Tiny Buddha

Tag: improvement

  • My New Approach to Setting Goals and Why It Works Better for Me

    My New Approach to Setting Goals and Why It Works Better for Me

    “The journey is long, but the goal is in each step.” ~Sri Sri Ravi Shankar

    I have a daughter, she is nine.

    A few months ago, I started to feel like we weren’t as close as we used to. I felt like we weren’t spending enough time together, and honestly, when we were I almost didn’t know what to do with her. It felt like our emotional connection was falling apart, like we didn’t have enough topics to discuss or enough games to play.

    Moreover, I was getting stressed and annoyed with her easily, and it definitely wasn’t helping. I could raise my voice and then would immediately feel terrible, and of course she would get frustrated too.

    I knew it was my fault. I’d been too focused on my work, and I just hadn’t been leaving enough time and energy to our interaction. I hadn’t been prioritizing it.

    I realized that I needed to fix it.

    And as I am very much into goal setting, I sat down and started writing down a goal to improve my relationship with my daughter.

    There are many different techniques people use while creating their goals. One of the famous and commonly used ones is called SMART, which stands for Specific, Measurable, Attainable, Relevant, and Time-Based. I used to apply this technique a lot in the past. So I thought I’d use it again.

    But as soon as I started, I immediately got in trouble.

    I was saying to myself, “Okay, it’s definitely relevant to me. And I guess it’s also time-based (ummm, really?). But how am I supposed to measure it? And how do I make something like ‘relationship’ specific enough?”

    And here is the biggest problem. The whole purpose of my goal was not just to get to some specific point in the future when my relationship with my daughter would be perfect. The purpose was to have continuous (this word really matters here), daily improvement in our relationship so that we could enjoy our time together today, tomorrow. and every day!

    And suddenly the following realization hit me like a strike of lightning:

    “My goal is not a result of some process—my goal is the process!”

    The issue with SMART goals is that they make us focus purely on the end result rather than pay attention to the process!

    Please get me right, there is nothing wrong with focusing on the end result. But I do believe that it is wrong to not focus on the journey that gets us there.

    As I was thinking about it further, I discovered more limitations of the SMART technique:

    We miss out on the important goals that don’t fit into the framework.

    The goal about my relationship with my daughter is the perfect example of this limitation. It’s obviously very important to me, but it can hardly be measured or timeboxed.

    Missing the deadline means failure.

    Whenever we deal with deadlines, we automatically tend to believe that missing this deadline is a failure. And our goals are no exception. But the truth is, there are many factors outside of our control that can affect our ability to meet the deadline.

    So instead of focusing too much on the deadline, I prefer to measure success by how consistently I make progress, regardless of how fast it goes.

    Missing the start date means failure.

    We already talked about the deadlines, but as soon as timelines are involved, we also happen to have a start date. And we start to face the same problem here—if we don’t start on the date that we defined for ourselves as a “start date,” we feel like losers.

    I actually think that this is one of the biggest reasons why we give up on our New Year’s resolutions so often. We just seem to believe that if we didn’t start working on our goal on January 1, then it automatically means that we failed. But that’s just not true—it’s never too late to start working on your goals!

    We often roll back to where we started.

    When we focus on the end result too much, it’s too easy to stop paying attention and therefore roll back to the previous state once we achieve that result.

    Raise your hand if you ever worked on the goal to “lose ten/twenty/fifty (choose your variant) pounds before the summer.” Okay, and how soon did those pounds come back?

    I myself struggled with losing weight for many years. I was always a little bit overweight. Not enough to make me do something about it, but definitely enough to make me feel uncomfortable. I tried to lose weight multiple times, I was even able to make progress for a few months in a row, but then I would stop. And again, and again.

    About three years ago I got to my highest weight ever, and it is when I finally said to myself, “Okay, now you really gotta do something about it.” But I approached it differently this time—I decided to make it part of my lifestyle.

    I started working out regularly with a personal trainer (hello accountability!). I started paying attention to what I was eating and drinking. But the most important mental shift that I had to make was that I wasn’t doing it as a temporary thing anymore, or wasn’t trying to achieve a particular “result.” My goal was to learn to appreciate the journey!

    Now, three years later, I am forty pounds lighter than when I started. I am stronger, happier, and more confident than ever before. I still exercise at least four times a week, and I enjoy it! I truly do! I even workout when I travel, and I would’ve never expected that from myself.

    —

    I feel like I am at the point in my personal growth journey when I don’t need the boundaries of specific frameworks anymore.

    So, from now on, whenever I create a new goal, I make sure it’s all about the continuous, consistent, sustainable improvement in one particular area of my life.

    I make sure it’s all about the process, because I strongly believe that the process is where the true success and happiness reside.

    And if you are curious whether I was able to improve my relationship with my daughter… Well, I am still working on it. There is always room for improvement, but I have been able to almost completely stop raising my voice at her, we are definitely spending more time together these days, and I am appreciating this time so much more. Which I am extremely grateful for!

  • How I’m Winning Over My Inner Critic by Letting It Exist

    How I’m Winning Over My Inner Critic by Letting It Exist

    “Winning the war of words inside your soul means learning to defy your inner critic.” ~Steven Furtick

    We all have that voice in our head, the voice that’s always negative about ourselves. Our inner voice.  Our inner critic.

    The one that tells us we’re not good enough, not smart enough, not attractive enough. That voice that continuously compares us to other people, so we come up lacking and feeling less than.

    Sometimes that voice is our own. Other times, and for some people, maybe those of us who have felt unloved or disliked by a significant person in our lives, that voice belongs to them.

    Then there are times when that inner critic will take on the voice of multiple people. A parent, a past lover who jilted us, and an abusive boss, for example. It can be quite the party in our heads, and not always a good one!

    For a while, the voice in my head belonged to my mom.

    It became a lot more frequent after she passed away. And a lot more persistent. Her best times to chat with me were always during my morning and evening routines. 

    Why? I haven’t quite figured that out yet. Maybe it was because, during those times, especially with my morning ritual, I was prepping to present my best self to my world, doing my makeup and fixing up my hair. What better time to be critical, right?

    In the mornings as I prepared for the day, I heard how my skin care routine didn’t matter, I was going to get old anyway, and look old. The makeup I applied didn’t make me look any better. The affirmations I wrote on the bathroom mirror were stupid and useless.

    Anything I did to make myself better and healthier didn’t matter. I could never change, and I could never improve myself. Regardless of how much I tried, or how much effort I put in, I would never be good enough. Never enough period.

    At times, I think there was an undercurrent of jealousy. Maybe because I wanted to improve my life, that I wanted so much more from life. More than what she wanted for herself and for me.

    When she was alive, I definitely felt this was why she found so many faults with me and pointed out all my shortcomings. It would make sense, then, that any critical thoughts I had about myself could so easily be transferred to her image, and in her voice.

    I can understand those feelings and see why her feelings came out the way they did. Fears held her back from becoming more, from wanting more. And just possibly, those were my fears too, but now being heard via her voice. Fears of never really becoming who I want to be, of never being enough.

    Sometimes it’s easier to deal with our negative thoughts if we can make someone else responsible for them. Have someone else own them. It takes the burden off of me to change my thinking if I can tell myself these negative thoughts are coming from my mom.

    For a long time, during those morning and evening chats, I argued back. I got very defensive. And I felt like everything I was doing was useless and worthless. During those times it felt like she was right. That my inner critic was spot-on.

    Then one day I got quiet. Maybe I was exhausted with this daily dialogue. I don’t know. But I got quiet. I decided to just let her talk without reacting to what she said. No more arguing. I just smiled, a gentle unconcerned smile, and continued with my routine.

    I let everything that was being said just sit in the space around us. I heard it but didn’t take it in.

    My intention now was to observe. I wasn’t belittling her feelings by ignoring her, I just simply observed and let her talk, giving her voice the space to speak and to be heard. Periodically, I responded with something like, “Yeah, I can see why you think that.”

    For a while this became the style of our regular chats. The new dialogue that the voice in my head was speaking. The negative remarks, the catty remarks, and the put-downs, all drawing a quiet and unconcerned smile, with no negative response from me.

    Before long it changed again. My mom-in-my-head, instead of chastising me for wasting my efforts, became inquisitive. The voice started making positive remarks about the products I used and the affirmations I wrote on the mirror. She became curious. That voice started asking positive questions, empowering questions. Questions that were now on my side—with me, not against me.

    It’s very possible that the reason my inner voice, my inner critic, has taken on the voice of my mom is that I still very much want the approval from her that I felt I never received while she was alive. I will never actually get it now that she is gone, and that’s something I have to accept. But this may be another way that I can maybe feel like I get it, even just a little.

    Perhaps it’s how I can get the approval from myself that I’m seeking too. The belief that I am indeed becoming the person I want to be. That I am indeed enough.

    I’m reminded of this saying, “We can’t control how other people act; we can only control our own reaction.”

    Sure, this inner voice is mine, maybe sounding like someone I know. And one would think we can control our inner voices. But if it were only as easy as that, no one would ever struggle with self-doubt, and at times self-loathing.

    Learning to control that inner voice is like controlling a temper-tantrum-filled two-year-old. Eventually do-able, but it takes herculean effort!

    The method that’s currently working for me is to let that voice speak. Meeting it with a gentle smile and letting it flow around me, without landing on me. Being observant but unconcerned. 

    Over and over, as long as it takes. Because soon that inner voice will be curious about what’s happening with me, what’s working for me, what it is that is bringing me such peace.

    Perhaps the same is true for you. Maybe instead of trying to make your inner critic go away, you just need to let it exist. When you observe your self-critical thoughts without fighting or attaching to them, you take a little of their power away. And maybe as you take your power back your inner voice will slowly transform into something softer, gentler, and on your side, because it can finally see it’s a good place to be.

  • One Question for Anyone Who’s Stuck in a Rut: What Do You Believe?

    One Question for Anyone Who’s Stuck in a Rut: What Do You Believe?

    “You become what you believe, not what you think or what you want.” ~Oprah Winfrey

    What do you believe? During the forced stillness of the pandemic environment we’re all living in, this is a question I’ve been faced with more intensely than ever. In particular, I’ve come to question what I believe about myself, and how that impacts every element of my life.

    Coming out of years of self-help for social and general anxiety, a long-standing eating disorder, and several dissatisfying personal relationships, I had to come to question what these external realities reflected back to me. For what you believe about not only your life, but more importantly, yourself, will show up again and again, and yes, again, until you’ve finally addressed the root of the problem.

    In my case, my lack of self-value resulted in many dysfunctions and setbacks in my personal and professional world.

    My deteriorating self-image led to my eating obsessions, a lack of confidence exacerbated anxieties, and the low value I placed on myself was most likely written all over me, judging by the way others showed disrespect toward me in personal relationships.

    Not only was I devaluing who I was, but I also operated from a place of being closed off to others, afraid that if I showed my true self I wouldn’t measure up to their expectations.

    This all came to a head when COVID-19 emerged and led to a global lockdown. Going off of numerous negative relationship experiences, I visited a doctor to discover I had a pelvic floor condition called vaginismus, which results in involuntary vaginal muscle tightening that makes sex and physical exams like pap smears either impossible or extremely painful.

    I spent the next four months going through physical therapy to heal my body from this condition, breaking off a new relationship to focus completely on my own journey. It amazed me how the mind and body go hand-in-hand; my muscle tightening felt like a total embodiment of years of being closed off to others and remaining safely isolated from sharing my true self.

    As I mentioned previously, prior to being diagnosed with vaginismus I’d spent years healing my mental health problems and gaining strength in my career experience.

    After high school, I was lost in my career path for a solid period of time, making lukewarm attempts at artistic endeavors such as acting and modeling, never fully prepared to take a leap and fully immerse myself in any one field.

    Again, this would require a bearing of my true self that would frighten me just to think about. Not only that, it would mean that I had the nerve to believe I was worthy of attempting a profession that’s reserved for an elite group of “special” people, a group I never considered myself to be a part of.

    I did muster up enough courage to move to Los Angeles, however, where I felt I could start a new identity. My Northern California roots felt outdated, and along with some family I sought to better myself with a fresh start.

    One of my first steps toward positive changes was a hostessing gig at a bowling alley, which forced me to get out of my shell and be more social for a change. I still felt very self-conscious, but the more I worked on interacting with customers and coworkers, the more I learned how much I loved people.

    This further developed when, following a chance Intro to Journalism course I took at Pasadena City College in Southern California, I found a new joy that I wasn’t expecting.

    I began to love writing, and not only that, my favorite element of this new career path was interviewing—something I never thought I’d be able to conquer with the severity of my social anxiety, which prevented me from going into grocery stores at its peak

    Deep down, I started to believe that something different could be possible for me. Maybe I could break out of my old mindset and turn into the person I’d always felt I was inside: someone who loved people, longed for and accomplished successful interpersonal relationships, and stood in her power, unapologetically.

    By January of 2020, I had gained a local job news writing in my home base of Burbank and felt optimistic about the future. After the pandemic hit, however, I went through a time of feeling down during isolation. This paired with the vaginismus diagnosis made me become initially quite frustrated.

    “Why is this happening to me?” I wondered. I had done a lot to overcome other personal issues, but now having to do months of diligent, and sometimes extremely painful, physical therapy felt like a punishment that I didn’t deserve.

    After a short bit of contemplation, however, I had a real and sudden shift in perspective. I simply thought, “I’ve been through more than this in the past. I’ll get through it.” I believed I could, and from that moment on dedicated myself to healing not only physically, but emotionally as well.

    Within four months I made enough progress to end in-person physical therapy appointments, I started blog writing and continued with news writing in Burbank, earned a journalism scholarship over the summer, which I contributed toward my studies, and now have just started my own independent journalism writing website.

    The more I believed that I could accomplish my goals, and the more I felt I was worthy of such things, the more I saw everything in the universe work for me, and not against me.

    Today I continue to improve my self-image, and I have a long way to go. But overall, I feel healed from where I once was.

    I’m pursuing my passions, now unashamed to show and share who I truly am.

    I demonstrate a great deal of self-respect in personal relationships, no longer tolerating poor treatment from others who don’t consider my worth.

    My diet and exercise habits are healthier, my vaginismus treatment is complete, and, although I still have to maintain physical therapy exercises, I feel grateful for where I’m at in that regard and in every aspect of my life.

    If you had asked me five years ago, prior to all of this self-improvement, what I believed about myself and my life, I probably would have said I had a promising future ahead, although my actions and interactions continuously showed otherwise.

    This is why I feel I’m at a much more positive place in life at this moment.

    Not only do I propose that I believe positive things about myself, but I now show it through my actions.

    I no longer want respect, I demand it.

    I no longer want to pursue my goals wholeheartedly, I now do it as much as I can every day.

    And not only do I dream of expressing the truth of who I am, I embody it.

    So, if you too feel like you’re stuck in a rut in your life, if you feel that the world isn’t treating you fairly, and if you don’t like what the universe is showing you, then I urge you to ask yourself:

    What do you believe? About yourself? Your worth? Your life? Your potential?

    What do you believe about what you deserve, in relationships and in your career, and what you can accomplish if you try?

    How do those beliefs affect how you show up in the world—the decisions you make, the chances you take, the things you tolerate, and the habits you follow each day?

    What would you do differently if you challenged your beliefs and recognized they’re not facts?

    And what can you do differently today to create a different outcome for tomorrow?

    These are the questions that shape our lives because our beliefs drive our choices, which ultimately determine who we become.

  • Why Accepting That You’re Not the Best Is the Key to Getting Better

    Why Accepting That You’re Not the Best Is the Key to Getting Better

    Medal

    “In fear, we expect; with love, we accept.” ~Kenny Werner

    It’s easy to let our ego and fear get in the way of our own success. I’m not talking about the aspects of ego that create a desire to “win” over others, which plague some more than others; I’m talking about the more inherent aspects of our inward facing ego that plague us all.

    When I was in high school I played a lot of piano. For Christmas one year, my dad (a professional musician) gave me a book called Effortless Mastery.

    It was a book that, among other things, taught one how to practice. The author spoke about the importance of learning how to practice in order to improve one’s skill. Sounds like common sense, right? Well, sort of.

    You see, most people don’t really like to practice much of anything.

    When I was a kid I learned a few really impressive songs on piano. My favorite was “Swanee River” in a boogie-woogie style. I practiced it and practiced it until my fingers could dance around like little people on the keys.

    Once I had learned that song, I played it over and over and over again. I used to tell myself I was “practicing,” but really I just enjoyed sounding good, so I would play it repeatedly, never really improving. I had been playing piano for over ten years, but I had never really learned to practice.

    Practicing is intentionally sounding bad in order to get better, and what I was doing was performing for myself. Quite a bit of life can be spent performing for oneself, which can act as a real barrier to knowledge, the kind of knowledge that requires vulnerability to acquire.

    If all you ever do is perform, then you’re not really learning and growing. If you’re afraid of practicing because you might sound bad or fail, then you will never really master anything.

    If you’re not willing to accept being anything but the best, then you will never gain knowledge and develop the skills that come from learning from others who are better than you.

    I’ve spent over ten years thinking about that book and reflecting on it in different ways, and I’ve finally learned how to put my thirst for knowledge ahead of fears.

    My interests and hobbies have come a long way from when I was a kid. Back then, I took up anything and everything that I was good at. It’s not to say that I didn’t genuinely love the activities I was doing, because I really did, but I wanted to do things that offered me the opportunity to be the best.

    My first foray into the realm of activities that I wasn’t naturally gifted in was triathlon. After high school I took up the sport. I had been running all my life. While swimming came very naturally to me, cycling did not.

    I began to sort of thrive in the zone of discomfort that I lived in throughout my years cycling. I would ride with people who were so much better than me and they would push me harder and harder every week.

    I remember at one point, I had a game going with my cycling buddies where when we reached a hill, they would keep cycling to the top and then back down again, repeating this until I reached the top.

    I began to grow a little less uncomfortable knowing that I wasn’t the best at this sport. So much so that I was able to laugh at myself as one by one competitors would pass me on the bike leg of the race, after I had come out on top in the swim.

    If you were to look at my life today, you would find a person who participates in a range of activities (in my personal life, my career, and academically), from ones where I excel to those at which I am less than mediocre.

    My husband has helped me along on this journey, because he doesn’t have a competitive bone in his body, so I’ve learned to derive enjoyment from things other than winning and to be less afraid of losing.

    I’ve taken up things like crafting. I love it and I’m really quite terrible at it. I mean, I can do simple projects, but give me a glue gun and materials and watch out, because I’m bound to mess something up.

    I really love rock climbing. I’m middle of the road (and that might be a stretch) within the group of people I climb with. And I recently finished a research project for a degree I was working on and I took up interpretive research, a paradigm that I was completely lost in.

    I have learned to take absolute pride in not being the best. As much as I love being a mentor, I’ve discovered that I really love being a student too! I love the vulnerability that is present and how real it feels when I openly acknowledge my weaknesses and areas for improvement.

    I’m perfectly okay knowing that I’m not the best, and I’m even more okay knowing that in certain activities, I never will be.

    In activities where performing counts (like my career), I’ve learned that it’s okay (even desirable) to make mistakes.

    I declare freely when there’s something that I don’t know. Ask me at an interview what my greatest weakness or area for improvement is, and you won’t get a cliché answer that I’m too attached to my work—you’ll get the real deal.

    In this territory of discomfort, failure, and ‘sounding bad,’ I have found what it really means to have a willingness to learn.

    I accept what I don’t know and learn what I can. I practice many things every day (from communication in my relationships to skills in my career), and as a result, I learn and grow every day.

    Here’s how you too can overcome your fears, embrace failure, and learn every day:

    1. Try something new that interests you but doesn’t come naturally to you.

    I think most people have at least one activity that they might like to try but don’t out of fear of being bad at it.

    Maybe it’s singing, maybe it’s drawing, maybe it’s public speaking. Pick an activity that you’re not good at and try it out for a while. Embrace the discomfort and insecurity that you’ll experience being less than the best, and have fun with it!

    2. Ask more questions.

    When you ask questions, you display vulnerability; you’re acknowledging that there is something that you don’t know that others do.

    Asking questions doesn’t always come easily for people who derive their confidence from a sense of success. Don’t be afraid to ask questions, and ask lots of them. People appreciate sincere questions and the opportunity to teach.

    3. Lift others up.

    Take some time to tell those around you how great they are, and celebrate in their successes.

    Have a friend that you run with who runs faster? Tell them. Have a coworker who has organizational skills that you could learn from? Tell them. Have a significant other who communicates better than you do? Tell them.

    Communication is the gateway to learning. When you tell someone about a skill or trait of theirs that you appreciate and could learn from, it empowers them and gives them the confidence to own that skill/trait. The more they own it, the more you can learn from them.

    4. Don’t beat yourself up.

    When you’re used to being good at everything you do, it’s going to feel very awkward to be less than the best. Don’t allow negative self-talk.

    I often catch myself jokingly saying, “I just suck at this” during my weekly rock climbing sessions, but all that’s doing is re-focusing on a win/lose attitude. Instead, speak kindly to yourself, and focus on how much your improving and what you can do rather than what you can’t.

    5. Think about the fun you’re having.

    Reflect on things that you do in your life and why you enjoy them. Acknowledge the aspects of your life where you derive pleasure out of perfectionism and those where you derive pleasure from other sources.

    Those other sources will be the key to finding more enjoyment out of new experiences and activities that don’t involve your ego.

    6. Be enthusiastic about failure.

    Don’t just accept failure as part of life; welcome it in with open arms! Sometimes the only way to learn is through complete and utter failure. It’s what you do with the failure that counts.

    Next time you’re working on something in your life (maybe a work project, maybe a relationship), acknowledge when what you’re doing goes belly up and think objectively about what went wrong. Don’t look at failure as an extension of you; see it as the only journey that leads to true success.

    As the great Winston Churchill once said, “Success is the ability to jump from one failure to the next with enthusiasm.”

    Medal image via Shutterstock

  • Why Screwing Things Up Is Crucial to Your Well-Being

    Why Screwing Things Up Is Crucial to Your Well-Being

    “Where there is perfection there is no story to tell.” ~Ben Okri

    Somehow I’d gathered my courage and volunteered from the audience during a local improvisational theater show. And before I knew it, I was up on stage with the troupe, being welcomed, supported, and seamlessly gathered into the scene in a way that only professional improvisers can do.

    I left the stage high as a kite from the adrenaline rush, returning to my seat and enthusing to my friend that I wanted to start taking improv classes right away!

    What I didn’t realize until I was several weeks into my first class was something I have since accepted as a truism:

    Improv theater is basically boot camp for perfectionists.

    A group of which I am a card-carrying member in good standing.

    In class, I understood intellectually that I was supposed to relax and go with the flow, but I didn’t know how to actually do that. All my life I’d learned to do the exact opposite—to prepare thoroughly and know exactly what I was doing whenever I went into a new or challenging situation.

    At first I managed to fake it, mentally choosing a few potential characters and situations before every class so that I could appear to be spontaneous in a pinch. Clever me! I was always ready with a funny line or interesting story.

    The problem was, I was also always stressed about it.

    At first I chalked up the rapid heartbeat and shallow breathing to the rush of performance, until I found myself obsessing after class about what I could have done better. Wondering where I could have been funnier, or reached deeper to bring out more poignant emotions, so that I could make sure that everyone liked me and thought I was a fantastic improviser.

    It was okay for everyone else to be fallible, merely human. I had to be better. In fact, I had to be perfect.

    Like so many perfectionists, I’d internalized the message that my self-worth was based on what I did, not who I was. And if what I did wasn’t good enough—well, then, obviously neither was I.

    At its heart, perfectionism is rooted in feelings of shame and inadequacy.

    Those of us who suffer from it are afraid that we’re not worthy of being respected and loved for our natural, unedited selves. There are many reasons why this happens, but the consequence is that we always feel the need to justify ourselves and our actions.

    We also feel we must prove ourselves, over and over again; we’re never good enough just as we are.

    Talk about a recipe for depression, stress, and burnout.

    A 2008 Psychology Today article titled “Pitfalls of Perfectionism” states, “[T]he biggest problem with perfection may be that it masks the real secret of success in life. Success hinges less on getting everything right than on how you handle getting things wrong.”

    What if we really got that?

    What if we practiced the pursuit of passion rather than perfection?

    When we are very young, everything is play. We don’t worry about failing because we’re so excited about trying. As kids, we haven’t yet learned that we’re supposed to think of ourselves as being on trial before the world.

    Think back to the first time you rode a bike. Or jumped off the high dive. The thrill you felt probably far outweighed any curb-slamming or belly-flopping you might have done.

    You didn’t do it perfectly, but you had a blast making the attempt. And because you had so much fun, you did it again, and again, until you improved. But improving wasn’t the goal. The fun was.

    That’s why it’s so important for us all to mess up once in a while. We must re-learn what we knew as children—that screwing up is not the end of the world. That we can recover, and keep trying, and get better.

    We must learn failure resiliency. We need to know deeply, not just mentally, that we can always bounce back.

    And maybe even have some fun in the process.

    If your sense of security comes from trying to be perfect, or even just “the best”—king or queen of the hill—you’ll be disappointed either when you never get there, or when you do and some newcomer knocks you off your throne.

    In other words, if your sense of self-worth is synonymous with your performance, you will never feel safe.

    Now what happens if you allow yourself to appear fallible? A few pretty nifty things:

    • The intense pressure is suddenly off. You can relax a little. Or even, with practice, a lot.
    • You now have room for improvement. If you score 100% right from the start, how can you ever hope to do better than that?
    • People will not expect 100% of your effort all the time. Now you’ve got some leeway when you’re operating at less-than-normal capacity for any reason.
    • People will feel more connected to you because they’ll feel you’re one of them, not up on top of (or trying to climb) some kind of pedestal.

    Now please understand that I’m not arguing for deliberate mediocrity here. I’m not saying that you should be lazy, or that you should stop setting and striving toward goals. That’s probably not in your genetic makeup anyway. After all, here you are reading a life-improvement blog, right?

    What I am saying is that if you can surrender your need to appear so relentlessly perfect (to yourself as well as others!) then you’ll be able to loosen up and enjoy the ride a whole lot more.

    When you leave perfectionism behind, you also get to define success and happiness by your own internal measurements rather than society’s external benchmarks.

    Granted, this takes practice. A lot of it. You can’t shuck all of your conditioning with a single shoulder-shrug.

    But you can gradually learn through experience that it’s okay to be imperfect—like I did on the day that I finally froze up in front of my entire improv class.

    I ran out of stories. I choked completely. Everyone stared at me, and I couldn’t come up with a single thing to do or say. I got dizzy; I felt my face flush and my pulse pound. I finally looked up, helpless, convinced they all thought I was a loser.

    “Sorry,” I mumbled. “I’m out of ideas.”

    And my entire improv class responded, as one, in the way we’d been trained to do from the first day. When a scene or offering flops, everyone throws their hands in the air and lets out a celebratory whoop, as if to say, “We screwed up, and it’s okay!”

    There I was, convinced that because I wasn’t the perfect improviser I expected myself to be, I was a failure. Then I dared to look up from my feet and out into the audience at my classmates.

    They all smiled at me, threw up their hands, and yelled “Whooooo!!!” at the top of their lungs.

    And in that moment, I understood that I was fine exactly as I was.

    Just like you are.

  • Renovate Your Life: 5 Key Truths About Creating Change

    Renovate Your Life: 5 Key Truths About Creating Change

    “Nothing ever goes away until it has taught us what we need to know.” ~Pema Chodron

    We are currently in the midst of home improvement—what we thought would be a small “touch-up.”  Nothing seemed too threatening on the surface, just a scratch here, a nick there. It would be a simple fix.

    But when we began the project and uncovered the areas we were going to address, we saw there was much more than met the eye, as often happens in life. We could no longer ignore what we had sealed over and painted, covered with lovely flowers, and ignored for many years.

    Isn’t it funny how often plumbing is a perfect analogy for life? Opening what seemed to be a simple clog revealed 45-year-old crumbling pipes, made from materials long obsolete. All of the unseen clogging and rusting seemed symbolic of the hidden parts deep inside myself.

    When I acknowledged a simple issue—my fear of change—it revealed old beliefs that no longer serve me. Beliefs that were behaving just like our pipes by creating major blocks. Beliefs that I had covered so well with personal landscaping that no one (including me) saw them.

    The most amazing thing was sharing this with a plumber who really got it and shared my insights.

    Who knew—enlightenment through our sewer drains!

    So as the project moves on, I want to share five of the truths about home and self improvement that I have discovered thus far: (more…)