Jennifer Shannon - The Monkey Mind Workout for Perfectionism: Break Free from Anxiety and Build Self-Compassion in 30 Days!

This fun and engaging book includes thirty practical exercises designed to change the thoughts and behaviors that keep perfectionism alive. The strategies in this highly accessible guide are rooted in cognitive behavioral therapy (CBT): a well-researched, effective approach for dealing with perfectionism. If perfectionism is a problem for you or someone you care about, I highly recommend checking out The Monkey Mind Workout for Perfectionism .

Martin M. Antony, PhD, ABPP , professor of psychology at Ryerson University in Toronto, ON, Canada; and coauthor of When Perfect Isnt Good Enough and The Shyness and Social Anxiety Workbook

Jennifer Shannon is back with thirty exercises to tame your inner perfectionist! From setting realistic goals and expectations to jump-starting those tasks you dread, she offers specific, concrete exercises with which you can compassionately rein in those habits of compulsive perfectionism.

Dave Carbonell, PhD , coach at www.anxietycoach.com; and author of Panic Attacks Workbook , The Worry Trick , and Fear of Flying Workbook

If you think that your perfectionism is ingrained in your personality and you just have to live with it, then heres some great news: The Monkey Mind Workout for Perfectionism will change your mind-set by asking you to make small and deliberate changes in your actions. Enough with setting such sky-high standards that you are doomed to failure. Enough of all those disappointments and self-criticism. Jennifer Shannon has been there and done that. Let her book liberate you from the tyranny of perfect. When you finish this workout, youll get to unleash your creativity, your purpose, and your self-compassion.

Reid Wilson, PhD , author of Stopping the Noise in Your Head

Jennifer Shannon understands perfectionism inside out! Her engaging explanations and creative exercises are expertly designed and paced. Perfectionists are in good hands as she coaches us through daily exercises to help us learn to accept, and even enjoy, a less than perfect life.

Christine A. Padesky, PhD , coauthor of Mind Over Mood

Jennifer Shannon has written another nearly perfect book. In The Monkey Mind Workout for Perfectionism , she describes the illusion that perfectionism promises and the soul-crushing reality that it delivers. Take heart, though. Jennifer presents a path forward, filled with compassion, insight, and a host of activities that will calm any perfectionists monkey mind. I highly recommend it.

Michael A. Tompkins, PhD, ABPP , codirector of the San Francisco Bay Area Center for Cognitive Therapy; assistant clinical professor at the University of California, Berkeley; and author of The Anxiety and Depression Workbook

Publishers Note

This publication is designed to provide accurate and authoritative information in regard to the subject matter covered. It is sold with the understanding that the publisher is not engaged in rendering psychological, financial, legal, or other professional services. If expert assistance or counseling is needed, the services of a competent professional should be sought.

In consideration of evolving American English usage standards, and reflecting a commitment to equity for all genders, they/them is used in this book to denote singular persons.

NEW HARBINGER PUBLICATIONS is a registered trademark of New Harbinger Publications, Inc.

Distributed in Canada by Raincoast Books

Copyright 2021 by Jennifer Shannon

New Harbinger Publications, Inc.

5674 Shattuck Avenue

Oakland, CA 94609

www.newharbinger.com

Illustrations by Doug Shannon

Cover design by Amy Shoup; Acquired by Tesilya Hanauer; Edited by James Lainsbury

All Rights Reserved

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Names: Shannon, Jennifer, author.

Title: The monkey mind workout for perfectionism : break free from anxiety and build self-compassion in 30 days! / Jennifer Shannon.

Description: Oakland, CA : New Harbinger Publications, [2021]

Identifiers: LCCN 2021003067 | ISBN 9781684037216 (trade paperback)

Subjects: LCSH: Perfectionism (Personality trait) | Anxiety--Treatment. | Self-acceptance.

Classification: LCC BF698.35.P47 S53 2021 | DDC 155.2/32--dc23

LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2021003067

Introduction

Despite all the scrutiny it has received in the last two decades, perfectionism still holds a romantic allure for us. In our competitive culture, performance and presentation are closely associated with power, success, and higher social status. But the cost of our enchantment is high. If we dare not risk making a mistake or misstep, and cannot forgive ourselves when we do, we deny ourselves the freedom to risk, to create, to explore, and to fully engage with the flow of life. Ultimately, our inability to forgive our own fallibility continues to be the single biggest obstacle to our professional success, our relationships, and our own personal growth and happiness.

Readers of my previous book, Dont Feed the Monkey Mind, will recognize perfectionist thinking as one of the three pillarsalongside being overly responsible and intolerant of uncertaintyof what I call the monkey mind-set, the reactive way we think when were hijacked by the fight-or-flight alarms of our brains limbic system, which we experience as fear and anxiety. To think that we should, or even can, be consistently perfect is a false assumption, and the wisdom of accepting our imperfect selves unconditionally is self-evident. Yet we continue to beat ourselves up for every perceived failure and shortcoming. Why?

As youll discover in this book, perfectionism is not only a pattern of thinking, it is a pattern of behavior. As a cognitive behavioral therapist, I work not just with the cognitions, or thoughts, of my clients, but with their behavior as well. These clients have proven to me time and time again that for any new way of thinking to take root, it must be harnessed to a new way of doing. That is why this bookthe first of three, each addressing one pillar of the monkey mind-setis a workout book. To benefit, youll not only need to break your perfectionist pattern of thinking, youll need to break your perfectionist pattern of behavior as well. In other words, youll have to break a sweat! With each exercise, youll develop more of the resilience and confidence you need to free yourself from the tyranny of perfect, enabling you to truly believe that you are enough as you are.

Before you begin, take my Perfectionism Quiz, available for download at http://monkeymindbooks.com/p/. The quiz will help you evaluate to what extent perfectionism is affecting your life.

The Little Perfectionist

Class, I have a special announcement. Someone in our class has won the school essay contest! My fifth-grade teacher was beaming. Her eyes scanned our faces, building our anticipation. I felt a burst of hope in my chest, like the first kernel of popcorn popping in the pot. But it cant be me, said the little voice in my head. My essay is lousy!

The subject of my lousy essay was Patrick Henry, the founding father who said, Give me liberty or give me death, and Id suffered a thousand deaths writing it. For the past two weeks, every day after school, I had shuttered myself in my room for hours, writing and rejecting what Id written until the floor was littered with crumpled paper. When my mother tried to help, I took each suggestion as criticism, confirmation that I wasnt up to the task. Many writing sessions ended with me in tears. On the last night, I cobbled together a single-page, double-spaced essay to hand in. And now, to my amazement, my teachers adoring gaze was fixed on me!