Confronting Perfectionism
I recently attended a retreat on perfectionism. The idea was to disconnect, immerse in nature, and confront my perfectionism head-on. Because perfectionism is not something you can simply turn off, our focus was to become aware of our habits and negative self-talk while meeting other women who were also struggling with how perfectionism manifests in their lives.
One of my favorite takeaways from the retreat is that “there is only room for disappointment when our expectations and reality are disconnected.” We talked about this at length and it really resonated with me. WHY did this resonate with me so much? Well, I can think of dozens of situations when my expectations were far from reality. One recent example is when I told myself I would write a new manuscript by September. I set this deadline in May and it is already September. So far, I have created an outline. That’s right—an outline. I’m nowhere near my goal and all that I’ve created is a lot of anxiety about my lack of progress. However, I have investigated exciting new ideas for my company, increased clientele, and hired and onboarded several new staff. Oh, and I designed a brand-new course to teach doctoral students this fall. Maybe I’m not so behind after all?
On a personal note, I’ve struggled to figure out a meditation schedule that works for me. I recently decided to start meditating in the morning instead of the evening because I was mostly falling asleep at night instead of meditating. I made a goal to start meditating every morning. What happened? I stopped meditating entirely in the evening and only meditated one morning in the first week. I was meditating less! I then stopped meditating entirely for about two weeks before realizing how ineffective and ridiculous my new plan was. Since my realization, I have meditated every evening plus a few times in the morning. Now, my personal net gain is higher, even if I haven’t perfectly executed what seemed like a “better” plan.
So where do the collective “we” go from here?
Good question. At the retreat, we completed an exercise fairly well known amongst therapists. The exercise consisted of writing responses we would have while consoling a friend during a difficult time. Next, we wrote down words we used with ourselves during a difficult situation. What a dramatic difference!
Here are some of the words I wrote down:
To my friend: It is going to be okay. I believe in you.
To myself: What were you thinking? You are such an idiot!
To my friend: You’ve got this.
To myself: Now it’s never going to happen. Great job!
To my friend: I’m here for you.
To myself: How did you manage to create this mess? This is so embarrassing!
See what I mean? We are so unbelievably mean to ourselves. Before we can accept ourselves, we have to first reinforce beliefs that we are enough by changing negative self-talk. None of us is perfect—including me; including you. But we can each be good enough. That’s pretty powerful.
I left the weekend promising myself to never ever be a perfectionist again. Or else.
KIDDING! See what I did there? Eh, it’s a work in progress. And that’s okay.