Not Sure If This Is You?

There will always be someone to compare yourself to. This girl was beautiful. All of us can appreciate beautiful jewelry, a sunset, or a piece of art. What if we appreciated another woman’s beauty, or congratulated her for her success, or celebrated her instead of finding a way to bring ourselves down. Instead, separate yourself from what you’re looking at, and appreciate the other thing for what it is. I was extremely conflicted. As much as I tried to focus on what was in front of me, my mind kept wandering to my upcoming wedding. At a break, I pulled aside one of the leaders and told her my situation. She paused and said, What if you just gave yourself permission to have a C+ weekend? To not do A+ work and just be where you are? But the truth was, the other way wasn’t working, either. I couldn’t concentrate, and beating myself up about it wasn’t helping. So I begrudgingly decided to take her advice, try giving myself a break and let go of being an honor student, at least just for the rest of the day. And the funniest thing happened.

I Don't Believe A Word

I ended up relaxing and absorbing more than I thought I would. The thing is, none of us can fire on all cylinders 100 percent of the time. No one is the Terminator. And having a C+ day is all about perspective. So, what is good enough to you? How good do you think you have to be at something? And perfect is something no one ever can attain. So from that perspective, it’s a lose/lose situation. But keep in mind, a C+ day for a perfectionist is probably an A day in realistic standards. Determine objectively what is standard A excellence, and then where you cross the line into unrealistic perfectionism. If you start to think about this, you’ll start to notice your triggers and be able to catch negative spirals more quickly. So, how do you practice being good enough? It starts with making a decision. First try accepting that you are absolutely the only person who can decide you are good enough. It probably feels powerful and scary at the same time.

Everybody Finds Out Sometime

If you keep falling into perfectionism, try redefining what perfect is. For example, when I was training for my first triathlon, I was terrified of the open water swim. How deep is it, 100 miles? I began placing time goals on myself, and feeling scared, pressured, competitive, and needing to not only do this triathlon, but also do it perfectly. Which wasn’t fun at all. Try my best not to drown or get eaten by a sea creature, not worry about my time and where I was placing, and just finish. And trust me when I tell you it was waaay more fun that way. It might mean repeating a mantra that is simply, It’s good enough when it comes to projects, actions, and decisions, and saying, I’m good enough over and over again to yourself. The bottom line is to give yourself a break and keep on truckin’. If your inner critic thinks you need to go back and finish your master’s this year even though you just had a baby, put it on there. That’s your good enough list. Instead, you want to feel motivated, powerful, and inspired. Your good enough list can help you find those feelings.

A Step Too Far

Take back your power and make your own. Getting validation through external sources is one of the common reasons women come to me for help. They can’t seem to get off the ride of only feeling confident, happy, and worthy because someone told them to feel that way. Let me start by saying it’s really, really great to be affirmed. And there is nothing wrong with having words of affirmation from others be something that’s important to you. When it becomes a problem is when it’s the only time you feel good. When it becomes one of your basic needs. If this happens chronically, you’re basically handing over your personal power to other people. You’ve become a puppet on a string, and most of the time, the puppeteer doesn’t even know he or she has this job. Not sure if this is you? You fish for compliments. You get upset if someone doesn’t notice your new haircut, outfit, or actions you’ve done. You try to spend time with people who stroke your ego. You might be highly competitive. If this is you, somewhere along the line you’ve made other people’s opinions more important than your own. Or perhaps you haven’t even shaped your opinions of yourself yet. Just remember, you were given your own mind so you wouldn’t just digest and accept opinions from others. You were given a mind to create your own definition of yourself and have your own opinions about everything. This behavior may have come from your childhood, a former or current relationship, your peers, or really anything in your life. The point here isn’t to place blame on whom or what shaped this behavior, but for you to know this is a learned behavior that can be shifted. Most of the time when people realize they are defining themselves through others and then want to change, they get stuck because they have no idea what they really want, who they really are deep inside themselves, or even what they really believe in. With a challenge like learning to validate and define yourself, it’s helpful to take small steps. After you’ve answered these questions, ask yourself who exactly are the people you’re referring to here. Not the people you think expect you to be a certain way, but those you know feel that way because they’ve told you so. Typically, people have one person on this list and no more than six though. And sometimes, it’s no one. Yet somehow, somewhere, we’ve managed to create an idea that one person’s opinion is the same opinion of an entire global population now.