Create Your Cheese List. Focus on the cheese and capitalize on your strengths.

If there is one thing that most everyone struggles with, it is their self-concept.  During my career as a psychotherapist, executive coach, and clinician, it is incontrovertible that most everyone spends his life suffering from any or all of the following:

  • Self-doubt
  • Insecurity
  • Poor self-image
  • Chronic anxiety
  • Self-loathing
  • Feeling inadequate and/or defective
  • Feeling unloved
  • Feeling like an imposter
  • Feeling weak and afraid

It is remarkable that so many people spend their lives perpetually taking inventory of what is wrong and defective about them rather than focusing on their good qualities, value, skills, and special contributions.

When you think about it, there was a period in our lives between pre-school and elementary school when we largely felt happy, excited, pleased, courageous, and generally pretty good about ourselves.  We were happy, our family was largely reinforcing, loving, and excited about our growth.  We liked to show-off, sing, play, and dance in public.  We said things like: Read more

THE AXIOMS OF LIFE

After several decades of practicing in the human relationship and performance effectiveness business I have come to realize that there are some incontrovertible truths about the business of living. They became evident to me over the years as I began to assemble them from the lessons I learned.

Understanding these truths and then guiding your life trajectory by living by them can make your life much more fulfilling, especially if you want to be happy, successful, highly functional, and well adjusted — as most of us do.

I call these truths the AXIOMS OF LIFE©.  There are 8 AXIOMS and I will be presenting them one at a time on YouTube this summer for your viewing and for your consideration.

#1 AXIOM OF LIFE

LIFE IS AS IT IS INSTEAD OF HOW IT SHOULD BE.

You may often find yourself believing that life is supposed to be different than the way it is. You are supposed to be good looking, healthy, fortunate, born into a good family, educated, safe, privileged, smart, lucky, impressive, respected, and popular. You are supposed to be happy, brilliant, successful, and perpetually young.

While all the above is the way life is supposed to be, you will likely notice that real life is often quite different. Life turns left when it is supposed to turn right.  Sometimes you lose your job, waste your time, make bad decisions, manage money poorly, or perpetuate bad habits.  Sometimes you get sick, let down, betrayed, divorced, and get old.

Moreover, you may complain and describe the problem more than doing anything to solve it.

SO, WHAT DO YOU DO ABOUT THIS?

I recently presented a recording of this Axiom #1 on YouTube. I included some ideas and suggestions on how you can much more effectively reconcile the gap between how life is supposed to be and how it is.

If you would like to see this recording, click here:

   

AXIOM #2 is entitled LIFE IS UNFAIR, LIFE IS FAIR, AND IT’S BOTH.  I encourage you to take a look at that one as well. 

Be sure to send me your comments and reflections on the videos.

Many thanks for your time and support!

If you like the material, click to subscribe to my YouTube channel here!   https://www.youtube.com/channel/UC-7x3R1mJJg5AyatzINR5iw?view_as=subscriber

And let me know how you are doing!

What You Believe, You Will Prove

 Your state of mind has a huge impact on the way you conduct yourself. Your ongoing beliefs determine a tremendous amount of the way you look at reality and apply those perspectives.Even if your beliefs are completely unreasonable, unrealistic, and irrational, you are likely to continue to proceed with your habits reflective of those beliefs. Therefore, before you begin to change your conduct, it is very important to first take an examination of your beliefs in the first place to determine if they are sane, reasonable, and realistic.

Examples of popular insane beliefs:

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TAKE ACTION

Hello:

“If you can’t do it right, don’t do it at all.”  Does this sound familiar?  Do you ever notice that when you hear this, you simply want to stall?  And before you know it, your life has passed you by and all you do is COUNT moments rather than LIVE them.

So, get off your backside and get going!  Remember, “DOING IT RIGHT IS SECONDARY… DOING IT IS PRIMARY!”

Dr. Mitchell Perry

TAKE ACTION

Let’s wait and see what happens, this isn’t a good time. I want to think about it. I need more time first. I might do it wrong… I might make a mistake. I just don’t want to right now. I wish something would happen. I’m not quite ready to do that. I don’t want to talk about it.

Stalling, waiting, marking time, holding steady; does this sound familiar?

All too often, most people would rather describe a problem than solve it, react more than pro-act – passive more than active.  The result… just more time rehearsing and refining their problem description skills without taking any action.

Do you want to get a new job, get a college degree, learn a language, lose weight, get in shape, fix your marriage, or play the piano?  Well, do you REALLY want to, or do you just want to talk about… or whine about it?

You must always ask yourself a fundamental question whenever you want to do anything!

ARE YOU WILLING TO PAY THE FREIGHT?

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The Perfection Obsession

ARE YOU A PERFECTIONIST?  

Perhaps you have a need to line-up your food boxes according to size, or arrange your closet by color, fabric, and space between the hangers, or alphabetize your cans of soup?  Wait a minute… if you are now thinking, “That’s a great idea!”  OMG… keep reading!

Do you obsess about your looks, house, or work?  Do you truly think that your standards of perfection help keep you striving? Do you ever notice you seem to be always anxious and/or cranky?  

It’s time to re-evaluate your perfection obsession – let’s add some common sense!  

Dr. Mitchell Perry

The Perfection Obsession:  A Set-Up for a Let Down

Many people have standards, values, and guiding principles by which they live.  For these individuals, standards and values are helpful guidelines for living; on the other hand, sometimes these standards become too rigid and strict.  In some cases, the standard expectations of excellence are so high that the individual becomes obsessed with having to be perfect.  This is called the “Perfection Obsession.”

I have encountered countless people, both personally and professionally, who are obsessed with being perfect.  In moderation, striving for excellence is a terrific basic governing value.  Yet, many of us take “having to be perfect” to the extreme, and later develop psychological, physiological, and interpersonal disorders which often result in emotional prison.

I often find multi-dimensional origins to the perfection obsession.  When suffering from perfection obsession, people frequently cultivate an unshakable irrational belief system in addition to rigid behavior patterns.  Dr. Albert Ellis presents the perfection obsession as another one of his eleven irrational ideas that contributes strongly to mental illness and emotional disorders.  He describes this irrational obsession as “the idea that one must be thorough, competent and achieving in all possible respects, and if perchance this is not achieved, there is something terribly wrong.”  As you can see, when we become firmly entrenched in this kind of thinking, we become anxious, irritated, depressed, or hostile if we’re exposed as being imperfect.

Sometimes people who are afflicted with perfection obsession have grown up in a double-bind family environment.  A double-bind family environment is a “damned if you do/damned if you don’t,” or “Catch 22” situation.  For example, suppose a child is continually told the following two conflicting messages by his parents or other authority figures:
“You’ll never amount to anything unless you achieve.”
“Whatever you achieve will never be good enough.”
If this sounds familiar, you have three options:

To keep achieving in hopes of reaching perfection some day, or
To become so miserable and defeated that it leads to severe depression.
Go crazy – (dip into the prozac).
Most people with the perfection obsession choose the first option.  The perfection obsession can manifest itself in a variety of ways.  Some of the behavior patterns are familiar — those of a workaholic, a narcissist, a compulsive cleaner, a neat nick, over-achiever, and an ultimate authority on every subject.

Workaholics constantly work to the point of masochism.  Most are working to compensate for intense feelings of inadequacy; in this case, a fear of being less than perfect.  By committing their time and energy to work and by excluding other people, they feel safer – that is to say, it is less likely that other people will discover they are in fact imperfect.

Other people can become “perfect” narcissists – obsessed with their appearance, making sure they look perfectly neat, coifed, clean, groomed, pressed, smoothed, sprayed, made-up, tanned, physically shaped, and coordinated.  The risk here is that “perfect” people might avoid potentially fun or educational activities that would expose them as being imperfect.  As a result, the “perfect” person may seldom relax for fear of having an imperfect physical image.  This narcissistic condition has become greatly amplified in the past two decades.  An example is the movie “Perfect” which portrays a woman’s obsession with exercise to create the flawless body.  Another example is the addiction with plastic surgery – as a result of a distorted view of your physical self, often referred to as body dysformia.

Many people are concerned about cleanliness and orderliness at home and work.  The neat-nick, however, is obsessed with cleanliness and orderliness. This person will spend hours cleaning every nook and cranny in the kitchen, will work for days making the office files letter perfect, or will devote the entire weekend to scrubbing the back porch and driveway.  The compulsive neat-nick’s behavior ensures the maintenance of control.  The neat nick fears losing control because that would mean revealing personal imperfections.

Still other people can become obsessed with perfection in their thinking, dialogue, and knowledge.  Have you ever dealt with someone who has an opinion and an answer for everything?  These people like to be the ultimate authority.  They will oftentimes read voraciously and store vast amounts of knowledge and will likely get quite anxious if the answer fails to immediately come to mind or if memory fails for even a moment.  Professional people, in particular, can become obsessed with perfection in their chosen field.  The idea of saying “I don’t know” is unthinkable.  Instead there is a recorded message playing internally that says, “unless I am a perfect, flawless professional, other people will lose respect for me.”  An additional problem that arises from this erroneous thinking is that other people begin to expect perfection from professionals who promote infallibility.  This leads to a tough bind.  I wonder if there would be less medical malpractice litigation if some physicians were less obsessed with projecting perfection, and if the public could allow them to be fallible and human?

The difficult part of being obsessed with perfection is the continual anxiety about making mistakes and exposing humanness, fallibility and imperfection.  The obsessive person thinks, “if I make a mistake, I will lose respect,” and “if I’m imperfect, I’m vulnerable and out of control.”  Notice how often we tell ourselves those lines?  This belief system states that anything less than perfect would be received with disapproval in other people’s eyes – an extension of the childhood double-bind scenario.

IN REALITY, THE CONTRARY IS TRUE.  We actually like people less for their perfections because perfection tends to scare and intimidate us.  If we encounter someone who appears perfect, we are immediately reminded of our own imperfections, which can make us feel uncomfortable and inadequate.  In addition, we find it difficult to identify with someone who is perfect.  We are able to relax only when we encounter someone who, while having high standards, also lets his or her imperfections and “human qualities” show through.  The more human a person is, the more we are able to feel comfortable and identify with this person.

Take a look at Oprah Winfrey, she is fabulously successful, loved and admired by millions of people — and she has always been willing to expose her failings and soft underbelly.  Do you suppose she is so admired because she is willing to be imperfect?

The perfection obsession is oriented toward reactive thinking and is motivated by the potential consequences of failing to do something.  “Perfect” people are unable to relax because they are always making an effort to be perfect – reacting to the fear of the potential consequence of appearing imperfect, flawed, and out of control.  This constant reactive obsession results in anxiety, dogmatism, and lowered creative potential and performance.  If we are unable to relax, we are denying ourselves the opportunity to grow; therefore, learning and progress are halted.

What can you do?

Ask yourself this question:  “What is the worst that can happen if I am less than perfect?”  Really consider this question because chances are, the answer is hardly fatal.
Practice saying, “I don’t know” when in fact you find yourself without an answer.  People will be quite accepting of your limitations.
Consider leaving the house (or a small portion of it) messy for one day.  It is interesting to see that your house, friends, and you too, will survive, and as a result, the obsession decreases.
List all of your standards on paper and consider the standards that are unreasonable.  Then, rewrite and adjust them to more reasonable standards.  The anxiety automatically diminishes.
Now ask yourself:

What am I noticing about myself and my perfection obsession?
What are my options to alter these behaviors?
What am I learning about these options?
What will I now do differently?