imperfectionism

At some point I decided to go with the flow of who I am instead of constantly trying to change myself. In keeping with this whole 'radical acceptance' approach, I came up with something called "the three D's" as a way to remember (and 'validate') these amazingly useful life-coping strategies: Denial, distraction and dissociation. As far as I can tell, most people rely pretty heavily on one or more of these D's to get through life, why should I be any different, or be held to some higher, more-holy-than-thou standard? Answer: I shouldn't. I should just get on with the dirty, messy business of life and not worry about it.

I've always had this (mistaken) notion that perfection was actually, somehow, achievable. And have wasted a HUGE percentage of my precious life energy stressing over the ways in which I was continually failing to reach various goals. But now I think I can finally say that I've overcome this particular little mental blip and can blissfully live my life in the haphazard and unpredictable way I was already doing, only, without the GUILT. BIG smile on grasshopper's green, chitinous 'face' here. (If you can imagine such a scary image :-)



I think everybody else on the planet but me already knows about the D's and uses them all the time , without ever stopping to think about it. Somehow I never got the memo - my take-home message from the school of life was that if I didn't get it 'right' the first time, I was somehow shameful and horrible and a bad person and could never show my face in public again

However, I've now recovered (mostly) from my early training, and am well on my way to becoming a full-fledged, blissfully happy imperfectionist.

Serotonin and dopamine and other feel-good brain chemicals, oh my :-)