I know it seems impossible that you could get a gold star without trying to be perfect, yet the true paradox is that you can only achieve excellence when you avoid being a perfectionist. I know right?!? It just doesn’t seem like this works that way. Take a listen to Dr. Natalie as she explains why it is that those of us who like gold stars and have since we were children, struggle as much as we do with perfectionism. She also offers us a tip for continuing to get our gold stars without the corset of trying to be a perfectionist.
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A Remedy to Overwhelm – Connection
So many of us struggled during COVID feeling isolated from one another and unable to reach out to our usual tribe. We know that this resulted in even higher rates of overwhelm than usual. Especially for those of us that are the caregivers, who were taking on even more than usual during this time. Listen to Dr. Natalie’s thoughts on how connection with others can be a remedy to this added overwhelm that we have suffered during COVID.
The “Selfless” Lie
In many ways women have been handed the short end of the stick. One of the most powerful social roles that we have been given is the “selfless” giver. Our very self-worth is tied to how well we give of ourselves to those around us. And this is not just to those who are in our families, or in our friend groups, or who are in our community groups. This also means to be a “human doing” in all we do, to all we meet.
When we decide to set limits and have boundaries, we often will be called “selfish“, “self-centered”, or “bitchy”. As in, “ I can’t believe that mom chose to go on a vacation with her girlfriends and not save that money to go on an extra vacation with her family.“ Or “She really is quite self-centered, deciding that her own exercise class is more important than enrolling her child in another extracurricular.“ Or “She didn’t have to be that bitchy, telling us she has no time for volunteering, while balancing work and personal life.”
This is a very genderized distinction, as we offer much more opportunity to men in American/western culture to be independent, putting themselves first as a means to be more creative and productive for the betterment of society. Not that this role is any easier, as their self-worth gets very tied up in how well they perform. Their paycheck size sometimes equating to their worthiness.
What can happen over time, is that women stop understanding that this “selfless” role is a construct…a definition that has been given to them to define themselves by. It is not itself defining, in actuality, they’re worth. And it sometimes takes women until a major life event happens to start to recognize this. By the time women hit my office, it is usually because of divorce, children moving out of their home and aging, a major shift in their work, or a significant loss in their life. Suddenly, life transition becomes a disruptor large enough to crack open the false nature that this definition of being “selfless” defines them.
Women can no longer keep up, and this may even be the reason for their life transition issue. Once they hit this midlife disruption, women are faced with unlearning a lifetime of defining their worth by the world’s definitions instead of by their own. This is not an easy task. Because it’s not easy, you see women in this situation scrambling to find new meaning, a purpose, and some source for helping them to create this. This might be self-help materials, courses, and books. Maybe it will be a new health and wellness regimen. Maybe they will start to shift into socializing more and trying to align with people that don’t seem taken in by the “selfless“ construct. Yet, by and large this is a very difficult time to navigate and one that needs some assistance.
And here is where I think the sickest part is in this debacle. Women don’t ask for help, because they are supposed to be the “selfless” helpers. They know that they have hit a wall, yet the construct is such a powerful one it is hard for them to admit to themselves or to others that perfection and being “selfless“ isn’t possible. Sometimes they just keep getting up and running hard and fast against this brick wall. Not stopping until they feel overwhelmed and crippled by their efforts, yet defeated by their inability to make those efforts count.
The other discouraging part, from the outside these are the women that we aspire to be. They are the top of their craft, the supermoms, the ultimate volunteers, and basically demonstrate what we think is perfection. On the inside, however, these very same women feel like they’re dying inside. They know that they are not attaining the perfection others see in them and the burden of their imposter syndrome is crippling.
The truth is that the only way out of this spiral is to let go of societal definitions of who we should be. And because this is not an easy task, having assistance and community support from others doing the same is essential. Find communities where women are starting to face this head-on. Redefining “selfless” as high amounts of self-care and putting one’s needs first, in order for you to have the resources to care for those which you choose. Bringing the best of your self to each and every task in your life, because you have “selflessly“ put your needs above those of others. The metaphor of placing a mask on your own face on an airplane before that of another comes to mind.
If any of this resonates with you and you are feeling ready to take that next step up and find that community, please join Learn To Love Your Story. Our purpose here is to help women in just these circumstances navigate their life transitions and come out the other side restored and renewed instead of defeated and depleted. Dr. Natalie has almost 20 years of wisdom and scientific research/clinical application to support the strategies that she will give you. Sign up so that you are first on the list to keep receiving this information and first to know of any opportunities in the future where Learn to Love Your Story is building such a community for you to grow within.
Come to our monthly Master Class for FREE, in an intimate coffee and conversation setting. This is a great place to get some FREE Group Coaching from Dr. Natalie, helping you be the best version of yourself all the time. Please be sure to sign up. Even if you can’t join every month, you will be part of the mailing list to hear about the topics and get the video highlights sent out afterwards, so it is well worth it.
Or, if you are looking for something a little more in depth, take a look at the Online Courses to help your with your personal growth and development.
The Busy Work of “Being Busy”
Is worry really a distraction from bigger problems in your life? Or from the unsolvable problems of your life? The unwinnable games we find ourselves in? Its an interesting line of questioning isn’t it. Dr. Natalie talks in today’s Vlog about just that concept. Is worrying a form of distraction for us? A behavior we use to make ourselves feel productive, when in actuality we are just spinning our tires in the wet sloppy snow and moving nowhere. Watch and see what you think.
Feeling Exhausted? Here Is A Tip…
Pandemics, social distance ending, returning to work, ending the school year, starting the summer…need I list more of the transitions we are all going through right now? We are exhausted and we have reason to be. Yet, there is a hidden exhaustion that comes from the borrowed trouble of worrying about things that haven even happened yet. Is this something you do? If so, take a listen to Dr. Natalie’s Vlog this week and hear her tips on how to address this.
Is Loving Your Story Really the Answer?
Is loving your story really the answer? Yes…it totally is!!! If you look back on your life and want to erase parts of it, or do it over, or just are unhappy with what you see; then you are saying you want to erase parts of yourself and are unhappy with who you are. In order to find joy and contentment in life, you must learn to embrace all aspects of yourself. I promise you this isn’t as hard as you think it is. And we now have hundreds of years of science to help support the methods we use to help people with this. Take a listen to Dr. Natalie on the subject. And watch until the end…she tells you about some FREE STUFF coming your way.
Why Does Story Matter?
Dr. Natalie breaks down in today’s blog why story is such a powerful healing tool. Did you know that story telling was likely the first form of therapy? Really! We sat around a fire and talked to one another, sharing our wisdom, pain, goals, regrets, etc. and felt healed by the experience. We wrote on cave walls to help others see what we had learned illustrated for them. And think about how we teach our kids…story! Take a look at the Vlog to learn more.
Rumble Strips
I know you’re asking, “What is she talking about with rumble strips?” Well, let’s jump right in. You know what a rumble strip is. It’s that strip along the side of the highway that causes your car to shake if you start to go over the line towards the ditch. It’s a guide to help us wake up to our driving, when we have zoned out for some reason. It gets us back on course.
I’m curious what things in your life act like rumble strips for you. What are those patterns of behavior, choices that you start making, feelings in your body that are signals to you that you’re about to go into the ditch of life? Maybe it’s that you’re feeling crabby or tired all the time. Maybe it’s that you’re not enjoying life anymore and feel a loss of enjoyment in the things that used to bring you pleasure. Maybe it’s because you’re feeling so on edge day after day, you fear you will never get yourself out of your restless stressed out state.
Our rumble strips are there. I promise you. We all have them. What we sometimes do not have is an awareness of them. I would encourage you to start to be curious about where rumble strips are showing up in your life. One way to do that is to start to pay attention to the kinds of choices that you’re making.
Are your choices always in alignment with your values? I can say whole heartedly mine are not always. I may make a choice to work late to get something done and I know that’s not in alignment with my value for spending time with my family and relationships. I may choose to eat that 2nd piece of chocolate (okay, okay 10th piece of chocolate) even though it’s not in alignment with my value for physical wellness. Sometimes my choices don’t match up and when more and more of my choices don’t match up with my values, I know I’ve hit a rumble strip.
Does that happen to any of you? Think about it. Where in your life do you see yourself going off course and hitting that rumble strip? What are the signs for you? Where are the choices that you are making not lining up with your underlying values in life? I’d love to hear more about it in the comments below.
Remember, rumble strips are there to wake us up and help us get back on course. No need to be judgmental towards yourself when you catch yourself doing these things, making these choices, falling away from your values. The rumble strip doesn’t judge. It just wants you back on the road.
How To Use Our Grief
It sounds weird, but did you know that your grief is a gift to you? Seriously. And this isn’t the first time I’ve written about this concept. Almost two years ago this idea hit me over the head like a ton of bricks after my son’s 15th birthday, when I wrote this earlier blog. Grief is a gift to us. It is a testament to how important things are in our life, measured by the amount of grief we experience with each new loss. And the grief helps us to keep a tally of what is valuable in our life. We do not grieve as much over the loss of a good series on Netflix as we do about a picture that reveals the aging of our children. And there is a good reason for this. Take a listen to this latest Vlog to hear more.
Good Grief
Good grief! And no, I’m not referring to a Peanuts character. Good grief is a concept that Americans are too unfamiliar with. Instead, we are more familiar with phrases like, “change is hard” or “time goes too fast”. It’s hard sometimes to break out of these constructs.
Here’s the thing though…we are more like a river than a standing body of water. We do not stay in the same place. Instead we move continually, change continually, grow and age continually. All of these natural changes entail some loss, yet they also entail something new to come. Nothing ever really “goes back” and nothing ever really “stays the same”.
I have two beautiful children. My son is 17 and my daughter is 6. I can close my eyes and imagine my daughter as a newborn and my then 11 year son holding his new little sister, who he called “our baby”. This thought can bring tears to my eyes. Tears of joy, tears of love, and yes tears of longing for a time gone by. And this my friends is what I call a “good grief.”
Good grief is a part of the greatness of life. Things keep moving like a river. While we can always go and find that river in the same place, the river itself is ever changing. This is how we work too. Our memories of the times we love the most are always there for us, whenever we want to access them. Yet every time we access these memories, the life we are presently living somehow changes what we see in those memories. Sometimes it is because we are sad that these memories represent that those times are never going to happen again. We long for the days when we were living in those memories. We want so badly to be able to be there again, just one more time.
On the other side of that, we can also feel the wonders of good grieving when the memories we have make us feel hopeful for the wonders yet to come. This happens to me sometimes when I am looking at my son these days. He is living a part of his life that is still a part of my life that I remember quite vividly. I remember 17. I remember it well. Some of my very best friends now, were my very best friends then. Some the lessons I was just embarking on then, are the kinds of lessons that I am using 20 times a day now. So I look at my son and I think, “Oh I can’t wait for him to experience these friendships as lifelong ones” or “Oh baby…I want so much for you to know that this is just a bump in your road…you’ll see that some day.”
Grief is not something to be avoided, yet rather something to expect and cherish as part of life. Good grief especially. It helps us to put life in perspective. To get into the part of us that can stand back and observe our lives as a whole and see that even the hard times and challenging lessons are times that are good FOR us and TO us. Grief is a space for us to recognize the beauty of what was, what is, and what will be.
What’s your good grief? I would love to hear about it in the comments.
Making Peace With Our Mistakes
Do you ever find yourself making the same mistake over and over? It can feel maddening. You know that you are doing it, yet you can’t seem to stop yourself. Do you know why you repeat the same mistakes over and over? Did you know this is a normal part of being human? You aren’t crazy…you are changing. And repeating something over and over usually means there is an underlying story we have been telling ourselves about our lives that no longer serves us, so we need to uncover and change it.
Take a look at Dr. Natalie’s Vlog describing why this happens and how we can make peace with this and work towards changing it.
Matter Over Mind?!?
Actions can change thoughts when we listen to our first language…behavior. We’ve talked about this concept before in Learn To Love Your Story. Behavior is a language and one that the body listens to constantly. Remember how we talked last week…about how divorced we are from our bodies? Well one of the drawbacks of this is that our thinking brains sometimes lose the ability to understand the language of behavior. Yet, our bodies never do. They are constantly attending to this native tongue of our being.
So one of our greatest assets is to harness the power of behavior patterns, because ultimately the body influences the mind to change its patterns of thinking when we change our patterns of behavior. We are able to shift perspectives, without focusing on our thinking at all. Instead we are focused on our actions. How we are showing up in our lives. Chew on that a second…without ever focusing on what you are thinking, or changing what you are thinking, or even replacing your thinking, YOU CAN CHANGE YOUR THINKING. I know right?!?
When it comes to changing our mindset around self-care, this is especially helpful. Remember those pesky social programs and conditioning that I have referred to before…well that can really get in the way of our changing our thinking about self-care. We are trying to shift to the perspective that self-care is a selfless act, rather than buying into the social programming that tells us that it is selfish. Implementing new behavior patterns becomes a great way to circumvent the thinking mind’s blocks with this old programming.
So how do we do this? It doesn’t take much effort really. We have to start by creating daily, weekly, monthly, and yearly rewards for ourselves that we do with religiosity. That means little things you do for yourself daily, slightly bigger things (or things that take more time) weekly, things that need more coordination to pull off for ourselves monthly, and at least once a year doing something really special for ourselves.
Want to know the best part? You never have to earn these things and you give them to yourself anyway. Huh? Right about now you are thinking to yourself, Dr. Marr is not making sense. Why would I ever reward myself for doing nothing? Earning nothing? Moreover, why would I reward myself if I haven’t even finished the “To Do List” I have or met all the needs of those who depend on me? It doesn’t make sense.
My answer for you is simple…it makes sense when your mindset is “Selfish is the New Selfless”. If this is the mindset you are trying to shift to, a behavior pattern change like this can demonstrate this to your body. If every day you are non-contingently rewarding yourself, it will influence and eventually change your old mindset. It will start helping you to see that caring for the YOU that does all the selfless things is the most selfless act you do. Taking care of yourself first means that you have the energy, drive, and compassion to do the selfless things for others that you value so much.
