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.

But I’ve been so well trained to fear
What happens if we don’t adhere
To all the rules we’re taught will keep
Us safe from wolves (obedient sheep)

That I’m no longer even sure
Of what I want; I just endure
Days and weeks and months and years
Of subservience to collective fears.

You say that I must earn my pleasures
By dancing to society’s measures,
Following norms I had no choice in making
With most of my waking hours yours for the taking.

But now I’m making a different choice
And listening to my inner voice
That tells me which rules I want to follow
And which make me choke when I try to swallow.

“Everyone does it” is not an excuse
For allowing myself to be seduced
Into a life that’s unfulfilling
In so many ways—I must be willing

To sever my ties to what you have taught me.
I am not the person you’ve always thought me.
The “good little girl” is growing into
A woman committed to learning what’s true

For herself regardless of what she is told.
She’s scared, but determined, and will not be sold
On a story that keeps her inside of your cages.
She wants to be daring and free and courageous

In facing her fear and her anger and doubt
Along with her laughter and joy, letting out
The pressure that’s built up for much too long
By struggling so hard all those years to belong

To a system she never really believed in.
So I’m waving goodbye now, truly leaving
Your heart-grinding tedium far behind,
Unless you’d like to change your mind

And come along, too. I could use some companions
When fording the rivers and crossing the canyons
I’ll surely encounter along the way—
But make your decision. I’m leaving today.

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.

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)

I’ve been pondering why it is that I always feel as though I have to meet a higher standard than anyone else. How did that requirement sink in? What, in my genetic makeup or my upbringing, makes me feel like I must be flawless in everything I do, to the point that I’m often so paralyzed I can’t even start?

I may have gotten some fresh insight into this. I’m currently in an extended phase of physical decluttering at my house, and yesterday I unearthed a bag of stuff my parents had sent me a few years back when they were decluttering. I’d tossed it in a “things to deal with later” box and forgotten about it.

Now here it was again. I opened it up to find a pair of my baby shoes, a baby book with entries by my mother, and an assortment of old report cards, poems I’d written, plus a couple of clippings of myself in the local paper. Curious, I started flipping through the baby book. There were pictures, a few locks of my hair taken at different times, and glowing entries about how cute I was. Then, as I read about myself getting older, I noticed an interesting pattern.

First medical examination: “She was so good and didn’t even cry.” Six months old:”Such a good girl!” And more through the first years of my life, in my mother’s handwriting: “Her nursery school teacher is continually astounded.” “Michelle is a really good girl.” “At a fifth-grade reading level already.” “A teacher’s dream.” “Michelle is still a very good girl.” (As if they were poised for me to become something else?)

Then an undated entry under “Likes and Dislikes” (about school) reads, “Michelle loves to learn. She seems to expect perfection from herself and others.”

Many people develop a sense of perfectionism because they are taught to feel inadequate from early childhood, and the only way they think they can be worthy of love is to strive (or at least appear) to be flawless. That was never my problem. Nope—I was always being told how smart, creative, wonderful, artistic, and ahead of my peers I was. You’d think this would be absolutely fantastic for a young child to hear, wouldn’t you?

In many ways it was. I’ve always had a lot of self-confidence, and I’m very grateful to my parents for instilling that in me. But it certainly set the bar high.

I clearly remember my parents telling me that they would be proud of me no matter how I did in school as long as I tried my best…but that they were very glad I always brought home As and Bs. College, they continued, was very expensive, and it would help a whole lot if my grades were good enough to earn some kind of scholarship.

This was when I was about 10 years old.

I don’t blame my parents for pushing me—they were honestly doing what they felt was best, and I certainly never balked. I was one of those geeky kids who really did love school. Why? Well, I truly did love learning things. But I also liked all the ego strokes I got for being such a good student. Who wouldn’t enjoy all that praise?

So I must have become terrified of not getting it anymore. I became a people-pleaser. First my parents and my teachers. Then anyone in authority (religious leaders, college professors, employers), and friends who might take away their approval and acceptance of me if I failed to be the person I thought they wanted me to be.

I created a series of costumes to wear in different situations. They don’t completely cover me—I wear them so that just enough of me peeks out to give my appearance a stamp of originality. The zany sense of humor. The jaunty confidence and outgoing nature that so often hide the yearning places and the sadness in my heart. The tightening of the mouth that I can’t allow to reveal what I want and need, because that might not be acceptable. And then people might not like me anymore.

Underneath it all, there’s still the little girl who so desperately wants to be included in the hopscotch games at recess not because she’s smart or creative or a good little girl, but simply because she’s herself.

I think I need to find out some more about who she is.

Check out the artist statement. Then go back up and look at Sam’s earnest little face.

When I was a child, I used to wonder about the dandelions, too. I was afraid of the spiky-looking leaves–I refused to step on them, and I remember one day making my father carry me over a stretch of grass in a park because there was nowhere to step without walking on dandelions–but I always thought the flowers were pretty.

I still do. Cheerful miniature suns smiling up from lawns and fields, they always cheer me up. And how cool is it when the blossoms go to seed? How many other flowers can you have fun blowing apart into the wind when they reach maturity and are ready to reproduce?

Who decided that dandelions are weeds? That roses, for example, are the epitome of flowery “perfection”?

Who gets to decide that people like Sam are less than perfect? That they are, in fact, disposable? (“‘Are you going to keep him?’ a nurse asked.” Were you as horror-struck as I was when I read that she actually said this, let alone thought it?)

So many of us pursue the ideal of perfection in our lives, at least in part because we’re conditioned to do so. From earliest childhood, we’re bombarded by unending messages from our parents, families, teachers, authority figures, and friends telling us what we should do, be, own, look like, and act like–messages which we all receive from the mass media and pass back and forth among ourselves as if they are gospel truth.

If perfection means keeping up with these perpetual, completely unreasonable, and sometimes conflicting demands, then perfection is impossible. But that doesn’t t stop us from wanting to achieve it, so we live in denial of the real truth and keep pushing, pushing, pushing. This usually leads to low self-esteem because we feel like we never measure up to all the standards that we “should”–and, all too often, to burnout, frustration, anger, and bitterness.

Personally, I prefer the definition of perfection that I found in the first entry on this page. First entry, from the Random House dictionary, meaning 3:

perfection – a perfect embodiment or example of something.

Doesn’t that take the pressure off? I don’t have to look like the model on the cover of that magazine in the checkout line (forget the fact that she doesn’t even really look like that, either) to be perfectly me. You don’t have to be as saintly as Mother Teresa to be perfectly worthy of love. Sam doesn’t have to have the mental acuity of his peers to be a perfect embodiment of Samness.

I can live with that definition of perfection.

Think what would happen if everyone did.