Hi, my name is Lynne and I am a perfectionist. Is this an addiction? I don’t know, but it’s awfully persistent! Can it be deadly? Absolutely! (So I say, I will overcome this. This is so not perfect! I’ll just stop.) Ha! Here’s just one more (ineffective) attempt to be perfect.
I just read an article about finding that we’ve been setting limits to what we can achieve, whether it’s success or happiness. If we just stop limiting ourselves, we can have what we want. But then I thought of the other end of this, setting the bar too high to even get in the game. Perfectionists are so good at this one. I know.
So it looks like we really need to raise the limits while lowering the bar. That creates much more room to move around. But wait, aren't these both standards, wherever we manage to place them! Is this the solution?
That’s when it occurred to me that when I’m really happiest, and when I’m really doing my best work, there are no standards. (Nor do I even know what “best” means!) There is only absorption in the task at hand (or, as in meditation, the non-task). This may be that situation some have called being in the “flow.”
Perfectionism requires a constant self-consciousness, always checking in to see how I am doing. The essential point, here, is that in this “flow” state my focus is on the doing – what, where, with whom. My focus is not on me!
What has this to do with an integrated life? Everything, since what I've just accomplished is an integration of my self and that self's living/doing. Worries about performance can only take place on the fractured, non-integrated plane.
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