HOW THIS MAY BENEFIT YOU
This may deal with your Perfectionism to the extent that it no longer stands in your way of achieving things.
MAIN TAKEAWAY POINTS
- Perfectionism stands in our way to achieve 'perfection'.
- Perfection is a unicorn - it does not exist!
- Practice self-compassion over self-criticism.
HOW TO
Stop living in a ‘I SHOULD DO THIS, I HAVE TO DO THAT, I HAVE NO TIME’ world. I have been guilty of a fair share of these thoughts but here is how I have learned how to deal with the overwhelm. My big eye openers were when I realized two things.
1. Your worth is NOT connected to your productivity!! Even if you only do one thing out of your fifty on your to-do list - you are NOT a failure, this does NOT define you and you are NOT stupid. You do what you can and so this is the way you should be, you are PERFECT the way you are! The sooner you start believing this, the sooner the magic happens.
2. Your desire to be perfect is the biggest obstacle on your way to ‘perfection’. Why? Because your longing for perfection leaves you feel like a loser, like if you were not enough. How insane is that? ☺ The truth is, perfectionists do NOT get things done, although they are busy all the time. Although they have lists of the lists, calendars, planners and schedules, they do NOT work efficiently.
Here are the exact DOs and DON’Ts that helped me to deal with this:
X Not taking criticism personally - a hard one to achieve yet the most rewarding. Do not give a flying fig about what others say, do not take it to your heart! Take it as a helpful feedback on something you do, create, or, think about; but remember, it is an EXTERNAL thing. It is NOT about you as a person. It does NOT reflect your value. Take that feedback and either turn it into something positive or just forget about it! It does NOT define you! (I will teach you how to dissociate yourself from any situation or a feeling in my blog coming up next month!)
X Stop having ALL OR NOTHING attitude because every little bit that you do, counts. Do not think that if you cannot win it all, it is not worth trying, because it is! If you slip up, do not quit. Take a break, pick up where you left of and keep going.
X You don’t have to and you SHOULDN’T do everything by yourself. The greatest people would not have built their empires without other great people. Do not be afraid to ask for help. Do not wait until you achieve everything by yourself because you can’t, it is just the way the world works. We are in it together. We can either understand that we need to help each other out to grow, or, we can stay trapped in a place where we are trying to do everything by ourselves. This in return causes anxiety and stress and brings us feelings of failure - the exact opposite of perfection, if you ask me.
X Do not punish yourself by being unhappy, feeling not worthy, or thinking about that one mistake you made two years ago. It is not worth it. It just consumes your energy and keeps you in lower vibrations preventing you from growing. It does not do anything good to you.
And now let’s get into the helpful stuff that does wonders if you practice it:
✓ FOCUS-ON-1-THING-AT-THE-TIME ‼️- this is a big one and it needs practice. Like in a meditation, amazing things can happen if you do it well but you need to be patient and practice. Make it your new hobby!
✓ DITCH SELF-CRITICISM and replace it with self-appreciation. For example; instead of crying over the items on your to-do list which you did not complete that day because you put too much on your plate, take a moment and write down all the things you actually managed to do. Be proud of yourself for completing those and always be kind to yourself!
✓ Start trusting people and GET HELP. Delegate the tasks, hire specialists, ask for advice.
✓ SIMPLIFY. Get rid of the things that do not serve you, declutter, minimise, discard‼️ (more about this in my book ’Shortcuts to Life’ coming up later on this month!)
✓ Do not miss the donut by looking through the hole and ENJOY the process.
✓ MAKE MISTAKES AND EMBRACE THE WORST CASE SCENARIO. Making mistakes is the way to progress, it is the fastest way to learn. Know, that even if nothing worked out, you got fired and missed your deadline, even if the worst case scenario were to come true, chances are that you will be fine. If not immediately, eventually, you will. The life and the world goes on. The worst case scenarios do not happen 99% of the time, yet 99% of the time they stand in our way of progress and health. You have to make peace with yourself and be OK with that scenario. Because if you do, there is nothing to be afraid of. Replace the fear with focus on your goals. As long as we have health, nothing else matters. And the state of our mental health is still being underrated by many!
✓ CHANGE YOUR PERSPECTIVE. When working towards our next big thing on the list, sometimes we get too attached to our goals. We get feelings of stress or inadequacy because of looking ahead and seeing that we have not ‘gotten there yet’. If you ever get this feeling, stop for a while. Look back at how far you have gone. This immediately changes your state of mind leaving you with gratitude and more motivation to work on your goal.
BLAH-BLAH & SOURCES
Do you ever feel like you have to do everything perfectly all of the time and there is not enough hours in a day? Are you putting things off because you feel the pressure to do them perfectly thanks to which some of the crucial ones never get done? Are you always in a rush, feeling overwhelmed, stressed, and not enough? Does criticism hurt you and slows you down on your way to top? Then welcome to the club and good job on admitting it - your first step towards success.
We are all striving for seeming perfection, as we see it every day - people with perfect bodies saying perfect words, perfect families eating perfectly healthy food, everyone living perfect adventures with a perfect smile on their faces - all perfectly captured and displayed on the social media - who would not love a life like that? The problem comes when we start comparing our reality with someone else’s whose whole story we don’t even know. On one hand, the comparison can motivate us, but it can also make us feel inadequate because it is a constant reminder of the things we have not achieved. (like those fridge magnets from your uncle reminding you of the places you have NOT yet visited ☺)
The struggle is real: we have our jobs to do - perfectly and on time, our second jobs and other streams of income to chase, constantly uploading on our social media because if we fail to do so we think the world will end and we will lose all the clients, and we have a house to clean, family to feed, endless laundry and dishes to look after, not to mention that we have our actual lives to enjoy... so when was the last time you had a privilege to get bored? When was the last time you sat down and think about life? Planned a trip? Did nothing, just breathe? You didn’t? I get it, all these perfect people saying how we need to prioritize. But how do I prioritize? And how do I know where to start? And what if every single thing is just as important as the next? Anyone else puzzled just reading all this?
So what is the secret sauce? How do you achieve all of ‘IT’?
You just don’t.
As simple as that. None of us can juggle all that and master it all by ourselves. There will always be something undone and that is OK. Let it be unwashed hair, a month-old laundry or an email to a client delayed by a few hours. It happens. PERFECTION IS A UNICORN!🦄 = IT DOES NOT EXIST‼️I even think that the word perfection is not from that of a perfect world at all; it is a very messy word itself as it makes us run, stress and eventually waste our time worrying about things - the exact opposite of what we are striving to achieve.
The good news is, you can train your mind in anything if you truly commit! And don’t take my word for it, try and implement the above and see it for yourself!
We often complicate simple things. And we forget that the world is going to keep spinning even if we decide to take a nap instead of scrubbing that kitchen sink until sparkling clean.
So good luck, dear perfectionist! And do not try to be perfect. Be real.
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