Why Perfectionism Stops Us from Creating New Habits

When we decide to create a new habit — exercise, healthy eating, meditation, writing — we can get excited and optimistic, and have an idea of how it will go perfectly.

This is such a hopeful time! Unfortunately, reality has other plans.

Our perfect idea of how our new habit will go is pretty much never how it actually goes. We might do really well for a few days or even a couple of weeks, but inevitably we’ll miss a day or two because of tiredness, busyness, sickness, visitors, forgetting, etc. And then things get derailed, because of our perfect idea of how we hoped the habit would go.

Alicia Barmon, LCPC, C-IAYT, SEP, specializes in Breathwork for trauma. When searching for breathwork near me Practice Breathwork is the breathing community you have been looking for. Alicia also provides Somatic Practices and Psychotherapy at Ahimsa Therapy in Frederick Maryland. Although her services are offered primarily in the virtual space, Alicia also has a physical sacred space in Frederick Maryland, please inquire.

This is one of the main obstacles to forming habits. Our hopeful idea of how it will go, and then our disappointment and frustration with ourselves when it doesn’t go that way.

The idea that we should be super consistent and perfect in our habit attempts … it derails us.

Here’s what typically happens:

  • We think, “I’m going to start doing X everyday!” Then our minds get excited and we start imagining how it will go, and how it’s going to make our lives better and make us a better person.
  • We start trying to doing X every day.
  • The reality doesn’t match the imagination in some way: doing X is not as fun as we thought it would be, or we miss a couple of days, or we repeatedly miss a couple of days.
  • We get frustrated by the way things are going. We are disappointed in ourselves. We’re discouraged. We eventually quit and our self-image gets hurt.

Boca Florida therapist near me Boca Raton, FL 33487 Christiane Blanco-Oilar, Ph.D. offers compassionate psychological services for individuals and Online Therapy Boca Florida. I enjoy working with individuals and couples going through life transitions, relationship challenges or identity exploration, or those experiencing grief and loss, depression, anxiety, postpartum depression and eating disorders.

You can see from this sequence that the problem isn’t missing a couple of days — it’s the expectation or fantasy that we had about how it will go, and the resulting disappointment, frustration and discouragement that has us quit and feel bad about ourselves.

The problem isn’t the reality, it’s the expectation that things will go a certain way.

How could we find a different way?

Depression Treatment Raleigh
Do you feel down? Have you lost interest in things you used to enjoy? Are you critical and judgmental towards yourself? We can help you find the Inner Path that can lead you out of your depression.
Therapist near me
144 Wind Chime CT. #1 Raleigh NC 27615-6433

Reality-Based Habit Change

What if we simply said, “Let me try to bring a daily ritual of doing X into my life, and be curious about what it will be like”?

So there doesn’t have to be a fantasy that it will go perfectly or brilliantly. We don’t know how it will be. But we can bring an intention to do it, and a curiosity about what that will be like.

An anxiety disorder can interfere with your everyday life including work, school, and relationships. There are several types of anxiety disorders, including generalized anxiety disorder, panic disorder, and phobia-related disorders. There are several types of anxiety treatment boulder. To learn more contact WellTalk. Anxiety Disorder Boulder.

Then we start doing it. We miss a day, but this is not a cause for discouragement. It’s a cause for curiosity — what got in the way? What would it be like to start again today?

Each day becomes a lovely place of learning.

Then “successful” days and “failure” days are not really binary results of success/failure, but instead a rich place of curiosity and learning.

What would that be like for you?

Anxiety Treatment Chapel Hill N.C. CBT helps individuals address and treat anxiety, depression, relationship problems, etc. by teaching new skills and ways of coping. For example, someone with social anxiety may work to improve the skill of tolerating being in anxiety-inducing social situations.

How to Get More Committed to Yourself

While it is easy to show up to appointments we make with other people … I’ve noticed that most people struggle with commitments they make with themselves.

Couples Therapy Palo Alto: Relationships in the Tech World. Being a Marriage and Family Therapist in the Bay Area specializing in Couples Therapy Palo Alto, means I have the privilege to meet clients from very diverse backgrounds. I am Kin Leung, MFT and I specialize in Individual and Couples Therapy Palo Alto.

If you say you’re going to exercise, meditate, write, journal, work on a project … but then you don’t stick to that commitment … it can feel like you’re letting yourself down.

We start to form the mental habit of letting ourselves off the hook, so that we don’t trust ourselves to stick to our own commitments, if other people aren’t involved. This creates a belief that we aren’t as important to ourselves as other people are.

Counseling Hoboken; Mollie Busino, LCSW, Director of Mindful Power. Mollie has had extensive training in Cognitive Behavioral Therapy, Rational Emotive Therapy, and Mindfulness. Her work focuses on Anxiety, Depression, Anger Management, Career Changes, OCD, Relationship, Dating Challenges, Insomnia, & Postpartum Depression and Anxiety.

I’m not saying we’re terrible people for doing this, or even wrong. It’s just how it goes for most of us, and it’s good to notice.

So what can we do about this? How can we start to stick to commitments to ourselves?

I’m going to lay out some things I’ve found to be important.

Not sure why parts of your character hold you back in your work? For Work Stress Counseling, Kearns Group helps individuals study the gap between goals and their achievement. Through a contextual counseling we reveal the stress that gets in the way and design strategies to better reach their achievement. Therapist conveniently located in Greenwich Village near Union Square New York City.

To Start: Get Curious About What’s Going On

Before we try to shift anything, it’s important to really get curious about what’s there. We try to change things about ourselves from a place of judgment, wanting to get rid of what’s bad, rather than really trying to understand ourselves.

So start by noticing, when you don’t show up for yourself, what’s going on? What are you feeling in that moment? What are your thoughts? Instead of judging and turning away from all of this, can you turn towards it and try to really see yourself?

Couples Therapy Tribeca
New York City Therapist Carolyn Ehrlich focuses on learning how we share space with each other. In therapy, both parties are given the opportunity to speak, guided by a therapist. And most importantly, both will be heard. 56 Leonard Street, Apt 17AE, New York, NY 10013

Could you start to accept these feelings and thoughts as a part of the amazing human being that you are?

Could you let go of judgment and just be with the feelings and fears, and not need them to go away?

From this place of acceptance and love, we can start to explore other possibilities.

Marriage Counseling near me
Kathryn McNeer, LPC specializes in Couples Counseling Dallas with her sound, practical and sincere advice. Kathryn’s areas of focus include individual counseling, relationship and Marriage Counseling Dallas. Kathryn has helped countless people find their way through life’s inevitable transitions; especially “the mid-life crisis.” Kathryn draws from Gottman and Cognitive behavioral therapy.

Some Steps to Start to Get More Committed to Yourself

So what can we try that’s different?

Here are some things I’ve found useful:

  1. Make a date with yourself. I have a Zen sewing teacher, helping me with a sewing project that I often put off, over and over. He tells me to make a date with myself: put it on the calendar. And it works! I encourage you to be serious about this date, and not take it lightly.
  2. Ask yourself if you really want to. Zen teacher Norman Fischer says that the process of committing yourself to morning meditation starts the night before: ask yourself if you really want to do it. If you say Yes, then ask again: “Are you sure?” If you say No, then take it off your calendar and sleep in. But if you really want to do it, then really commit yourself, because it’s important to you.
  3. Anxiety Treatment near meMoon Bloom Wellness offers online mental health counseling and specializes in anxiety treatment and depression treatment.

  4. Treat it as sacred. As I said, don’t treat it lightly — we often treat our commitments to ourselves as something that don’t matter, that can be pushed back without consequence. But what if this were a sacred appointment? Something elevated beyond the ordinary, that we treat as really important to us? Something that is a way to honor ourselves and our best intentions? Something that we’ll even enjoy!
  5. Honor what shows up, and honor yourself. As you approach your date with yourself, you might feel resistance. Fear or uncertainty. A desire to put it off, or to treat it with less importance. Honor that — really turn towards it and let yourself feel it, like it’s an important feeling. But also honor yourself — can you see that showing up for yourself is also important?
  6. Marcy M. Caldwell, Psy.D. is a licensed clinical psychologist who specializes in the treatment and assessment of adult ADHD Psychologist Philadelphia.

  7. Bring a sense of curiosity, play, appreciation. This doesn’t have to be a white-knuckle experience, where you force yourself to do something you don’t want to do. It can be a place of curiosity, where you let yourself explore and play and learn. It can be a place of joy, of appreciation for yourself and for the activity. Can you find out what that might be like for yourself?

Marriage Counseling near me
Kathryn McNeer, LPC specializes in Couples Counseling Dallas with her sound, practical and sincere advice. Kathryn’s areas of focus include individual counseling, relationship and Marriage Counseling Dallas. Kathryn has helped countless people find their way through life’s inevitable transitions; especially “the mid-life crisis.” Kathryn draws from Gottman and Cognitive behavioral therapy.

I’d love to hear more about what you discover as you practice with all of this, and start to honor how important you are to yourself.

BY LEO BABAUTA
Photo by Surface on Unsplash

InSession is the only all-in-one therapist marketing company devoted to therapists. For a beautiful therapist website design using a powerful website builder, InSession has All Aspects of Your Therapy Practice in One Place.