Behavior Change, Drop the SHOULD, Purposeful Mindset, Why do I do what I do?, Why use a coach?

Perfection Paralysis – The Instagram Fallacy

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In this blog series we’ve looked at several ways in which our thoughts can keep us stuck, what I call Perfect Paralysis. Another way that I see Perfection Paralysis show up in my clients… and myself is what I call ‘The Instagram Fallacy’.

The basic scenario goes something like this:

Client: ‘I want to try meditation.’

Me: ‘What about meditation is interesting to you?’

Client: ‘I have lots of friends who have a regular practice and they just love it.’

Me: ‘So you’ve heard good things, what would trying meditation look like for you?’

Client: ‘Well, I’d like to try it, but I don’t really have a good spot in my house. I mean I have a little nook, but I’d need a mat, and some calming music, or a small water fountain and it is a bit drafty, so I’d have to think about how to fix that…’

Roadblock! This client is paralyzed by ‘The Instagram Fallacy’. She can’t imagine just trying meditation without setting up the perfect, Instagram worthy meditation space with mat, fountain and a cheery bamboo plant.

I do this to myself every time someone gives me a beautiful journal… I agonize over, using it, because well my handwriting is terrible (truly terrible), I’m an inconsistent journal writer… I basically stop myself from ‘ruining’ the beautiful journal by using it. WTF? And it is not limited to meditation and journaling, I see it with dating, job hunting, starting a new hobby, taking family pictures… important things in our lives that are often fleeting, might not happen if we are so set on it being perfect before we start.

In our highly curated visual world, we are constantly fed the idea that the environment must be ‘picture perfect’ before we can move forward. Having an environment that supports our activities is hugely important, however wanting it to be perfect can throw-up major roadblocks. If you tend to suffer from ‘The Instagram Fallacy’ there are a few things you can do to free yourself.

Ask yourself the following questions:

  • What is the absolute minimum I need to ‘try’ this new thing? What if you hate meditation, but you only discover that after you’ve spent hours and hundreds of dollars setting up the perfect Zen space.
  • Why does it feel important for the space to be picture perfect?
  • What does it say about you if meditate in your pjs, on the couch with the mail and toys and laundry within reach?
  • Who is the judge of the worthiness of your space, or journal?
  • What is more important, the action or the environment?
  • Can you give yourself permission to create your environment as you evolve? What you think you need as a novice is rarely what you discover you need as you move towards mastery.

So far, we’ve looked at ‘The Fear Factor‘, ‘The Guilt Gremlins‘, ‘The Daisy Chain Effect‘ and the Instagram Fallacy… in my final blog post about Perfection Paralysis we will examine ‘Eating an Elephant’. (No elephants were harmed in the writing of this blog post.)

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Behavior Change, Drop the SHOULD, Purposeful Mindset, Shame, Why do I do what I do?

Perfection Paralysis – The Guilt Gremlins

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In my last post we talked about how fear can show-up as Perfection Paralysis… and today we are going to look at another mighty foe… Guilt.

I see this most commonly when a client is thinking about trying something purely for the joy it will bring them, a bucket filler you might say. This could be learning to knit, taking a walk every night after dinner, scrapbooking, reading a novel… there are so many examples of thing we can choose to do to fill our bucket.

Here is the basic scenario. This client has identified a need, a need to relax, be creative, be physical and they have identified something they want to try to meet that need… you’d think it would be a no-brainer to give it a try.

This is where the Guilt Gremlins show-up.

“I can’t take the time to read that new mystery novel, I should be folding the laundry.”

“I have so much to do around the house, I can’t take the time for a walk in the evening, the dishes aren’t going to wash themselves.”

“Learning to knit will take so long, and it will just drive me crazy sitting there looking at my messy house, knowing I’m wasting time.”

The Guilt Gremlins love to contrast ‘bucket fillers’ with the things we ‘SHOULD’ do and make them seem like a selfish indulgence. Our world is peppered with the ‘Shoulds’ and many of us live our lives by what we ‘should’ do rather than what we ‘want’ to do.

When working with a client battling the Guilt Gremlins, I usually approach it on multiple fronts.

  • We look at the need they have identified and why that need is important. What benefit will there be if they explore their creativity, be more physical, etc.
  • We look at their idea to meet that need. How much time will it take, what does it require, etc.
  • Then we look at the ‘Should’. I honestly believe every time someone says, ‘I should…’ the next statement should always be ‘Why?’
    • ‘Why, should I do this thing?’ If you can’t identify a reason that has a positive benefit to you it might be time to question the need for ‘the Should’.
  • ‘What negative thing would happen if you skipped the ‘the Should’?
  • If ‘the Should’ slides, what does it say about you as a person? Are you lazy, self-indulgent, messy?
  • Does ‘the Should’ preclude with possibility of the bucket filler? Is it possible to do ‘the Should’ and the ‘bucket filler’?
  • Why does ‘the Should’ take higher priority than the ‘bucket filler’?

This is usually the kicker. People have deep-seated feeling about meeting their own needs before meeting the needs of others’, even if the ‘others’ are the laundry. The Guilt Gremlins will poke the guilt button, trying to convince us that we are selfish, self-indulgent, dodging our responsibilities when we think about meeting our needs.

I’m going to call bullshit! It is not selfish, self-indulgent or irresponsible to meet our needs, especially those things that fill our bucket.

By working your way through the questions listed above you can expose the Guilt Gremlins for what they are; they are thoughts, not indisputable pronouncements from the universe. Recognizing the validity and benefits of meeting our needs can help calm the gremlins. Understanding the ‘stories’ we tell ourselves about what might happen, or what it says about ourselves can help calm the gremlins. Realizing that what we want to do, and what we ‘should’ do are rarely mutually exclusive; there is room for both. Lastly recognizing our habit of prioritizing everyone and everything above our needs is a habit that does not serve us.

The Guilt Gremlins are hard to defeat, it takes a very conscious effort, but it is possible. Like they always say on the airplane, put your air mask on before helping others. Our bucket fillers are the air mask, they must be a priority!

In my next blog post we are looking at the third most common way that Perfection Paralysis shows-up… The Daisy Chain Effect.

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Behavior Change, Drop the SHOULD, Weight Watchers

What’s the deal with my timeline anyway?

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This meme cracks me up… because I’ve totally said it to myself and it got me thinking about timelines and personal goals. When I decide I want to make a change I want it now and part of that mentality often includes an artificial timeline in which I believe I should be able to accomplish a goal. If I’m not keeping pace with that schedule I’m disappointed, frustrated, and petulant and in the worst case scenario I give up on the goal all together.  I see this same time restriction with some of my clients and on social media, especially when it comes to weight loss.

As a Lifetime Member of Weight Watchers, I’m a frequent user of their Connect community, which is basically Facebook for Weight Watchers members, but a really positive and supportive space where trolls are not welcome. I cannot tell you how many times a day I see a post about being disappointment with the pace of someone’s weight loss or frustrated that they only lost .4 pounds that week.  And I get it. I’ve been there. I know it is crazy frustrating when you feel like you’ve been putting in the work and you are not seeing the results you expect.

While it is totally normal to be disappointed or frustrated the danger of having a strict timeline is you are putting yourself under undue stress over something that is not a linear process. While many would have you believe that weight loss is simply about calories in versus calories out, it is far more complex than that; and holding yourself to a linear timeline for a non-linear process will only end in frustration and disappointment.

I’ve thought about this timeline trap quite a bit, and the phenomenon of quitting a goal when your progress is not fast enough. I think a number of things come into play to create this dynamic.

  • We all want immediate outcome results, forgetting that outcomes goals require behavioral action, and that requires time.
  • We’ve been taught that weight loss is about calories in versus calories out, which sounds like an easily controlled process, when in fact it is far more complex.
  • We are spoon-fed unrealistic expectations in the media from shows like the Biggest Loser to quick fix diets promising that we can lose 10 pounds in ten days winking at us in the checkout line at the grocery story.
  • This mentality speaks to a destination view rather than a journey mindset. Especially in weight management there is no destination, it is a journey and one that changes course throughout your life. Thinking that you’ll be done when you hit your goal weight is setting yourself up for failure.
  • This thinking smacks of the ‘shoulds’, which is just a sneaky way of judging ourselves.
  • We don’t seem to appreciate that the time is going to pass anyway; you might as well continue to focus on making healthy changes in your life, even if it feels like it is taking too long.

The real disconnect is mixing expectations for achieving an outcome goal, like weight loss with the ongoing experience of a behavioral change. There is no end date for behaviors. Make your experience easier and more enjoyable stop imposing some artificial timeline on your journey.

When that little voice pops-up and says “You should be doing this faster.” Please give yourself the gift of pausing and asking “Why?”

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Behavior Change, Drop the SHOULD, Why do I do what I do?, Why use a coach?

What is your boiling frog problem?

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We’ve all heard that if you drop a frog into boiling water it will hop out immediately, but if you put a frog in a pot of water and bring it to a boil, the frog will boil to death. So a boiling frog problem is one that happens gradually over time, creeping, creeping, creeping getting slightly worse every time you turn around.

In my work as a health and wellness coach I help clients with boiling frog problems all the time. The professional working mother, who keeps thinking ‘yes, I should be taking better care of myself, but I don’t have time. I’ll do it when things settle down.’ Things never settle down when you are a professional woman with children. (I know this from personal experience!) The former weekend warrior who looks fondly at pictures of past running races, and wonders when did racing become a thing in my past? The middle manager who is bored at work, but the thought of making a change is too daunting, so he convinces himself that bored and secure is better than the alternative.   To the woman who knows she should go see the dentist, but can’t seem to find the time to make the appointment, until she cracks a tooth.  We notice the boiling frog problem, but the water is so nice and warm it’s easy to minimize it or convince ourselves that we’ll get to it later.  And the temperature keeps rising!

We are all busy. We all have many competing priorities screaming for our attention, energy and time. For many people the easiest place to find a bit more attention, energy and time is to steal it from the things we need to do to take care of ourselves. In doing so we allow what might be an 8 pound weight gain over the last two years to become a 23 pound gain in the next two years.  The time between dental visits expands from 2 years to 5 years, and now we can add embarrassment to our list of reasons why we don’t call and make an appointment.  And the temperature keeps rising!

When people think about changing their boiling frog problem they usually do two things. The first is they ‘should’ themselves. I should do this. I should do that. There a mountain of research into motivation that says ‘should’ should be the new ‘s’ word, because it is really shitty as a motivational technique. The second thing we do is we try to tackle the whole problem at once. Rather than just swimming to the side and looking up, we expect to be able to jump clear of the pot, spring to a lovely stream and have the problem behind us. We are just setting ourselves up for failure when we try and tackle the whole challenge at once. And the temperature keeps rising!

It’s time to hop out of the water before you boil to death.  What is your boiling frog problem? Is it at work? Is it in a relationship? Is it tied to your weight or fitness? Pick one thing where you habitually say, ‘I’ll get to it later’ and ask yourself why might I want to start working on this thing today? What would a change in this boiling frog problem give me, and why is that thing important to me? By connecting to what is valuable to you now is a far better motivational technique, and one that will serve you well as you swim to the side of the pot and reach for the lip.

If you have a boiling frog problem, but it seems too daunting to tackle or you don’t know where to start I would love to have a conversation about how I can help you out of the boiling water.

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