I used to call myself the lazy perfectionist. Perfectionism hindering us has come up a lot lately.
The pressure we put on ourselves to be perfect and do everything 100% and perfectly is paralyzing. Sometimes literally. We instead end up doing nothing because of the unrealistic expectations we put on ourselves. We create a monumental task in our minds out of everything.
We need to have the perfect pretty journal before we start our journaling practice (well… actually we need to somehow remember that we want to buy a journal … drive to the store … look through every journal at the store to find the one that is “perfect” … possibly find one or more likely get overwhelmed that you can’t find the right one or can’t justify spending x dollars on a journal & leave without one) --- PHEW! I’m exhausted just thinking about it.
Meditation is another example. I think there a lot of people (I used to be one of them) who thought that I had to do it “right” or it wasn’t worth it. We think that we have to sit in the right position, on a specially designed meditation pillow, don’t dare think of laying down … we have to have x amount of minutes to dedicate to it regularly … and if you don’t do it everyday at the same time then just forget it. Also, I used to get so hung up on breathing correctly and completely clearing my mind. I felt I was always doing it “wrong”. I was off on the breath count. Those pesky thoughts kept coming back. So I would get frustrated and give up.
We spend so much time psyching ourselves out of doing something that we avoid potentially fun or helpful things. Or we get ourselves so far behind that we are actually making our lives harder. When we do try, we often fall into the trap of beating ourselves up about how we did it. Somehow we didn’t do it “good enough” and we end up making ourselves feel worse than if we just didn’t do it at all.
Sound familiar? I think we can all think of several habits, tasks or practices that we go through a similar process in our mind.
So here we go … let’s stop this paralyzing perfectionism and start getting some forward movement going. Here are some of the ways I’ve been tackling this:
Use Mel Robbins 5, 4, 3, 2, 1 strategy. You have 5 seconds before your mind starts to talk you out of what you know you should do. Start counting backwards from 5 and then get into action. You will interrupt the sabotaging habit of your mind.
Remember the phrase “Progress not perfection” … put a reminder in your phone, make signs, write it on sticky notes and hang all around.
If it is a larger task just 10-15 minutes a day will do the trick sooner than you think. Stay focused on one area or part of a task and chip away at it.
Or if trying to establish a bigger habit try to at least do something every day. Laura from the YouTube channel “How to Get Your Sh** Together” describes this concept as having no “zero days”. She encourages us to not have any zero days, meaning any days where you don’t do anything for your project, goal or habit. The idea being that it is so much harder to get back on track when you’ve done nothing.
Just get started. Don’t wait for the perfect time, perfect way or perfect materials. It really doesn’t matter … our mind is tricking us to believe it does.
Just journal on any paper you have handy.
Just meditate sitting in a chair, laying in your bed, sitting in your car, sitting on your couch. Just take 2 minutes to be still and quiet.
Just throw the socks in the drawer unpaired.
Just write a note to a loved one on a piece of lined paper (you know that in reality they will be ecstatic just to hear from you … not wondering why you didn’t send your note on coordinating stationary.)
Remember that we are constantly talking to ourselves so let’s focus on shifting that language to supportive and encouraging rather than critical and defeating.
We’ve got this!
-Amanda