Hi Lovely Simplerista,
Most of us have perfectionistic tendencies. Growing up we learned to feel wrong when we did certain things. That was painful, so we strived to be better, so we wouldn't feel wrong. We strived to be perfect.
As adults, many of us are still driven by this desire to be perfect, to not make any mistakes, to not do anytihng you could be criticized for. It's a mask we learned to put on so we wouldn't feel the pain. Now we've forgotten that it's a mask and not our real selves. It's become a permanent part of us, a subpersonality.
And it can seem like a reasonable, even useful, thing, too. Hey, I'm just trying to do a good job here. I'm just dotting my i's and crossing my t's.
What you may not know about the perfectionist, though, is that the perfectionist in you needs you to keep screwing up, so it can "improve" you and help you become more perfect.
In other words, the perfectionist is the very part of you that will make you screw up, so it won't lose its job. Isn't that beautiful?
That's how it works with any attempt to "improve" yourself through negative self talk. The part of you that insists you must always be nice is the one that'll make you lash out. The part of you that says you must restrain your eating is the part of you that makes sure you screw up so it can give you a hard time about it.
In order to not loose its job as Berator-in-Chief, your berator needs to make sure you keep doing the things it can berate you for, so it feels valuable and useful.
There's only one way out of the cycle: Love.
Love yourself for how you are. Love your perfectionist or whatever part it is, thank her for doing such a great job, and let her know you don't need her anymore. Love yourself no matter how you do. When you so-called "screw up", take a deep breath, and love yourself even more.
New Features in Simplero
We just launched the ability to create online worksheets.
They're beautifully simple online versions of the types of documents that most people include as part of their courses: A simple document with some text and some places for people to fill in their responses.
The online version is much easier to create, and has the added benefit that we can save people's responses for them, so they can come back and read them later, and so you as an admin can see what people are actually doing with them, so you can support your customers better and improve the worksheets over time.
See how it works here.
Nick and I have been spending the week together, and it's been crazy productive and fun. Stay tuned for beautiful things to come.
Random Links from around the Interwebs
The simple solution to traffic.
xkcd temperature timeline.
Someone is learning how to take down the internet.
And... looks like I missed adding the link to the Rollie Eggmaster shitting out an egg last week. Here it is. Bonus link: Same device, but in Danish.
Lots of love,
–Calvin