There I was hurriedly hoovering yesterday when I ran out of cord.  Do I run up the stairs and move it down or….hmmm I thought,  “Do I really have to reach every nook and crannie down here?” …to which my inner voice yelled a resounding “No!”  Then I ‘heard’ a most surprising thought;

“I don’t do perfect when it comes to hoovering!”

Next thoughts…  “What can I do ‘perfect’ on then?  When is ‘perfect’ allowable?”  (Yes, if you are wondering, I do often have conversations with my Self like this! It’s a Highly Sensitive woman’s perogative!).

Here is what I came up with.  I go for ‘perfect’ when I am editing or following a recipe, stuff like that.  Of course it doesn’t necessarily mean it comes out perfectly.  Ideas, for instance, are never perfect and the best of recipes can certainly fail.

Being ‘perfect’ and being a ‘perfectionist’ are 2 different things.
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I gave up perfectionism decades ago!  What a relief.  Now I am a selective perfectionist.  I decide pro-actively what I choose to be ‘perfect’ about.   I will unapologetically try for ‘perfect’ on some things, like making sure there are no typos in this article.  (Now some perfectionist out there is going to search for one…should I give them one?)  Coming from this new view of being or doing perfect is vastly different than believing from the bottom of my soul that I am not good enough unless I am ‘perfect’.  I mean, after all… Perfect at what?  Perfect how?  Perfect when?  I never could, and still can’t, answer these questions.

Being an unfulfilled perfectionist only brings angst!
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Having embraced ‘selective perfectionism’ means I have grown to the point of being pretty OK with goofing-up.   Say, for example, choosing ‘the perfect’ paint colour for a room, if you are anything like me that might take a few tries!  (Apologies to Nancy, my interior designer back in Canada to whom I promised, hand on heart, never to pick a colour again!)  Now, in the past, not choosing the ‘perfect’ colour would have been a huge personal failure.  Now, I’m more likely to laugh or cringe.  It’s just paint, so I paint again…or find another designer!

Embrace being a ‘selective’ perfectionist, love your ‘perfect’ side and know what it’s great for!

Wow, so there is an upside to boring old hoovering!  It’s good for thinking about stuff… even unperfect ideas like this.  So, our Darling Burnout Queens, crowns off to perfectionism!  I’m off to hoover!

Carry on and be perfect!

PS.  The BOQs would love to hear from you!  Leave your wisdom and comments in the box below.

Here’s my confession Lovelies… being Highly Sensitive comes with it’s own ‘fear factor’.  I’m cautious and  I make no apologies for it.  I’m not held hostage by fear and it doesn’t make me feel powerless.  Au contraire!  As long as I keep my inner line of communication open with my highly sensitive fear factor I can take risks, have adventures and get on with living.  I’m free to defy ordinary!

I haven’t always enjoyed this freedom.   I was raised with a parent who always said, “I won’t live in fear”.  I used to believe that was so big, so bold, so brave.  However, over time, when fear wouldn’t go away, I learned to feel ashamed when I felt fearful.  I felt weak or crazy or wrong when I experienced fear.  I learned to mistrust my fear, to ignore it and avoid it.  Instead I lived with constant worry, anxiety and even panic attacks.   I had been ‘coached’ out of my natural ability to fear and could no longer tell the difference between fear and it’s second-cousins, anxiety and worry.

Then I read a book that changed my relationship with fear and, this is not an over-statement, changed my life.  That book was The Gift of Fear by Gavin de Becker (Little, Brown & Company,1997).  From that day forward I have recommended this book to every woman  I have had the honour of working with.

I went from being the picture of tense and worried to understanding that if I lived with fear all of the time it created a kind of white noise that everything gets filtered through.  That white noise ultimately turns into anxiety.  There was so much static, I didn’t know when to be afraid and when not to.

I began asking myself some searching questions;

• “Is anything really bad happening right now?”
• “Are the knots in my stomach about anything real?”
• “Do I need to be afraid? ”

Slowly I began to hear through the noise.  In the process I learned to use my Highly Sensitive pause-to-check advantage to give me a well-manicured foot-up on fear!

I used to curse my cautious nature, but slowly I began to cherish it.  My healthy caution and my natural intuition gave me time to assess and consider whether the fear I was feeling was relevant and imminent or if I was slipping into my familiar old pattern of anxiety and worry.

Fear is involuntary…worry & anxiety are choices.

Now, here’s the gem that changed my experience and relationship with fear forever.  Fear is anticipatory, it’s job is to warn us that something might happen.  However… (this was mind blowing at the time I needed it)

If you are feeling fear nothing is actually happening!

I’ll give you a couple of examples that will make it really clear.  First one, I looked up and saw a car heading straight into us and I felt fear.  Next moment however I was in action with nothing but responding to the emergency in my focus.  What happened to my fear?  Second example, middle of the night and we hear an invasion type burglary happening and it sounds like our door!  Fear, for one split second until I jumped into action.  (It was the next door office just so you know!)  Are you getting it?  When the scary thing actually does happen you don’t feel fear you respond.

Fear can stop you from living the life you dream of.

That’s because fear is never really about what we think it is about.  It’s a shell game where we have to constantly search for the ‘real thing’.  You second guess yourself out of fear.  You stop taking chances because of fear.  Life begins to revolve around your fears and it affects how you live your life, the decisions you make, and the dreams you dare weave.

Instead of being open to the unexpected, fear will keep you clinging tightly to the old.

Think about it, if you could walk away from your fears without a backwards glance…

…because you can count on fear to warn you when needed…

…because you can trust and rely on your intuition…

…because you cherish your ability to be cautious and careful…

What ‘loves’ would you embrace, what new journeys would you embark on, what new heights would you reach for?  

P.S. The BOQs would love to hear from you! Leave your wisdom and comments in the box below.