Overcome perfectionism

The other day my friend told me that my problem is that I want everything to be perfect in a precise, pre-planned way, and when it doesn’t work out that way, I slip into a deep depression and near-apathy.

I’ve been listening to Dr. Wayne Dyer a lot since yesterday, and DVR’d part of a talk on PBS about his new book Excuses Begone .

I was just listening to a part of it, and it was so powerful, I had to take notes, rewind and write down all of what he was saying. It really goes along with self-defeating thinking, and perfectionism that I struggle with. I tend to have all or nothing, black or white thinking, which is not only unreasonable and unrealistic but self defeating because it’s impossible to live up to perfect standards.

He was talking about excuses we tell ourselves, which I had a little aha moment because we don’t always recognize them as excuses, we believe them to be truths and therefore just go with it instead of challenge the thinking. He says that you should ask yourself a series of questions.. which I found oh, so , enlightening.

Example excuse: “It will be difficult.”

Question 1: Is it true?

Question 2: Can you be 100% certain that what you are thinking is true?

Question 3: Is there any possibility that exists that it might not be difficult?

Question 4: What is the reverse of the excuse?

It will be easy, and come naturally.

Now, he questions, why would you pick the first way of thinking? His line of questioning makes me reverse the negative thinking. For example, I tend to think exercise will be difficult and uncomfortable. So, I procrastinate. And, I have been thinking that getting a new job that I enjoy and fits my school schedule will be difficult. Are these patterns of thinking true? Not necessarily. Exercise is usually enjoyable, and leave me feeling better than I started. Will getting a job be difficult? Maybe not. I just got a job interview last week at an almost idea employer, off of doing only one application online. That came pretty easy. He goes on to say, “Why would you pick the first way of thinking, when reversing the excuse will lead to the desired outcome? One will keep you from getting what you want, the other way of thinking will lead you to where you want to be.”

Brilliant. I must get the book now…

I’ve been listening to Dr. Wayne Dyer a lot since yesterday, and DVR’d part of a talk on PBS about his new book Excuses Begone .

I was just listening to a part of it, and it was so powerful, I had to take notes, rewind and write down all of what he was saying. It really goes along with self-defeating thinking, and perfectionism that I struggle with. I tend to have all or nothing, black or white thinking, which is not only unreasonable and unrealistic but self defeating because it’s impossible to live up to perfect standards.

He was talking about excuses we tell ourselves, which I had a little aha moment because we don’t always recognize them as excuses, we believe them to be truths and therefore just go with it instead of challenge the thinking. He says that you should ask yourself a series of questions.. which I found oh, so , enlightening.

Example excuse: “It will be difficult.”

Question 1: Is it true?

Question 2: Can you be 100% certain that what you are thinking is true?

Question 3: Is there any possibility that exists that it might not be difficult?

Question 4: What is the reverse of the excuse?

It will be easy, and come naturally.

Now, he questions, why would you pick the first way of thinking? His line of questioning makes me reverse the negative thinking. For example, I tend to think exercise will be difficult and uncomfortable. So, I procrastinate. And, I have been thinking that getting a new job that I enjoy and fits my school schedule will be difficult. Are these patterns of thinking true? Not necessarily. Exercise is usually enjoyable, and leave me feeling better than I started. Will getting a job be difficult? Maybe not. I just got a job interview last week at an almost idea employer, off of doing only one application online. That came pretty easy. He goes on to say, “Why would you pick the first way of thinking, when reversing the excuse will lead to the desired outcome? One will keep you from getting what you want, the other way of thinking will lead you to where you want to be.”

Brilliant. I must get the book now…

So, my tub is clogged. My hair is too long, and falls out at such an alarming rate that it’s amazing that there is so much still left on my head. I can’t figure out how to take apart the drain stopper, which is a metal cap that twists and fits snugly to plug the drain. But, I don’t need it anymore, seeing as my hair seems to do the trick. And I can’t figure out how to get it out in order to stick my handy-dandy- little plastic stick de-clogger thingy that I bought at Home Depot today.

I ask my mom if she knows how to take it apart, and explain my predicament, and she looks at me like I’m nuts and says- you spent money on something to unclog it? Just call the office, that’s my we pay them money.

She calls the office, and says- make sure your bathroom is tidy, they’ll send up a maintenance guy to unclog it.

Now, for some reason, I allow myself to live in an untidy bathroom, yet the thought of showing it to Jose, the maintenance man, who I have never met and probably won’t, is just unthinkable.

I take out the laundry basket, the scale, the toilet scrubber, the extra toilet paper holder, and everything else that covers the floor. This floor is much too dirty for anyone else to walk into my bathroom and see, so it must be cleaned. I throw all the mats in the wash, and grab a bucket, fill it with hot water, and throw some Ammonia cleaner in that couldn’t possibly be good for me to inhale in an unventilated bathroom with no windows. I vacuum the floor. I go behind the toilet on all fours to start scrubbing with the little yellow and green sponge. Then once I see the dirt on the floor, I see the dirt on the base boards. Then when I see the base boards, I see the filth on the walls that needs to be scrubbed. Then I see the bottom of the porcelain on the toilet, and the around the back bit that always drives me crazy because one can never really get satisfyingly all the way back there. And then I am exhausted after only doing one square foot. Every detail leads to another detail and another detail to be cleaned. And As I scrub, I am frustrated at the fact that although it does look better, and cleaner, I can’t get it as clean as I like because the brown grossness on the base boards is just ground in to the corners of the white paint, and probably has been there long before I have ever lived there. I’m exhausted, way beyond the physical of scrubbing on my hands and knees… I have psychically exhausted myself at the idea that it really is impossible to get it as clean as I would like. And I wonder why I even started the project. I finished the project, frustrated and wonder why I can’t just get a fucking mop and stand upright and mop the floor like a normal person, and be done with it. This is the epitome of my perfectionism, all in 10 minutes of trying to unclog my tub.

has bred a deeper goal. I am so frustrated with not achieving enough and not reaching my goals, but I am thinking it’s underlying issues that are holding back progress. And it’s time to work on those. This is incredibly scary because my issues are illusive, and by definition things that scare me. Otherwise they wouldn’t be issues. But, I’m tired of being an underachiever. I’m tired of feeling like I have such an enormous amount of potential, but also feeling like such a failure. I have always known that I have perfectionist tendencies, yet never admit how self destructive they are. I think I have black and white- all or nothing thinking, and if I can’t do it perfectly I give up. Which has lead to a lot of giving up. And a lot a quitting… because it’s absolutely impossible to do anything perfectly.

This goal presented itself to me in my subscriptions ironically under my one sentence journal from yesterday, in which said that I keep thinking that if I just attain perfection in various areas of my life, then I’ll be happy. Mollie responded to ReelJim’s last entry under this goal, and they were both exactly what I needed to see.

I keep thinking in all or nothing/ perfectionist terms about my life… if I just get down to a certain weight, or perfect body, then I’ll be comfortable to date regularly, as soon as I find a perfect job then I’ll earn more money to pay off my debt… then I’ll be happy, as soon as I clean everything perfectly and have all of my things perfectly organized, then I’ll be able to be more productive. But any level of perfection is completely unrealistic, and therefore doomed for failure. And I’m tired of fearing failure so much that I put myself in it before it can happen to me. If I just give up first, I won’t really fail ... well, I’ll never be successful that way, either. So, I’m not sure how I’m going to work on this goal, but adopting it and realizing it’s a problem is a good first step.

I’m trying hard to stop freaking out if I mess up a bit around women. I even took dancing classes just so that I could expose myself to messing up around women and trying not to care, and just try to have a good time.

Sometimes I’m able to let go and it feels awesome! I’m dancing, not a care in the world. If I mess up, I start laughing and continue. I can see it in the eyes of the girls I dance with that it’s way more fun when I do this instead of getting all serious when I mess up…

I enjoyed this reading from Each Day a New Beginning, it is relevant to my journey as a female perfectionist. Here’s an excerpt:

“Too often we look back on our lives with regret. What is done, is done. We learned lessons from those mistakes. Each day is a new beginning. And we can close every day with no regrets when we have followed our consciences, that “iner tug” that beckons.

The opportunities will come today… Opportunities for making choices over which we feel good or full of regret at the day’s close. Many of our choices will bring us closer to the satisfaction, the contentment with life, that we all search for as women, as human beings. We need not fear coming to life’s close, wishing we had done more or better. Living each day in good conscience, waiting for the tug and following it, will ensure a life well lived.”

Part of my struggle with perfectionism is due to my not accepting my past, to demonizing myself in the past and feeling that I deserve to feel guilty and ashamed. What keeps me in the perfectionistic cycle is the flawed belief that if I do everything perfectly today, that I’ll get a pass for what I’ve done in the past. What I need to realize, today, is that my Higher Power, God, loves me and has always loved me, and that what I’ve done in the past has made me who I am today. Today I don’t need to be perfect, to feel as if I need to be perfect, or to expect perfection from other people. Today I can be content with my imperfection, and to be happy that my God loves me. How grateful I am that my God doesn’t expect me to live up to the standard that I expect myself to live up to. When I can love myself as He loves me, I will not expect perfection from anything or anyone, including myself.

I’m a perfectionist but because of AA I’ve been getting better! It’s weird, I went to AA because I thought that being a person fully in recovery would make me more perfect or at least help me with some of the things I think are “holding me back” from being a really great girl. The funny thing is that I’m learning that I’m already a really great girl and I just need help learning how to cope with the fact that I’m not perfect, and that if I stay hung up on being perfect or getting as close to perfection as I can, I’ll end up in a major rut.

One of the small ways I’ve practiced this anti-perfectionism is through cleaning. I’ll go through and do a quick clean of everything, not getting in and doing it perfectly like I used to. I used to be so darn perfectionistic that even something like organizing my sock drawer was a pain in the ass, because I had a ‘special’ way of doing it and if I didn’t have the time to do it that way, I wouldn’t do it – because what was the point, why bother if it wasn’t perfect. WELL, my feet do not notice a difference and today I just paired up socks with their mates and left it at that, and it felt good to get that one thing done. It’s amazing how much cleaner my room, bathroom, and the rest of the house is when I just DO things and don’t worry about doing them perfectly.

I’m perfectionistic about my appearance, as well. I chronically pick my skin, it’s genetic (my mother, grandmother, and great-grandfather all had forms of it) and the reason that I pick is because I hate if I have any lumps or bumps and so I zero in on them and make them much worse than they are. I don’t really break out that often, but when I do, boy-howdy, I go to work on my face and make a real mess of things. I don’t know how to fix this, I suppose that’s my perfectionism rearing up again – I want to fix everything that’s wrong with me, immediately. But by learning good self-care habits, I’m doing my part today, and that’s what matters. When I don’t practice good self-care, my eating disorder, CSP, anxiety, anger, etc. all come to a head and I just turn into a walking, talking mess.

So this is my goal. I normally wouldn’t pick this as a goal because it doesn’t have a definable end-point, but I’ve added a lot of goals like this lately (e.g. “do first things first,” “do the next right thing,”) and I might as well add this one, too. I’m such a little perfectionist, and part of me is not wanting to let that go because I see it as a good thing, sometimes – but I must remember that this is a MALADAPTIVE problem and that it hasn’t helped me so far in what I want to do. In fact, it tends to depress me and make me less likely to do the things I want to do, and if I do them, I tend to not enjoy them.

Here’s to being a law student that isn’t a perfectionist, but that succeeds nonetheless!

I’m so obsessed with keeping a perfect house, especially kitchen and bathroom, I’m finding it very hard living with my sister. It’s also hard to relax enough to have visitors round. It’s making me miserable, basically.

It’s something I really think it’s time I tried to conquer. I’ve ordered a book from Amazon to work through.

I want to learn to make decisions quickly, so that I can accomplish my larger more important goals.

I’m hung up on finding the best pair of glasses frames at the best price right now. This is taking so much time that I’m not working on my next goal of cleaning & organizing my junk. Then I have to do my taxes. Then sell my stuff on eBay. Then fix up my home for sale. Then start my business idea in the spring.

By being perfectionistic in accomplishing these things, I will not get them done, will run out of money and have to go back and find a real job instead of trying my business idea.

So I need to make faster decisions and move on to the next thing, so I can realize my dreams and not have to work for someone else again.