aHA!
For years I have struggled with the notion that I must do things well in order to measure up. That if I work hard, do what I say I’m going to do, do it well, etc., I’ll be beyond reproach. In other words, I won’t get yelled at and people will like me.
This is the specter of perfectionism, I know now. It is that engine that keeps me doing “too much” in order to be a “good” wife, mother, friend, worker…person.
It is of course a lie.
But it is a seductive one, for who doesn’t want to be good at what they do? Who doesn’t want a conscientious hard-working employee? Who doesn’t want to live in a clean, nicely decorated house?
It clicked for me yesterday morning while I was driving to the hospital. I was replaying the Friday conversation where the supervisors were telling me that I should bring music into my visits, that I should find a way to be happy and enjoy this work. And the 7-year-old in me finally said “Why isn’t what I’m doing good enough?”
AHA!
Why isn’t being a music director good enough?
Why isn’t just being who I am good enough?
There are always messages from people I respect (and those I don’t) saying to strive harder, be all you can be, use all your gifts, blah blah blah.
I’ve always heard those messages personally and re-doubled my efforts to try even harder to get it all done so that those people (or anybody) would see the effort I put in and praise me for it. Appreciate me. Love me.
Of course they don’t. All I get is exhausted and crabby and have to let something else slide which allows the critic in my head to say “SEE? If you were really good you could keep this going too.”
I’ve worked a long time, almost ten years, to identify and neutralize this internal critic. That work has reduced my migraines from 3 or 4 per week to less than 1 every 2 months. But episodes like Friday morning remind me that I will always be a perfectionist, susceptible to the slightest suggestion that I “could be doing more, if you just tried a little harder.”
I suppose, if I tried a little harder, I could more easily brush those comments aside.
Or maybe the way I’m handling it now is good enough.
Peace.
— — —
A year ago (or longer) on This Journey…
-
Grateful: Mid-November edition 2009
approved 2008
Random Tag 2007
wasting time on a wednesday 2006
On the precipice 2004
December 31st, 2006 at 4:36 pm
I’d go with the latter.
How many people do you know who’ve truly fixed the quirks they want to fix?
In my case, not many.
Like you, I’m trying to be psyched on the process, if it’s honestly attempted.
Rock on.
Thu Nov 16, 05:27:00 AM 2006