Stop Trying To Be Perfect!

So often, when we start a new habit, energy is high and we are ready to conquer the world. As time goes on, and life happens, we hit ups and downs and our energy wanes. As a heath and wellness coach, people often come to me with habits they have been working on unsuccessfully for years. They usually have had some success and then something derails them. They see it immediately as a failure and stop working on the habit completely, chalking it up as another loss. 

Perfectionism is based on an all-or-nothing mentality. You are either perfect or you are a failure. This mentality causes a great deal of stress for people. Nothing you do is ever good enough. Perfectionism is often rooted in a fear of failure. The mindset becomes, if I can’t do it perfectly then I won’t even try. 

How do we get past perfectionism? You need to able to actually see your pattern. If you are not aware that you are a perfectionist then you won’t be able to see where your work is.

Start focusing on what you ARE doing and not what you AREN”T doing. So often, my clients will tell me the one day they weren’t successful with their habit rather than the four or five that they were. You have to start to rewire your brain to see your successes and not only focus on the failures. 

It is important to focus on how you feel when you are successful with your new habit. Everything that we do gets stored in our body. Think back to something that really upset you or made you feel so much joy. You can literally feel those emotions in your body. The same becomes true with our successes. Remind yourself to recall how the success feels and use that as your foundation. Build off of that feeling. 

Remind yourself not to dwell on the failures. Failures are often success in sheep’s clothing. When we figure out what doesn’t work we are actually one step closer to finding what does. Often, we are not successful because we bit off more than we can chew. Break the habit down into a smaller step. It really doesn’t matter how small of a step it is. If you are able to be successful with it then it will only continue to grow. 

We get very set on what success is going to look like in our new habit. Oftentimes, the success we are obtaining doesn’t look exactly the way we imagined it and so we aren’t able to see it for what it is. One of my clients had mapped out an exercise program for herself. She reported back that she had been unsuccessful with her new exercise habit. When we started to unpack it she realized that she had been exercising every day but it just didn’t look the way she had expected it to. 

If habits are going to be sustainable then they are going to have ups and downs. Every day we have to remind ourselves that we are doing the best we can. Take each day as it comes. Pat yourself on the back for your successes and be open to learning from your failures. As Ralph Waldo Emerson said, “Our greatest glory is not in never failing, but in rising up every time we fail.” In other words, stop trying to be perfect and just start trying.