you doing it? If you’ve found a way to keep your resolutions, inquiring minds want to know!)

How does the idea of an annual theme sound to you? If you’re exploring it and want to comment below, I’d love to hear your thoughts.

Again, happy 2010! I hope it’s a great one for all of us.

Yeah, me too.

This post was sparked by Jennifer Louden (whom I am not accusing of being saccharine, by the way—she’s the real deal) and her Declaration of Freedom from Self-Improvement which she posted today to kick off a week on this theme on her blog.

I signed the declaration by leaving a comment, but it made me think about how easy it is to fall into empty-words, positive-thinking rhetoric and say, “Yes! Non-judgmental self-acceptance, what a great idea! I stand behind it completely!” and then go about your life as usual, vs. really trying to practice it.

And the ironic thing here is that trying to practice it can turn into the very self-improvement self-tyranny you’re attempting to unlearn. (“Damn it! I’m failing at unconditionally accepting myself!”)

That’s a fine line to walk, so I thought I’d share some thoughts on what has helped me to walk it.

Today’s post is about one of the most important attitude adjustments you can make toward overcoming what I am hereby naming “Superhero Syndrome.” (Definitely more to come on that!) I will follow up soon in another post with a list of specific techniques I’ve used.

So . . . how can you move past feeling that the pep talks (from others and from yourself) about how “you’re perfectly fine as you are” are empty positive-thinking platitudes? How can you start believing them?

Realize that accepting yourself as you are now is NOT the same thing as becoming complacent and lazy.

If you already set high (maybe even unreasonably high) standards for yourself, you will not suddenly turn into a person who lets things slide, produces shoddy results, and stops working on yourself. It’s simply not in your nature. You will continue to do your best, but if you can uncouple those efforts from the belief that they define your worth as a human being, you’ll gradually be able to relax into an acceptance what you really are—an amazing work in progress.

This is not easy, but it’s well worth the effort. Personally, I get there by:

• Self-talk. I remind myself over and over again that the essence of me is more than the sum of my actions and how successful I think they are.
• Self-observation. When I act as if the above concept is true, I notice that I feel more peaceful and happy. The more I notice that I do not, in fact, become lazy and complacent when I let go of my attempt to be 100% perfect at everything, the more I build up evidence that I’m not going to turn into an unmotivated lump.

One important thing to keep in mind here is that if you’ve been riding yourself into the ground for a long time, once you begin to realize that you can stop trying so hard all the time you may find yourself sleeping a lot. Or vegging out and staring at walls or the television. Or reading novels. Or playing lots of computer games. Or whatever you do to relax and unplug.

This is fine. You are not becoming a lethargic slob. You are catching up on much-needed rest and rejuvenation, which you may have been denying yourself for years or even decades.

When I finally admitted that I needed to slow down and nurture myself, I slept for 10 hours or more per night for four straight months, with many daytime naps on weekends. And when I came out the other side, I had more energy and enthusiasm for life than I’d felt in many years. I was able to do more.

Go easy on yourself. Don’t be like the saying on one of my all-time favorite t-shirts.

And stay tuned. There’s more to come on this reeeeeeally important topic.

My friend is known for his sense of humor, but then again, as a classic overachiever, maybe there was something beneficial in there for me. I opened the book.

And closed it less than an hour later. Like I said, it’s a very slim volume. The author would probably say that it’s exactly as long as necessary, and not a word longer.

It left me . . . disturbed. Because it’s a funny book, but in the way that Dilbert cartoons are funny, being only slight exaggerations (hmm, perhaps I’m being too charitable there) on work environments that really do exist.

Take, for example, the “Ten Principles of Underachievement.” I particularly like #3 – Expectations lead to misery. Author Ray Bennett writes:

It would be nice to believe that setting the bar high always helps, but it doesn’t. Most people start on an exercise program looking for great improvement, only to quit out of disappointment. If only they had learned to avoid expectations . . .

Ouch. Nail hit squarely on the head.

He also talks about the law of diminishing returns. In any undertaking, there comes a point where even if the spirit is willing, the flesh is gasping for rest. The mind goes into lockdown from sheer overload. At that point, you start getting less and less accomplished for every bit of extra effort you apply. Continuing to push will result in burnout, injury, or worse.

Slow down, Bennett says. Lower the bar. Good enough is good enough.

Of course, my Inner Drill Sergeant scoffs at this notion. “Are you insane, woman? How can you respect yourself if you deliberately do less than you’re capable of?”

I’m getting better at scoffing right back. Some days I can look my Drill Sergeant right in the face and say, “You’re only one part of me, and I don’t have to listen to you all the time anymore.”

Other days I still snap a smart salute, spin on my heel, and march away to do whatever the Sergeant has told me to. But at least when that happens, I’m getting better at noticing it. On good days, I even refrain from judging myself for it.

It takes a long time to break a pattern this entrenched. Compassion for myself seems like a good way to go.

So I’m experimenting with doing less. Deliberately. Just a little, here and there.

• Not always being the first to volunteer whenever a task comes up at work, because after more than three years on the job, I shouldn’t have to feel like I’m proving what a good worker I am every single day.
• Not balancing my checkbook for the first time in my life. (Miraculously, I’ve survived this.)
• Not trying to cook (which usually ends up as a late-night run for junk food), but allowing myself to order takeout instead.
• Not keeping up with my elaborate personal planning system; just writing down brief to-do lists on Post-It notes as they occur to me.

The Underachiever’s Manifesto is a lopsided little treatise. It doesn’t take into account that there are some situations in which you really do need to strive for perfection—for instance, I don’t think I’d hand the book to an air traffic controller just going on-shift.

I also don’t believe that pushing yourself is always a bad thing. I’m proud that I’ve run three marathons, for instance, and I never would have accomplished that without going way out of my comfort zone. I think that every now and then, choosing a really difficult goal and going all-out to achieve it can really be inspiring, and it can teach you some valuable lessons about what you’re capable of.

But this book definitely got me thinking.

What about you? Are there areas in your life where you’ve experimented with turning things down a notch? What happened when you did? Or maybe there’s a situation where you’d like to try that approach. Where can you do less and possibly gain more? And what would you gain?

Feel free to comment below. I’d love to have a conversation about this . . .

Where there is perfection there is no story to tell.

—Ben Okri

Perfectionism is rooted in feelings of shame and inadequacy. We’re afraid that we are somehow not good enough, not worthy enough, to be loved and respected simply by being our natural selves. There are many reasons why this happens, but the upshot is that we feel the constant need to justify our own existence to ourselves and others. Whatever we have achieved thus far is never enough; we must prove ourselves over and over and over and over again.

Talk about a recipe for stress, depression, and burnout.

An article in Psychology Today entitled “Pitfalls of Perfectionism” (March 1, 2008) states:

But the biggest problem with perfection may be that it masks the real secret of success in life. Success hinges less on getting everything right than on how you handle getting things wrong.

What if we were taught that from early childhood? Wouldn’t it have been great if our school grades weren’t based on how well we scored on tests, but on how gamely we worked back through the problems again to figure out what we’d done wrong and how to do them correctly the next time? Or if our parents had asked us how we felt or what we’d learned when our softball team lost the game, rather than saying things like, “Too bad, better luck next time,” planting the unspoken and therefore insidious conclusion that losing was to be considered a 100% negative experience?

What if we were taught that it was (*gasp!*) perfectly okay to express our unhappy emotions, and that if we learned to do this appropriately most of the time, without attacking others in the process, no one would stop loving us?

The quotation continues:

This is where creativity, passion, and perseverance come into play. . . . you don’t make people powerful by pushing them to be perfect but by allowing them to become passionate about something that compels their interest.

When we are very young, everything is play. We don’t worry about failing because we’re so excited about the trying. We haven’t yet learned that we’re supposed to think of ourselves as being on trial before the world.

Think back to your childhood and the first time you rode a bike. Or jumped off the high dive. My guess is that the giddiness and excitement you felt outweighed any bumping-into-curbs or belly-flopping that you might have done. You didn’t do it perfectly, but you had a blast making the attempt. And because you had so much fun, you did it again, and again, until you improved. But the improving wasn’t the goal. The fun was.

So here is the reason why I’m saying that it’s vital to screw things up once in a while. You must learn that it is not the end of the world. That you can recover, and keep trying, and get better.

You must learn failure-resiliency. You need to know, deep in your bones, that you can always bounce back.

And maybe even have some fun in the process.

For any innate talent or learned skill, there can only be one best-in-the-world (or school, or company, or whatever) at a given time. And let’s face it—chances are pretty high you’re not it. That’s not a put-down; it’s simply me making a guess based on the odds without knowing exactly who is reading this.

But what if I’m wrong about you? What if you really are the best at Whatever-It-Is? Even then there’s no surety, because there’s always the chance—pretty much the certainty—that someone will improve on your best performance some day.

So if your sense of security comes from being king or queen of the hill, you’ll either be disappointed when you don’t get there, or when some newcomer knocks you off your throne.

If your sense of self-worth is synonymous with your performance, you will never, ever feel safe.

Now what happens if you allow yourself to be—and appear—fallible? A few pretty nifty things:

• The intense pressure is suddenly off. You can relax a little. Or even (shhh!) a lot, if you want or need to.
• You now have room for improvement. (If you score 100% right from the get-go, how can you ever do better than that?)
• People will not expect 120% of your effort all the time, so there is leeway when you’re operating at less-than-normal capacity for any reason.
• People will feel connected to you because they’ll feel you’re one of them, not up on top of (or trying to climb) some kind of pedestal.

Now I’m not arguing for deliberate mediocrity here. I’m not saying that you should be lazy, or that you should stop setting and striving toward goals. That’s probably not in your genetic makeup anyway. After all, here you are at a blog about perfectionism, right?

All I’m saying is that if you can surrender your need to appear so unremittingly perfect, to yourself as well as to others, you’ll probably be able to loosen up and enjoy the ride a whole lot more.

You’ll also get to define success and happiness by your own internal yardstick rather than society’s external benchmarks.

Granted, this takes practice. A lot of it. You can’t shuck all of your conditioning with a single shrug of the shoulders.

Hence the name of this blog. ;o)