Pop Goes the Perfectionist

Perfectionism.  We are all affected by it, either in ourselves or in a loved one.  It is despicable in the way cancer is despicable- and almost as hard to get rid of.  I could bore your eyes off writing a million pages on the offenses of perfectionism and defense against them, but I won’t.  At least, not all at once.  Instead I’d like to draw your attention to an item that I think is perfect to float out as an initial perfectionism metaphor:

BALLOONS

Balloons are round.  Balloons are pretty.  Balloons can be large, or small, or weirdly shaped.  But the balloon I’m talking about is bad news.  A balloon, for those of you who have never had fun, is a piece of fantastically elastic plastic into which air can be blown to expand it into a bright, often round, symbol of joy and exuberance.  The plastic is in a constant state of tension, stretched to a thin layer.  The air (or helium for all you chipmunks out there) is trapped inside when the plastic tail is tied off.  It’s a beautiful thing, dancing at the end of its string for all to see or falling from the sky in a cascade of congratulatory excitement.  But what if you just kept filling it instead of tying it off, or poked it with sharp objects, or heated it up (I know you wouldn’t do such things to our friendly balloon, but what if someone did?)?

Perfectionism is the balloon.  Or, for a more perfect metaphor, the balloon is you on perfectionism.  See, the point of perfectionism (yes, to be perfect, we know) is to render something both successful and flawless.  This can be a relationship, a report, the cleanliness of a room, your GPA, whether you stubbed your toe trying to get ready in the morning, whether everyone you know likes you, whether other people are judging you for saying that one word wrong, whether the color of the rectangle in the graph matches the border of… you get the idea.  Whatever it is, it has to be good.  And “good” here means “if it has a speck of fail on it, it gets tossed.”  My grandmother once threw out a perfectly good cake because it had a black speck on it- the speck was a tiny burnt cake crumb.  That’s perfectionism.

How is that even remotely like the balloon?  Well, in order for a balloon to perform its function (to be perfectly round, bright, and flawless) it has to enter a state of extreme tension.  And while it does this very well, being that tense makes it quite vulnerable to, well, everything.  The same goes for you perfectionists out there.  In order for the perfectionist to achieve his ideals, he must constantly and relentlessly compare what he is doing to the ideal, and adjust if necessary.  This is extremely stressful.  Not only is he constantly having to adjust his thoughts and behaviors, he’s trying to match something that’s all in his head.  It might be distorted.  It might literally be IMPOSSIBLE to match.  Set your air conditioner to 50 when it’s 120 outside and then listen to your air conditioner.  Hear that?  That’s the kind of stress a perfectionist might have to endure every single day.

That’s not a big deal, the perfectionist says.  I’ve been doing it my whole life, I’m good at it!  It kind of defines who I am at this point.  If I relaxed my standards, people would know I changed, and not for the better.  No, I can handle this tension.  It doesn’t bother me—I must be really good at this!

Bully for you, theoretical perfectionist.  You’re right (as usual, right?), but if you are right it’s only because you haven’t been overpressurized, or left out in the hot sun, or heaven forbid stuck with a pin.  Because even if you’re a badass perfectionist who’s learned to manage her stress under all that tense behavior management, your tension is still there.  You’re vulnerable.  And sooner or later…

POP.

I can say this because I’ve lived it, and I’ve lived it because I am, in fact, a perfectionist.  In the fall of 2008 I was awesome.  I was an academic badass, had landed an overseas internship, was in a great relationship, had lots of friends.  I identified with all of these things, all of these things were good, and therefore I was awesome.  Then my balloon drifted into one of those dressing rooms, the one labeled 2009, where those awkward little pins stick out from that board thing, and…  January 1, my mom was diagnosed with pancreatic cancer…. May 23, she breathed her last.  Pop.

For a while my perspective shifted.  My balloon deflated, the initial wave of grief subsided somewhat, and I was able to develop more meaningful relationships with people, live life more fully.  I had brilliant philosophical revelations, meditated regularly, and let my perfectionist tension go for a time while I dealt with the tension of grief and an overturned worldview.  But as time went on, as I graduated, moved away, got a job, got married… my balloon filled back up again, stretched thinner than before, and this time with a patch on the hole of that pinprick.  The tension of all those changes got to me.  I became a wreck, terrified of the next pin, of not being able to inflate the balloon again.  But I have finally come to the realization that is at once the perfectionist’s salvation and greatest fear: you don’t need the balloon.

For whatever reason, we perfectionists see the balloon as the most important thing.  It’s beautiful and smooth and round, and as long as it stays that way we will be loved and admired and so can love ourselves.  But if you’ve ever loved a perfectionist, you know a secret they don’t: far from loving it, you hate that damn balloon.  Sure it’s pretty, and perfect in its narrow-minded way, but you see the futility of it and the energy it takes to keep it inflated.  What you love is the air inside it, the substance of your loved one’s life- her aspirations and talents and quiet wisdom; his suppressed compassion and unique genius- and you yearn for them to LET IT GO.  Untie the balloon and let themselves float free.  As beautiful as the balloon is, is it more beautiful than a gentle breeze, a soft cloud at sunset, a deep breath, a kind whisper?  That is what you see in them, and what is so hard for perfectionists to see in themselves: the balloon is not a showcase, but a prison.  They can be as great and perfect as they dream they can be, and still lock away their natural gifts and talents in pursuit of the ideal.  And stress themselves to the point of bursting while doing it.  That is the tragedy of the perfectionist.

THE TAKE-AWAY

I could go on and on (and plan to at a later date!), but to wrap up an already long post I leave you, my brothers and sisters in perfectionism, with these two thoughts:

Think of someone you love who has a tendency toward perfectionism, and recognize how much you love them, and how little of your love is predicated on the things they are trying to make perfect.

Got that?  Now,

Love yourself the same way.

That’s it.  Because when you love yourself, you realize that the inherent worth of a person, what makes that person lovable at all, has literally nothing to do with all the things we work so hard to make perfect in our lives.  And if it does?  Well, that isn’t actually love at all (more on that later too!)

Deflating the balloon of perfectionism, letting go of that tension, learning to love ourselves in a way that allows us to express our nature without needing to put up a perfect reputation for fear of judgment- it is a difficult challenge for all of us, but for the perfectionist it can be the difference between a stressful life of success and a life free to live up to its fullest potential.  It can be a lifelong journey, and I too am only just beginning it.  The imperfections of a life well lived, expressing who you are, flaws alongside talents, mistakes beside successes- those “imperfections” are what will make your life perfect… for you.

WHAT’S IT TO YOU?

I started this blog with the intention of sharing my observations on life with the world, by turning silly everyday objects, emotions, and occurrences into deep philosophical reflections.  The more readers I got and the more positive feedback I received, the more pressure I put on myself for perfection.  I wrote post after post… until I couldn’t think of a post that was good enough one week.  And then the next.  And rather than put up an imperfect post, I retreated altogether.  My balloon was a beautiful blog floating up into a WordPress sky, waiting to float into space, pop, and fall to Earth forgotten.

As part of my journey into the foreign land of imperfectionism, I’ve decided to throw that old balloon away and return to the blog.  It may well be flawed (there might even be some grammer errors!), but it will be real.  And if it brings one smile, or sparks a new thought, or, miracle of miracles, changes a life for the better?  Then I will have proven my point about the balloon, and this post won’t have been a total waste of… oh wait.  Not supposed to be hung up on results.  It doesn’t have to be world-changing.  Man, this stuff is hard.

And that’s why it’s worth it.

Is there something in your life that you’re good at or interested in doing, but you’ve been holding back from for fear of failure or judgment (by yourself or others)?  This week, take a look at what “balloon” you’ve inflated that brought on that tension… and start taking steps to deflate it!

 

If you can’t take the heat…

Ready or not, the holidays are coming, and no matter who you are, you will most likely experience an upswing in stress in November and December. Some of this is good stress: time with friends and family, anticipation of gifts, college football bowl season. But many of you will experience negative stress as well. Perhaps you love but don’t actually LIKE your family, you ridiculously procrastinate in your gift buying, or you don’t observe religious holidays and are just a bit irritated about the whole thing. But between the cheesy office parties, family gatherings, and general explosion of food everywhere, you probably won’t be able to entirely avoid the topic of

BAKING

For the purpose of this blog post, please ignore the nitpicking semantics differentiating baking vs. cooking vs. roasting vs. broiling. Set your mind on casseroles, or cakes, or pies, and notice the commonality: when they enter the oven, they are cold and runny. At best they are kind of awkward and gelatinous; at worst, full of raw eggs and ready to ruin your day if you eat them. But when they come out of the oven, delicious, smelling heavenly and tasting even better…drool, drool. Go find some pie (I know I’m going to!).

And welcome back again! I hope it was perfectly done: not too runny, and certainly not burnt! Because baking can be a bit tricky: to get that perfect pie, you have to make sure the temperature is right, or you’ll end up with a mess. After you’ve gathered up all of the ingredients and mixed everything just right, you have to send your creation into the oven, leave it in there for a while, and basically hope for the best. And let’s be honest: an oven is a terrible place to be. The hapless holiday dish is trapped, suffocating in the devilish red glow that burns it without and within. Essentially hell, right? But the result can be magnificent, if it’s not overdone.

Now remember a time (probably more than one) where life was baking you. Maybe a class or job was wearing you out, your house needed a major repair, money was tight, or a caustic relationship was straining you on multiple fronts. Chances are, you were pretty runny heading into these situations. For whatever reason, be it naiveté, lack of experience, conceit, or crippling fear, you just weren’t ready for the situation. You found yourself trapped, elements of your life heating up all around you. You were baking. Now recall that one of three things happened: you were either

1. Burned—something terrible happened. You were fired, or divorced, or suffered a mental breakdown. For whatever reason, you were in the oven too long, the heat was too high, and you’re still putting out the flames.
2. Undercooked—you got out of it. Congratulations! You escaped the fires of hell unscathed, but guess what? The happy holiday-makers are afraid to put you on their table and risk the health of their loved ones. You’re unproven, and have little to show for your stint in the heat.
3. Done! You got into this situation for a reason, whether by fate or choice, and that was to come out better. And though you might be a little crispy on the edges, a little gooey in the center, you’ve solidified into what you were meant to be. You stayed in just long enough and kept the temperature just right. You’re ready for the feast.

THE TAKE–AWAY

Life is often an oven, and like any technology, ovens can be prone to going crazy and bursting their contents into flames. But for the most part, there are aspects of baking situations you can control, and how well you take the heat while balancing these other factors will determine the quality of the result. Perhaps you regretfully end a relationship that has singed both parties to prevent it from progressing to an unhappy marriage and ultimately divorce. Or you manage a successful work-life balance through a punishing deadline, or budget effectively through an economic downturn. Despite the heat of the situation, you handle it and come out better on the other side. Your products, of course, are those qualities that are solidified by your experience. Virtues such as patience, humility, perseverance, and compassion are just a few sweet results of life’s baking.

Perhaps the most important take-away from baking is that even if you are burned to a crisp, you can gather the ingredients together and try again. The good news is, unlike that smoldering casserole, life will give you another run in the oven. You just have to be willing to combine the ingredients, get in the pan, and go for it.

WHAT’S IT TO YOU?

What are some of your own oven experiences? Were you burned, undercooked, or baked just right? What “baked goods” did you end up with? Leave comments and discuss—we’ve all learned lessons from life, so share your wisdom here!

 

Making it Stick

Everyday objects sometimes have a lot to tell us about life. Some, like three ring binders, have pretty cryptic life lessons, I’ll admit. But others have a story to tell if you’re paying attention. Take books for instance! Yes, pun intended.

Really though, take almost anything and you can find a way it applies to living life. Today, in the absence of any other real inspiration, let’s think about

TAPE

Yes, like Scotch tape. Why tape, you ask? Because it has two sides to it. Look at the smooth side: it faces the world and lets you know it’s there, but is pretty ineffectual otherwise. That’s the idea, unless you’re dealing with double-sided tape which is just insane. Then there’s the sticky side, the reason the smooth side exists, the one doing all sorts of work. The thing is, the only time you see the sticky side is when it’s being useless. And then you KNOW it’s being useless. Or worse than useless, it’s being downright annoying and sticking to your hand.

How does this relate to life, you ask? Well, my inquisitive reader, I’ve observed that there are two sides to life. The “sticky” side, or action side, is what you’re doing when you’re attending class, doing homework, working at your desk, attending meetings, etc. You’re in the thick of things, and the world isn’t exactly watching you while you go about your day-to-day mundane schedule. Think too long about the proportion of your life spent spinning your wheels like this and you’ll be depressed, but eventually you get to reap the benefits of the smooth side.

The smooth side is the public result of your sticky actions. Just like a piece of tape holding up a poster, the only thing you see is the smooth side and what a fantastic job it’s done to hold up that huge poster, not the molecular bonding actions that the sticky side is using in its epic struggle against gravity. In life, the smooth side is the stuff you enjoy, the client presentation that goes well, the good grades, the awards, the promotions, the published papers, the completed projects on your resume or bio. This is what people remember you for, and what you work for. You turn to face the world, and you show them the poster you’re hanging up.

THE TAKE-AWAY

You’re probably thinking that your life is more interesting than a piece of tape, and for your sake I’m hoping it is. But today I want you to dumb it down and think about the times when you’ve been focused on the sticky side of your life, and what benefits you reaped when you turned to the smooth side. Moreover, notice that without the sticky side THERE WOULD BE NO SMOOTH SIDE. And there would be no way for you to share your accomplishments—your poster—with the world.

People really want to see your poster, but unfortunately they aren’t going to look on the ground for it. You’ve got to put in the work that lets you hold up your accomplishments for the world.

Sometimes you have to use your sticky side just to repair things, or at least patch them up. And sometimes despite your best efforts, your actions aren’t going to stick, or they’re going to stick to someone the wrong way and irritate them. Everyone has a unique sticky side, as different as Scotch tape, packing tape, athletic tape, electrical tape, bandages (just go with it), or duct tape (the Renaissance man of tape). We all have a way to use our actions to make a difference in the world. So go ahead, find your passion, find a way to put it to work for the world, and make it stick.

 

The Long Run

So when you live somewhere between the urbs and suburbs in a car-centric city like I do, you only have a few options for regimented exercise.  These are:

• Run in the area near where you live, and risk being killed by the 8 lanes of traffic you have to cross to go anywhere.
• Drive to a nicer, more survival-friendly area or trail, which may be many minutes (or hours in traffic) away and requires planning, parking, and drive time.
• Go to some sort of gym and use the lovely piece of machinery that is the topic of this post:

THE TREADMILL

Now, I’m not a serious gym person like some of you readers might be.  I’m not going to discuss the pros and cons of going to gyms, or brands of equipment, or try to make you (or me) feel guilty for not exercising.  Exercise if you want, or don’t—I don’t care.  But I’m willing to bet at some point in your life you’ve run on a treadmill.  (If you haven’t done this, go do it now so you can relate.  I’ll wait.)

…waiting….

Welcome back!  In your mind, please review your experience.  Perhaps it involved staring at a wall, or CNN, or someone’s sweaty back for however long you can bear to exercise (if you’re lucky you got to watch SportsCenter. Or at least look out a window).  If you’re like me, you would vastly prefer the option of walking out your door into a nice, forested neighborhood or walking a short way to a lovely nature path for your exercise.  But sometimes this just isn’t an option.  You know you need to work out, and unless you’re an urbanite for whom cheating death by dodging people and cars is part of the fun, you join the masses and go to the gym, where you spend an hour or so torturing yourself running in place like a hamster.

“Why?” you ask. “I work so hard to get and stay motivated to go to the gym already.  WHY are you bashing my exercise routine!?  Who do you think you are?!”

Well, if you bear with me, you’ll discover I’m not even talking about your exercise routine.  This is a blog about life, and our friend the treadmill is going to help us dig up a little truth.

Why is it that people run on treadmills?  It really isn’t pleasant—it’s convenient, which is, let’s face it, the only reason treadmills exists.  And running on a treadmill certainly isn’t a goal in itself.  Nobody competes for how long or fast or far they can run on a treadmill. (Olympic Treadmilling anyone?)  No, the only reason to run on a treadmill is to get in shape, whether for general health or to train to be able to do something related to but not at all the same as running on a treadmill.

Look at your life. Chances are in some aspect of your life you’re doing something every day that is pretty tedious, or painful, or boring.  EVERY DAY.  Logic says you’re an idiot, yet you keep doing this thing.  Maybe it’s a particularly odious class, or your job (or aspect of your job), or cleaning your house, or mowing the lawn.  You don’t want to do these things, but you motivate yourself to do them anyway.  Why?  Because they are BUILDING to something, the same way running on a treadmill is helping you lose weight or improve your stamina, or train for a marathon, or just feel better.  Maybe they’re ongoing maintenance activities, like mowing or cleaning, that aren’t really ever done but improve your environment so you can feel good about doing other things.  Your class is going to help you graduate, and your rat race job is going to lead to new career opportunities or raises or recognition.

When we’re on the treadmill, we try to ignore the pain, or work through it, or care a WHOLE LOT about what’s on CNN.  Mostly we just want off, but we stay because we are there for a reason.  If you’re in a situation in life that feels like a treadmill, whether bogged down in cleaning or in another boring lecture or in what feels like a dead end job, chances are, it is JUST LIKE a treadmill.  Which means at some point you’re going to hit the cool down button, or you’ll reach your time or distance goal, or you’ll just jump off and decide it’s time to do something else because you’ve had enough of this mess.  And you’ll find that you’re grateful (maybe ironically grateful or bitterly grateful, but grateful nonetheless) that you hung in there.  It’ll be like endorphins hitting your soul!

THE TAKE-AWAY:

My point here, and I do have one, is that just because you’re doing something you don’t want to do, it doesn’t mean it’s not worth doing, and it doesn’t mean it will never end.  Like running on a treadmill, even when you want to smash the mileage counter for not going up faster, you’ll eventually reach the point where you can step off.  And when you do, you’ll be much farther along even though you thought you were running in place.

Hang in there during treadmill experiences, and take solace in the fact that it is going to help in the long term, even if you don’t know how right this minute. But don’t forget to get off when the time is right!

Because eventually, you’ll graduate, or get promoted, or sit down to watch TV in that spotless living room, or, heck, even just look back and see how you’ve grown and matured since you started attending those awful meetings…

And in the long run, you’ll feel like you’ve just won a marathon.  Happy trails!