Bad Perfectionist

 Until a few days ago, I, like most people never asked myself this question.  It was an innate feeling. Another way to think of this question is: do you believe things are more likely to fail than work out in your favor? If you're experiencing an uncomfortable feeling of realizing that in fact, you assume things are less likely than more likely to work out, I am with you.  If you have spent most of your life preparing for the worst possible outcome. Worrying about outcomes that never came, I am with you. But, I am also here to help you see things differently. First, I want to say you have a choice. You have a choice to see things differently, to change your perspective. I say this because I did not know that I had a choice. I thought it was just the way I thought. Perhaps if I tried REALLY HARD, once in a while, I could hope for the best, but certainly, I did not think I could change the entire story running through my mind. After all, I had a long list of reasons why it ...

I felt motivated to write about why I think it matters that I know myself. Perhaps as a reference for myself, perhaps as a tool for others who stumble upon this and would like me to answer this question for them. I started this because I felt like I didn't know myself. Like all the driving forces in my mind were external.  The voice of my family, the voice of my friends, what would so and so do in this situation.  I wanted confidence that my voice, my desires were driving my decisions, my pride in myself, my love for myself.  As I have moved slightly deeper into the journey, a lot of my learning about myself has been from objective tools. Myers-Briggs, Astrology, other psychology-based things (learning style, for example).  My feeling is that these tools give us the objective feedback I crave, but in fact, are my voice, being presented in a way I am currently able to hear it. These tools give me structure, they give me a foundation that I can reference when I am feel...

Over my first few weeks of thinking about who I am and what could make me a happier person. I have been confronted by several themes in my research and simply appearing in my life Awareness and Exploration Ask Questions Magic (and letting go) Awareness and Exploration can be best summarized as a push to simply pay attention in everyday life, hard, and doing research, for me, easy. Doing research is something that comes incredibly naturally to me. I do it in my day to day career, I do it when I make basic purchases. ( Hey, look at that, that is one thing I know about myself!) Ask Questions, I have discovered tons of things about myself just by asking why I do something, or, my therapist asks me why I did or thought something. This concept of asking questions applies to that type of awareness (sited above) but the utilization of proven scientific surveys and even junky Cosmo-style surveys to know ourselves better. We can also ask those around us their perception (if we care) of us. ...

 2020 has not been kind to anyone.  Whether you lost your job or your home, experienced family medical issues, or simply had your patience tested, 2020 will be remembered as a challenging year. Some have been more fortunate than others, but there are few who will make it through completely unscathed. I have been tested. I have been challenged. There were moments that I felt I would simply break, fall apart. But I didn't.  I picked myself up and found a way to keep moving forward. It is weird when you think about it. I don't know about you, but I look back on certain moments and wonder how I made it through. I remember the feeling of sorrow and pain, I remember feeling so out on a ledge I could barely hold on, a small wind would push me right over. But somehow, that last bit of wind never came, somehow I found a way forward. One day,  I will examine some of these events more closely, but for now, I will leave you with this. I think I had no choice. Even as someone who...

I had a realization. Trying to be perfect is not working. Beating myself up about that which I cannot truly control, is not working.  Walking around with the weight of the world, attempting to control everything around me, is not working. And so, I started a self-care practice.  Just saying that almost makes me ever so slightly uncomfortable.  Historically, I have not been someone to practice self-love. I have been someone who was focused on success, on performance, financial security, and self-improvement, but not happiness or joy or loving myself for who I am.  Not actively anyway.  It is not as simple as that. Of course, nothing is ever as simple as it sounds. But that is the beginning of the story.  Bad Perfectionist is a double entendre, It is meant as a half-joking reflection on what it means to be a perfectionist, the inevitable reality that you are never perfect and therefore bad at being a perfectionist. It is also meant in a scolding way.  A ...