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January 20 - January 30, 2025
She is what she is and she is whole. Dr. Clarissa Pinkola Estés
I wrote this book for the women[*] who are done being “good.” I wrote this book for the women who are ready to set themselves free.
Your problem is not that you’re a perfectionist. Some of the most joyful, extraordinary, fulfilled people in the world are perfectionists. Your problem is that you’re not being your full self.
Perfectionists are intelligent people who understand that everything can’t work out perfectly all the time. What they sometimes have trouble with is understanding why they still feel so disappointed by imperfection in the face of that intellectual concession. What they sometimes wonder about is why they feel so compelled to endlessly strive. What they’re sometimes confused by is what they’re striving for in the first place. What they often question is why they can’t just enjoy relaxing “like a normal person.” What they want to know is who they are outside of what they accomplish.
facts
Intense perfectionists are effortlessly direct and maintain razor-sharp focus on achieving their goal. Left unchecked, their standards can go from high to impossible, and they can be punitive with others and themselves for not achieving impossible standards.
2nd highest
Classic perfectionists are highly reliable, consistent, and detail-oriented, and they add stability to their environment. Left unchecked, they struggle to adapt to spontaneity or a change in routine, and they can experience difficulty connecting meaningfully with others.
Perfectionists are people who consistently notice the difference between an ideal and a reality, and who strive to maintain a high degree of personal accountability.
This results in the perfectionist experiencing, more often than not, a compulsion to bridge the gulf between reality and an ideal themselves.
Highly self-disciplined, classic perfectionists are adept at presenting in a uniform way, making it difficult to take their emotional temperature.
Classic perfectionists aren’t trying to be impressive or distance themselves as much as they’re trying to offer to others what they most value themselves: structure, consistency, predictability, an understanding of all the options so as to make an informed choice, high standards, objectivity, clarity through organization.
left feeling excluded, misunderstood, and underappreciated for all that they do.
Disconcerted by their own paralysis, procrastinator perfectionists assume that if they had more energy or discipline, they’d be able to execute, which is not the case. Procrastinator perfectionists have plenty of discipline and aren’t lazy at all. What they don’t have is acceptance. Acceptance that now is the only time anyone ever starts anything, and that starting now means you’re taking something that’s perfect in your mind and bringing it into the real world, where it is bound to change.
It’s not mere talent that rises to the top, it’s persistence. While change does always involve loss, not changing involves a much deeper loss.
Joy holds tremendous power. It is impossible to live joyfully without your joy benefiting the world.
perfectionism is meant to be celebrated.
Perfectionists never stop noticing the gulf between reality and the ideal, and they never stop longing to actively bridge the gap.
Ambition is not a universal trait.
When you approach your health holistically, you’re not just trying to find one wrong thing and fix it, you’re working to strengthen each part of yourself so that you can become healthier overall.
let’s be honest, we can ascertain from past experiences that identifying red flags and backing away from red flags are two separate skill sets).
Taking an integrative approach to perfectionism requires you to think outside the box, then throw the box away. That kind of thinking starts now.
Number two is that you need to start appreciating what you have. Stop taking your perfectionism for granted. Not everyone gets to experience that impulse you carry, pushing you to explore the bounds of possibility for yourself and the world around you. Perfectionists don’t allow themselves to be constrained by what’s “realistic”; that one mindset advantage alone is invaluable.
You’re not flawless—none of us are—but you are whole, you are complete, and you are perfect.
What would the world look like if we felt as entitled to step into our power as we do to renounce our wholeness?
No one could ever do a better job of being you than you.
Healthy means safe; healthy means empowered; healthy means reflective of your authentic self. Healthy does not mean happy all the time.
Perfectionists are bored by hedonism. Perfectionists love working. Perfectionists love a challenge. Perfectionists want to contribute, create, and grow.
A lot of perfectionists think they’re driven by success when what they’re really driven by is the avoidance of failure—two very different animals.
“The promotion-focused are engaged by inspirational role models, the prevention-focused by cautionary tales.”[20]
You don’t heal by changing who you are; you heal by learning how to be yourself in the world.
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You are the person responsible for directing where your newly liberated energy goes next.
If you direct your energy in curative and intentional ways, you can build a life that you want instead of a life that feels hard all the time. In case no one’s mentioned it before, when you build a life you want, it still feels hard a lot of the time. The difference is that the difficulty feels, to say the least, worth it.
When people say they don’t know why they can’t sleep, what they usually mean is they’re not ready to explore the possible reasons out loud.
The stakes are higher when you say something out loud because the truth becomes clearer to you.
We also don’t speak what we know out loud because while acknowledging the truth can be liberating, it’s almost always painful first.
To enjoy optimal vitality, you pay attention to the internal energy system within you and calibrate it according to your needs. Balancing energies is markedly different than balancing tasks, the latter of which is what the colloquial meaning of balance has come to represent.
there is no better or worse way to do something that is impossible, which is to find balance.
living authentically looks on the surface like the opposite of balance.
Women feel an increasing sense of liberation as they age, not because they’ve finally achieved the balance they were searching for but because they’ve finally given up on it.
What’s culturally incentivized is not being healthy for yourself, it’s seeming healthy for others.
The opposite of the healthy, balanced woman is the perfectionist.
There’s a reason you’ve never once heard a man refer to himself as a “recovering perfectionist”—because men aren’t taught that they need to “recover” from their perfectionism.
If only for the briefest moment, allow yourself to consider a radical thought in a misogynist world: there’s nothing wrong with you.
Tension doesn’t always feel good, but there’s value in it. Tension energizes and stirs awareness. Tension catalyzes action. Tension makes everything more interesting. What we do with the tensions we experience is what makes life such a colorful, redemptive, tragic, joyful, and surprising experience. Tension is the wild card.
Average is not a bad thing. Perfectionists are totally fine operating at an average and below-average level in a lot of areas, just not the areas they long to excel in.
IT’S NOT THAT YOU APPROACH YOUR LIFE WITH PERFECTIONISM; IT’S THAT YOU RESPOND TO MISSTEPS WITH SELF-PUNISHMENT
To sustain any kind of personal growth, we need to internalize the lessons of our past mistakes, understand what the healthier alternatives are, and believe that we are capable of change in the first place.
Anything you do to protect, save, restore, and build your energy is productive.
INSTEAD OF: I have to . . . TRY: I have the chance to . . .
