Elizabeth Lombardo - Better than Perfect: 7 Strategies to Crush Your Inner Critic and Create a Life You Love

better than PERFECT

Better Than Perfect

Copyright 2014 Elizabeth Lombardo

Authors Note: The names of all clients and most of the others who appear in the stories and anecdotes have been changed to protect their privacy. I have also created composites of most people, so they are not identifiable.

SEAL PRESS

A Member of the Perseus Books Group

1700 Fourth Street

Berkeley, California 94710

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form without written permission from the publisher, except by reviewers who may quote brief excerpts in connection with a review.

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Lombardo, Elizabeth.

Better than perfect : 7 strategies to crush your inner critic and create a life you love / Elizabeth Lombardo.

ISBN 978-1-58005-550-5 (ebook)

1. Perfectionism (Personality trait) 2. Imperfection. 3. Self-acceptance. 4. Happiness. I. Title.

BF698.35.P47L66 2014

155.2'32--dc23

2014020639

10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1

Cover design by Faceout Studio, Kara Davison

Interior design by Megan Jones Design

Distributed by Publishers Group West

To Jeffrey, for your unconditional love and support. Thank you for helping me see how amazing Better Than Perfect can be.

And to all the people out there who are tired of not feeling good enough. You are Better Than Perfect.

Contents

I VE BEEN A perfectionist for most of my life.

In all honesty, Ive been rewarded quite nicely because of it.

At the same time, though, its caused a lot of unnecessary tears, tension, and trials for me and for the people around me.

It was 7:27 in the morning. Id already been up a few hours trying to tackle my lengthy to-do list before flying to New York around noon. I still had to pack, wondering what shoes I should bring; respond to a journalist about how to excel during change in the workplace; empty the dishwasher; get my daughters breakfasts ready; and test my eight-year-old on her spelling words.

My stress level was definitely up there, but I was trying to keep it together.

Unpleasant, I said, reciting a word from the spelling list.

As I glanced over my daughters shoulder, she wrote the word down on a sheet of paper. UNPLEASENT. Two Es rather than two As. Hmmm.

When she misspelled unpleasant, I started to get unpleasant. Part of it was that Id always had trouble with spelling. (I love spell-check!) But the bigger problem was that I was a perfectionist, and my being a perfectionist at that moment could have made both my daughter and me very unhappy.

Your test is today, Sweetheart, I said in what I hoped was a motivating tone. In reality, I was really anxious, thinking shed miss that word on the test.

Now, as I sit here recounting this incident, Im embarrassed that my daughters messing up one letter would upset me so much. Unfortunately, it did.

Ive always tried to hide my perfectionist tendencies from my children, hoping to not pass them on to my girls. But who was I kidding here? The tension in our kitchen was palpable.

Then my daughter saved the day. Mom, I think we all need to take a deep breath, she said.

This was the proverbial wisdom out of the mouth of a child. But for me it was much more than that: it was an important wake-up call.

On some level, perfectionism is rewarded in our society. We may be the person who consistently stays at work until midnightto complete a project in particular, or to excel at our job in general. Maybe were striving to have the body of a supermodel or a superhero. Or we might go above and beyond normal expectations to ensure our children get into Harvard. As you might guess, many champion athletes, prominent scientists, and celebrities demonstrate perfectionist traits. Serena Williams, a number-one-ranked female tennis player and the only female player to win over $50 million in prize money, describes herself this way: Im a perfectionist. Im pretty much insatiable.

Of course, not all of us are extreme perfectionists like Serena Williams. And yet, many of us have one or more perfectionistic thought patterns or behaviors that negatively impact our lives on a daily basisfrom our relationships to our work.

Do any of these tendencies sound familiar?

You see your life in black-and-white terms. I did not get the promotion; I am a failure. Or, I ate one cookie and ruined my diet; might as well eat the entire bag.

You often act out of fear rather than passion. Fear would say: This project is so stressful. I could get fired if I mess it up. Whereas passion would say: I enjoy using my strengths and collaborating with others to make this project incredible.

Youve made up tons of rules for yourself (and others) that you dont even know youre following. I should be more successful. I should be in better shape. She should call me more. He should do the dishes since I cooked dinner.

You give up before youve even tried to do something, like compete for a promotion or take on a challenging assignment. You think, I failed in the past, so why risk trying again? Or, If its never really going to happen, then why bother?

You frequently use distorted thinking when you make decisions. You think you can read the minds of those around you. She thinks Im lazy. He doesnt love me. Or you predict the future will be unbearable, essentially making a mountain out of a molehill. My career will be ruined if I mess up this speech!

Sounds pretty unpleasant, however you spell it! But theres more...

Chances are you experience high levels of stress, rarely feel satisfied, and live with a barrage of negative self-talk cycling around your head. You consistently think, If only I achieve X, then Ill be happy. Happiness is seen as the endgame, the result of achieving a goal. Your self-confidence is conditional, based on how successful you view yourself at that moment, or on how others react to you.