behavior change – Julie M Gold

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.)

In this third post about the many manifestations of Perfection Paralysis we are going to look at what I call the ‘Daisy Chain Effect’. In electrical and electronic engineering (stay with me here) a ‘Daisy Chain’ is a wiring scheme in which multiple devices are wired together in sequence or in a ring. At this point you are asking yourself what the hell does this have to do with Perfection Paralysis.

Well I’ll explain why I use this term. The ‘Daisy Chain Effect’ is when an individual wants to do a task, but before they can start that task, they have 10 things that need to happen first. The task they want to do is contingent on the completion of other tasks, and those tasks are usually unpleasant.

For example, I have an amazing client she has lived in her current house for three years. We were exploring why she was not feeling settled in this house and she casually mentioned that she has not hung any pictures or artwork on the walls. So naturally I pursued that comment, because to me hanging pictures makes a house feel more like home. Well it turns out that she was suffering from the ‘Daisy Chain Effect’. Before she could hang any pictures, she needed to paint all the walls, and then the trim would need painting and she has some crown molding in a few rooms that would have to be painted. After she painted the walls she needed to replace the carpet in the hall and two of the rooms, and replacing carpet always dings the trim so that would need to be touched up… the seemingly simple act of hammering a nail into a wall to hang a picture was contingent on several expensive and time consuming tasks. And so, she was stuck.

The ‘Daisy Chain Effect’ can be very challenging to untangle, once we’ve created the chain it is very hard to break it apart to see the individual components. Like the ‘Guilt Gremlins’, when working with a client paralyzed by the ‘Daisy Chain Effect’, I approach it on multiple fronts.

I always start at the task the client wants to accomplish, in this example hanging some pictures on the walls. I start here, because this is where the client’s energy is focused, they have identified it as something that will meet a need. In this example having pictures and artwork on her walls would help my client feel more settled in her home.

Being a coach, I get to ask all sorts exploratory questions, and shine the light of curiosity on a situation. Being outside the situation I can help clients unpick the mental construct that created the ‘Daisy Chain’ in the first place.

Some of the lines of questions I pursue include:

Is this task contingent on the other tasks being completed? Could you hang pictures on the walls before they are painted?

What would be the benefit of doing the task, meeting the need, even before all the other tasks were done? Would it help you feel more settled if you had pictures on the walls, even if the carpet and paint and trim are not updated?

What would it say about you as a person if you did the tasks out of order?

What is the benefit of delaying the task until all the items in the ‘Daisy Chain’ are completed?

Using a scale can also be helpful when breaking the ‘Daisy Chain Effect’. Exploring on a scale of 1 – 10 how important is it to hang the pictures, paint the walls, paint the trim, replace the carpets? Using scales can often help us see where our real priorities lay.

Sometimes tasks are truly contingent on another task, and if that is the case, I’ll work with the client to create an action plan to start working from the beginning. This might include exploring the idea of breaking the project up into multiple smaller projects. Rather than taking on the whole house, could you approach it room by room?

Like the ‘Fear Factor’ and the ‘Guilt Gremlins’ that we explored in the last two blog posts the ‘Daisy Chain Effect’ is a thought it is not a fact.

To break the ‘Daisy Chain’ one must be willing to question their thoughts, explore with curiosity and be open to creating new thoughts about these tasks. In the next blog post I’ll explore what I call the ‘Instagram Fallacy.’

Perfection Paralysis – The Instagram Fallacy

Perfection Paralysis – The Daisy Chain Effect