On Being Perfect

I’m working on a book about overcoming perfectionism. It’s going to be perfect.

Just kidding.

Frankly, I see so many people in my coaching practice whose major sticking point is their drive/need/desire/compulsion to be perfect. They can’t act unless they can be assured that the outcome will be perfection.

This search for perfect has a partner – procrastination. Perfection seekers postpone action until the all the pieces are in place to hypothetically insure success. However, when all the perfect pieces inevitably fail to fall into place, nothing happens. Ever.

That’s certainly one way to be safe: don’t do anything, then you can’t possibly do anything wrong. Oh, boy, do perfectionists hate being wrong. Why? Our psychologist friends say it’s rooted in self-esteem, anxiety and control issues. I’ve heard more than one perfectionist say that if they are imperfect then people will know they are a fraud.

Well, all I know is that many perfectionists I see are stuck, unable to act and unable to feel fulfillment.

And they confuse excellence with perfection.

I got a call this week from a loving, devoted mother whose 12 year old daughter is on a select volleyball team. The team is so good, in fact, that they’ve been to nationals. The athletic daughter, let’s call her Carly, announced that she needed to quit volleyball because she wasn’t “perfect” at it. The mother asked me, “What should I do? She’s really talented, and enjoys the game, and her teammates elected her captain. She’ll be miserable if she quits.”

OK, blurting happens. In coaching, blurting happens more often than I ever expected. I blurted to the mom, “Who wants to be a Soviet gymnast? Who wants to be an athletic automaton who executes every move with textbook perfection? Where's the thrill in that?”

I was on a roll. “Look at Tiger Woods. He’s probably the greatest golfer the game has produced. But he’s not perfect. I’ve seen him hook the ball far to the left, or slice to the right. He’s in the rough plenty of times. I’ve seen him double bogey.

“But what Tiger has – what makes him great – is his ability to improvise. He famously used his driver to make a difficult putt from the fringe. He’ll turn his club backwards to hit a shot. He knows his game, he knows his skills and has the confidence to use anything he’s got to play the game.”

Improvisation takes heart. It takes soul. But most importantly, improvisation takes an awareness of who you are and an understanding of what you bring to the situation.

I talked with Carly’s mom about how to reframe the girl’s drive to excel from “having to be perfect” to “getting to be creative”. If the planned play is Dig, Set, Spike, but the setter is out of position, it takes creativity for the spiker to still make the point. And when a player makes an unbelievable point, what happens? The crowd goes wild.

That's not perfection, that's excellence.

Ironically, improvisation can have perfect results. What you say? Without planning, without plotting, without a safety net – you can be perfect?

Yes. You can be. To prove my point, I’ll ask you one question:

Have you ever heard Ella Fitzgerald scat?

Go to this web address http://www.smithsonianjazz.org/class/fitzgerald/ef_class_1.asp and listen to any of the audio clips.

Ella’s in the moment, using her magnificent voice, tremendous range and keen understanding of jazz to create one-of-a-kind, indelible perfection.

Letting go, trusting your talents, trusting your instincts, trusting your training… and improvising – that’s how to productively channel your pursuit of excellence. That’s how to live a full and fulfilling life.

I am working on a book about perfectionism, and it’s not going to be perfect. It’s going to be whatever it’s going to be. What I’m bringing to it is awareness of my experience and an understanding of how to overcome the limits of perfectionism.

Won’t that be perfect?

Forgiveness

I was a guest speaker at a book club the other night – reviewing the best of parenting, relationship and personal growth books – when I was asked, “What about forgiveness?” In response, I talked about the ideas in Dr. Janis Abrahms Spring’s book How Can I Forgive You?, but as I drove home I felt unsatisfied with my response. It wasn't complete enough.

Don't get me wrong. Dr. Spring’s book is terrific, providing a workable framework for moving to forgiveness. It’s practical, it’s pragmatic and it’s well-written. The book was not my problem. I was glad I had mentioned such a useful book.

No, my problem was – no surprise for this "words girl" – the semantics of the word “forgiveness”. What is it? What does it mean? We hear about forgiveness from pulpits and pop culture all the time. Why, it’s a gift we give ourselves! It’s the right thing to do! Forgiving is a sign of our spiritual development and piety!

Forgiveness has become such a ubiquitous word, in fact, that perhaps it’s lost its potency. I bump into someone in a crowded store and I say, “Excuse me.” Am I asking forgiveness for my offense? Many of us say “sorry” almost as often as we say “uhm”. Do we seek forgiveness each time we blurt it out? Teens say, “My bad” and their buds say, “No problem.” Is that a forgiveness exchange?

What does "forgiveness" mean?

As I drove home, pondering, this definition popped into my head:

"Forgiveness is when the hurt you’ve suffered no longer drives your decision-making, nor defines who you are. "

Here's an example: Tom’s wife left him for another man. Tom was devastated. For the first few months, he was among the walking wounded and would tell the story of his betrayal to anyone who’d listen. And some who didn’t want to listen. His mind was filled with thoughts of retribution, retaliation and revenge. Nearly every thought he had, nearly every course of action, was directed by his wife’s affair and their subsequent divorce. And women? Pffffft. Since his wife had betrayed him and she was a woman, then all women were capable of betrayal and should be avoided. Women were not to be trusted. No one was to be trusted.

He was not in a place of forgiveness.

Over time, though, he began to add different activities to his schedule. He got into mountain biking, planned outings with friends and explored his beliefs. He recommitted himself to his work, and got a promotion. He gingerly made friendships, then dates, with women. Gradually, his decisions were based on his life now, not his life then. He no longer needed to tell the story of his wife’s affair to people – because it no longer seemed that relevant. If you asked him, he’d say, “I’m Tom. I’m a 45 year old engineer who likes mountain biking, wine and hanging with friends. Oh, and I’m divorced.”

He had arrived at the place of forgiveness.

That doesn’t mean his wife’s affair had no impact on Tom’s life. It did. Forgiveness didn’t mean Tom pretended he wasn’t hurt. He was. It doesn’t mean it was OK for Tom’s wife to have had an affair. It wasn’t. What happened in his marriage became a part of the accumulated experiences of Tom’s life – just not the key, defining part of his life.

Forgiveness meant that Tom was no longer driven or defined by his hurt.

In many cases, one person hurts another person and they stay in a relationship. The hurt may be big or it may be small. But it’s a hurt and the only way forward is through forgiveness. This mutual forgiveness benefits both parties.

We've seen how a hurt person's path to forgiveness helped him. In an ongoing relationship, forgiveness is a huge relief for the injuring party, too. She knows that she’s not going to “have to pay for this for the rest of my life” since his decisions are not going to be solely based on the hurt ("I'm only doing this because you lied to me twenty-five years ago."). And she knows he's not going to forever define her by having hurt him ("You know I can't trust you because you lied to me that time twenty-five years ago."). But to get to forgiveness she has do her part. She has to acknowledge that he’s been hurt, she has to work to help him recover, and she has to promise not to willfully repeat the injury in the future.

Sometimes the person who needs forgiveness is you. Many people, for instance, carry shame and guilt over a failed marriage, or a lost job, or a blown diet. “If only I had…If only I had been…If only I hadn’t…” is a constant refrain. Yet, this song is an oldie. It has a good beat, and you can dance to it. But it's the same old song and dance. Singing it keeps us firmly in the past. When where we've got to live is in the now.

Forgiving ourselves – acknowledging what happened, how it impacted us then and now – and moving to the point where our perceived shortcomings no longer fuel our decision-making or define who we are, is the key to living in the present. And living happily. This may require therapy to understand how we hurt ourselves in the past and to work through the issues so that we don’t continue to hurt ourselves in the future.

Viktor Frankl, noted psychiatrist and author of the classic Man’s Search for Meaning, founded an innovative school of psychology called “logotherapy”, which holds that if people have meaning and conscience in their lives then they are more apt to be successful. This idea underpins much of modern psychological thought and took mental health into new and productive areas.

Now for the reveal. Frankl developed his theories while imprisoned in Auschwitz. Man’s Search for Meaning details the suffering, deprivation and humiliation the men and women in the camp endured. It was unlike anything most of us have seen. No one should experience such inhumanity.

Although Frankl’s experience in Auschwitz birthed the most significant work of his life, Frankl didn’t appear to define himself by the time in the camp – rather, he defined himself by his work, his life.

He became bigger than what he had suffered.

And that’s the promise of forgiveness. You can become bigger than your hurt. With forgiveness you can leave the wound in the past and be your best self. And you can start right now.

Difficult People

Ever have a really difficult person in your life? I see all those heads nodding out there – and a few hands in the air. So, many of us can agree: Difficult People are a difficult challenge. Dealing with them sometimes proves so challenging, in fact, that some folks exit, stage left, rather than continue to engage with someone so… difficult.

Let’s just get this out of the way. Some people are mentally ill, and not interested in getting treatment. There, I said it. Sometimes, these people are in your workplace or in your neighborhood or in your gym or in your family tree. This article is not about how to deal with the mentally ill – no, that’s for another writer in another venue.

This article is about how to deal with the run-of-the-mill Difficult Person who gets on your last nerve. You know who I’m talkin’ about.

They’re the people who annoy you with their incessant, inappropriate chit-chat, or stymie your plans with pointless roadblock after pointless roadblock. They run late, they're absent-minded, they can’t “move on”, have body odor, halitosis and are way too needy.

Guess what? They all have something in common -- they're not doing what WE think they should be doing. They should shut up, go along, get along, let us lead, remember stuff, shower, brush their teeth and pull themselves up by their own bootstraps. If only they’d do what WE want them to do, they’d be so much easier to get along with!

The difficulty is that they don't do what we want them to do, do they? And we invest a lot of time and energy trying to get them to be different than they are, don't we? Hey, let's accept it -- we can't control them. But we can control ourselves. So, boys and girls, what you’ve got to do is check your own expectations and motivations to see why you react to the Difficult Person the way you do.

One of the best tools I've used to help clients deal with Difficult People is this: take a piece of paper and write down everything your Difficult Person does to drive you up the wall. Don't leave anything out, don't censor yourself, don't hedge. Let it all hang out.

Feel better now? So nice to get that off your chest, right? OK. The hard part. Go back through the list. Anything there something you wish you could do, or something you dislike about yourself? I had a client who was cheesed at a brown-nosing co-worker, who she called “Miss Thing”. Seems Miss Thing would walk down the hall, see the boss and say, “Charlene, want to get some lunch?” – and proceed to have coveted one-on-one time with the boss. My client was irate! Who did Miss Thing think she was?

I asked my client to write down everything she disliked about Miss Thing and then go back through it. The proverbial light bulb appeared overhead. “Someone once told me I ought to know my place, and not be too big for my britches," she said. "I am afraid of being seen as too forward.” I queried, "So, it’s not so much about Miss Thing, is it?" "No," she responded, "it’s that she’s doing something I wish I could do.” Yes, my young Jedi – that is exactly the problem.

It’s ultimately not so much about the Difficult Person, it’s about you. Understanding yourself makes the behavior of others easier to manage. You may come to find that you don’t mind somebody else brown-nosing, or running late, or being weird. After you get to that point it’s mind over matter -- if you don’t mind, it don’t matter.

Keep author Byron Katie's advice in mind: "There are three kinds of business in the world: your business, my business and God's business." Getting into someone else's business is a futile exercise. Waiting for someone else to change is likewise pointless. Let me tell you this: there is no magic incantation you can make, no string of words you can utter, to get someone to change his ways.

Change? That's their business. And your business? Simple. It's what you choose to do about yourself and for yourself. Difficult People are only difficult when you mistake your business for theirs.

Meaningful Change

There's been a lot of talk about the making and keeping of New Year's Resolutions. I have been asked, "How do you make a resolution and actually keep it beyond January 12th?"

I have an answer. Which I will reveal. Keep reading.

First, let's look at the typical Resolution Making Process.

Susan says to me: "I am resolved to lose 15 pounds this year. How can I do it?" [Now, notice my brilliant coaching technique in action!] "Why do you want to lose 15 pounds?" I guilelessly ask.

The wonderful Martha Beck, who writes for O Magazine and trains coaches, taught me a deceptively simple coaching tool -- The Five Whys. Ask the question, "Why?" five times, she says, and you will get to the root of any problem.

So asking Susan why she wants to lose 15 pounds is the first Why.

"So I can be thinner," she responds.

"Why do you want to be thinner?" I ask (the second Why).

"Because if I'm thinner, I'll be more attractive."

"Why is being more attractive important?" (the third Why).

"Because maybe then I can get a boyfriend."

"Why do you want a boyfriend?" (the fourth one).

"Because, then, I guess, I might get married, which I'd like to do."

"Why?" (the fifth, and simplest Why).

"Because if I'm married I won't be lonely any more."

So there it is, dear readers. Losing 15 pounds is the surefire cure to loneliness. Didya know that?

And we wonder why people don't keep New Year's Resolutions! Losing weight can be a terrific goal. But it's not the perfect solution to feeling lonely.

Loneliness is not cured by being skinny. Skinny people are lonely. Heavy people are lonely. Single people are lonely.

Married people are lonely, too. If you ask me, Married And Lonely is the worst kind of lonely there is.

What do we want in our most intimate relationships? To be known, to be understood, to be accepted? Sounds about right to me. Faithful readers, you know my mantra, "can I give this to myself?" Why, yes, you can. Knowing yourself, understanding yourself and, dare I say it, accepting yourself -- these are the first steps toward alleviating loneliness. And here's the bonus: once you do these things, you make yourself extremely easy to love.

Yep, loneliness needs to be tackled with a game plan that doesn't necessarily include weight loss. Here are three more practical things anyone can do to be less lonely:

1) Find Meaning and Purpose In Your Life: volunteer where you are appreciated and can do good. You'll find connection with a group of like-minded souls, and your life will expand to include them.

2) Stop Waiting For Other People To Call You: call them! Organize a girls night, or a book club, or a poker group. Or an All Girl Poker Playing Book Club. Which invites men! You'd certainly draw a crowd!

3) Focus On What You Have, Not What You Lack: Whatever you focus on expands in your life. It's true. If you subscribe to the "oh, I'm so lonely, woe is me" school of thought, then you will constantly reinforce your sad state, and feel sad -- well, all the time. Plus, you won't be particularly fun to be around, what with that black cloud following you everywhere you go and all that heavy sighing, weeping and moaning... If, however, you allow yourself to look forward to your Friday night All Girl Poker Playing Book Club meeting, or working with your tutoring client, or staffing the church bazaar, you will be happier. Organize your life around what you have, not what you lack. And revel in it!

Making a resolution to change behavior never works unless you understand the fundamental, underlying reason why you want to make the change. Resolutions fail because we're making the wrong resolutions! Susan doesn't really want to lose weight, she wants her loneliness to be fixed. So, find the true problem -- not the perceived problem -- and address that with specific solutions. Doing so will give you a reasonable shot at making lasting and meaningful change. And keeping your resolutions all year long.

Alive and Awake

I have a little shorthand I use to describe some people. I started with “deeply unconscious”. Then I shifted to: “lacking insight into themselves and how they function in the world.” Both of these phrases were my feeble attempts to get at a larger issue – how to describe people who have no interest in (and in fact run screaming from the very idea of) personal awareness, openness and growth.

(You know who you are.)

Recently, I was running errands and had Oprah & Friends playing on my XM radio. I have to admit it: I have an Oprah crush. Sure, she’s got Steadman, and I’m not gay. But still.

I love her.

And I love her Friends. So the other day, I was listening to Dr. Robin Smith, author of Lies At The Altar, when my girl Dr. Robin said something that caught my ear. She said, “It’s time for you to step up and be a grown-up. It’s time for you to be alive and awake.”

Ka-thunk. That was it! Alive and awake! I want my friends to be alive and awake. I want my family to be alive and awake. I want my clients to be alive and awake. I want to be alive and awake.

Why would anyone want to be anything other than alive and awake? What’s the opposite there – unaware and asleep? Hmmmn. Guess if you’re unaware or asleep, you’re kinda safe. You’re insulated from feeling anything or having the scary possibility of anything in your life changing. You sleepwalk through your life, numbed to all experience.

Is that the way to live?

I’ve always wondered what babies think when they fall asleep in their car seat and wake up in their crib. Do they think, “Whoa! Weren’t we just going to the grocery store? How’d I get here?”

Maybe that’s what happens for some people at mid-life. They begin to wake up and think, “Whoa! How’d I get here?” And if they’d been awake and experiencing their 20s and 30s, maybe they’d have a partial clue.

Being alive and awake is a lot of work. The major spiritual traditions suggest that coming awake is our soul’s lifework. It was the Buddha, wasn’t it, who experienced enlightenment and became The Awakened One?

I love the words of Jesus in Matthew 7:7-8: “Ask, and it will be given you; search, and you will find; knock, and the door will be opened for you. For everyone who asks receives, and everyone who searches finds, and for everyone who knocks, the door will be opened.”

Leading me to believe that if you never seek, you will never find. If you aren’t alive enough to seek enlightenment – asking who you are and why you are here – you’ll never be awakened.

There is an element of pain and suffering to being alive and awake that you certainly don’t have to face when you’re unaware and asleep. When you’re alive and awake you consciously open yourself to good and bad, happiness and pain, light and dark. Would the easier way be to lead a life of only the former and none of the latter?

That ain’t gonna happen, is it?

As writer Jack Kornfeld has said, you can’t live full time in a blissful state. Even the most enlightened person has to do the laundry from time to time.

Alive and awake is about balance. Think about balance for a moment: bakers add a little salt into a dessert recipe to enhance the sweetness of the treat. Balloonists add a load to their lighter-than-air craft so they can control ascent and descent. Opposites attract.

Continuing the homey aphorisms, it’s said that into every life a little rain must fall. And where would we be in a world without a little rain? Well, we’d have drought. Which would bring on famine. Then death.

Perhaps being unaware and asleep is the way some people try to avoid death. Funny, isn’t it? You go through life insulating yourself from experiences because you’re afraid of death, and guess what? You die anyway.

Because we all do.

How much better, then, to fully live until you die? How much better to turn your face up to the rain and lick the drops as they fall into your life? How much better it would be to live sensing everything, feeling everything, knowing as much as you can. How much better it would be to be alive and awake.

What a great New Year’s Resolution, huh?