On one of our drives, we wanted to hang out with a herd of elephants. While watching them, I noticed they would pull up grass and shake their trunks vigorously. I asked our brilliant guide about this, and he told me they were shaking off the dirt and rocks. Elephants eat over 300 pounds of vegetation daily. For this, they need to be able to chew their food. Dirt and rocks wear down their teeth, and once their teeth wear down, they will die. They are shaking off the dirt to get the necessary nutrients and have a long and healthy life.

Watching the elephants feed was a metaphor for my trip. The terrain itself was visually stunning. I learned a tremendous amount about Tanzania, its history, economics, and different tribes through our guides and the staff at our lodges. I added 100 new birds to my bird list. I saw lions mating, the wildebeest crossing the Mara river, and a hyena stealing a leopard’s kill. It was an incredibly rich experience and fed me in many different ways.

I also had to shake off a lot of dirt, metaphorically and figuratively—much more than I do when I am in my familiar surroundings. We could not drink the water and had to be careful about what and where we ate. We went at the end of the dry season, so the roads in and out of the preserves were dusty. After one of our safari drives, I had dirt everywhere: my clothes, camera, hair, eyes, ears, and nose. Even with precautions, I ended up with traveler’s diarrhea off and on for most of the trip.

The grandeur and newness of Africa were so absorbing; it created effortless mindfulness; I was very much in the present moment, more when I am at home.

Now that I am home, I am incredibly grateful, feeding on the green grass of my life, the clean air and water, familiarity with my daily routines, being near the ones I love, and returning to seeing my clients.

I am also back to the familiar dirt and small rocks of my daily patterns, particularly my perfectionism. Trying to get too much done and my tendency to base my self-worth on how much I accomplish. Instead of grinding down my metaphoric teeth, I am shaking these well-worn habits and patterns off with the tools I use and teach others to use, for example, setting timers when I start a task and taking short breaks in between. Reminding myself that it is the process of how I do things, as opposed to the goal of getting things done.

Like the elephants, I am taking in the nutrients of my life while shaking off the dirt and stones of the things that wear me down. I too want to live a long, healthy —and happy—life.

Last week, reading the entertainment section of the newspaper, I noticed a grass roots band that looked interesting was playing this weekend at the Green Center. Since the pandemic, my husband Doug and I haven’t been to a live music venue and we were overdue, so I asked him to get tickets. It felt like a risky thing to do. Doug can be over-frugal, and I didn’t want to end up in the cheap seats, using my binoculars to see the musicians. But I framed it as an exposure, welcoming the uncertainty of what he’d decide.

As it happened, he surprised me by getting premium seats. He’d stretched himself and let go of a few more bucks than felt comfortable to him. Alas, in life, you don’t always get what you pay for. The view from the seats Doug picked out on the seating chart was partially blocked by the seats in front of us. Both our monkey minds howled in unison. A mistake! We made a mistake!

It took a minute to remember that this was actually a golden opportunity. Here are three ways mistakes are good for us.

1. When we make a mistake, it is an opportunity to practice self-compassion, a chance to choose forgiveness rather than blame. The more compassion we have for our own failings, the more we’ll have for others.
2. With every mistake we have an opportunity to practice accepting loss. While losing can be painful and disappointing, since it’s part of being human, we need to be willing to feel what it brings. That’s the only way we recover from loss.
3. Mistakes are how we learn and grow. When we try something new, or not good at, we’re not going to get it right the first time. We can measure how much we’re growing by the mistakes we make.

Once Doug and I forgave ourselves for our mistake (1) and accepted that we didn’t get the view we hoped for (2), we thoroughly enjoyed the concert. And when another concert comes along, we want to see, we will have learned a little more about picking good seats, as well as how to enjoy ourselves should they turn out to be not what we hoped for (3).

The next time you make a mistake, whether tripping on the stairs, forgetting someone’s name, or something more serious, practice self-compassion and pat yourself on the back. Remind yourself that since we’re all inherently fallible, losses are acceptable. Of course, you could have stayed in bed, and avoided the mistake, but what would you have learned from that? Plan to make some more mistakes tomorrow. You just can’t make enough of them!

Since the pandemic, my gym requires us to reserve a lane in the outdoor pool for ½ hour blocks. This morning I went to get in my reserved lane at 7 AM, and there was a woman in my lane. I waited patiently for her to swim to the edge and told her that I had reserved this lane. She said she was sure that she had reserved this lane.

Now, I knew I was correct; this was the lane and timeslot I always reserve. When she offered to double-check her reservation, I let her do it. This meant she had to get out of the pool dripping wet in the chilly morning air. Meanwhile, I hopped in the pool and started doing my laps. I was surprised when, a few minutes later, she showed up at the edge of the lane and showed me her reservation for this lane at this time!

“Wow, there must have been a glitch in the reservation system,” I said. Fortunately, I was able to share a wider lane with another swimmer. Then, after about five laps, I suddenly remembered that I had changed my normal routine and reserved the lane for 7:30, not 7:00! My monkey mind sounded the alarm, chattering, You were wrong! You made a mistake! You were rude! You are bad! You should be punished! Shock waves of shame pulsed through my body. How could I have been so sure of myself and been so wrong?!

Fortunately, I was able to recognize my perfectionistic monkey mindset at work, thinking that my mistake made me a bad person. What I needed was unconditional acceptance. So, I practiced the three steps I outline in my books.

1. Expansive Mindset: I changed my mindset, from “mistakes make me bad” to “mistakes make me human!”
2. Welcoming Breath: I welcomed rather than resisted the feelings I was having. For the rest of my swim, I breathed in my shame and breathed out forgiveness.
3. Changed Behavior: Instead of hiding or avoiding the young woman, I went up to her in the locker room and told her I had made a mistake and that I was very sorry that I had allowed her to get out of the pool to check her reservation, instead of checking mine. She smiled and said, “We all make mistakes.”

It is a widespread misconception that unconditional self-acceptance means we won’t improve ourselves. The opposite is true. When we acknowledge that mistakes make us human, not bad, we can take responsibility for our actions instead of cringing in shame. When we forgive ourselves rather than punish ourselves, we are cultivating kindness and self-compassion, qualities we are then more likely to extend to others.

Forgiveness Meditation:

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I will be releasing a series of videos with newsletters focused on working out perfectionism. If you would like to receive these topical mailings focused on perfectionism, you can subscribe to this new list by clicking here!

One of my personal traits that I’m not particularly proud of is impatience. Yesterday when I went online to the DMV website to find out why I hadn’t received my car registration renewal in the mail, the web form wouldn’t take the information I entered, and I couldn’t find a number to call or make an appointment.
This shouldn’t be so difficult. ARGGGGH!

I can become impatient with people I love too. When I sent my husband to the store to get some coconut milk and he brought back coconut cream, I got really annoyed at him. He happily turned around and went back to the store, but I didn’t like waiting.
Can’t I trust him to manage a simple task? GRRRRRRRR!

And I can be just as impatient with myself as I can be with the world. When I’m working on a task, I often don’t think I am getting enough done. Even as I am writing this newsletter, I catch myself measuring my progress against an imaginary timeline.
I’ve been working on this for an hour, shouldn’t I be done by now? GROAN!

My impatience, like everyone’s impatience, is characterized by the assumption that things SHOULD be going better, smoother, more efficiently, than they are. It’s a standard of performance we expect that is not being met. Judging everything with this perfectionistic mindset, we contract, causing ourselves and others to suffer. We really shouldn’t be so impatient, should we? Sometimes I get so impatient with my impatience!

The antidote to impatience is hardly more judgments and criticism. What we need is compassion, understanding and acceptance. This meditation is specifically designed to help us stay present with our feelings of impatience. When we welcome, rather than resist this painful emotion, transformation happens.

A 30-day cognitive workout to help you cultivate self-acceptance, resilience, and the “mental muscle” needed to thrive in an imperfect world!

Do you hold yourself—and others—to unrealistically high standards? Are you afraid of making mistakes? Do you live for to-do lists and deadlines, and yearn for flawlessness? You aren’t alone. In our competitive, high-pressure world, it’s natural to strive for excellence. But over time, these perfectionistic tendencies can feed the internal anxious “chatter” known as your “monkey mind.” So, how can you quiet the monkey and stop feeling like you need to be perfect all the time?

In this illustrated guide, psychologist and anxiety expert Jennifer Shannon will show you how to break free from the monkey mindset that drives your perfectionism and set realistic goals; unleash creativity, joy, and productivity; and foster self-compassion and compassion for others. Most importantly, you’ll learn how to give yourself permission to make mistakes and learn from those mistakes, leading to a fuller and more meaningful life.

Our monkey minds are hardwired for survival. They depend on the approval of others and the need to fit in and be accepted by the “tribe.” But monkey minds can also get in the way of reaching our full potential. If you’re ready to welcome imperfection and start taking risks, give this workout a try!

Available on Amazon.com!

I’d seen a lot of procrastinators in my practice, and I’d yet to see one who was genuinely lazy. I had a different guess about Andi.

Going Deep, Uncovering Perfectionism 

I began our session by asking Andi to imagine opening her mailbox and seeing a credit card bill. What feeling came up for her? She said it made her feel anxious. I then asked her what thoughts went with this anxiety. She identified thoughts like, I’ve been spending way too much money, and This bill’s probably overdue and I’ll have late charges.

Thoughts like these would seem to act as motivation for Andi to pay the bill before things got worse. But she wasn’t doing that. There had to be some deeper cognition that was stopping her from paying her bills, which were piling up. I asked her, “If it’s true that you’ve accrued late charges and you’ve been spending too much, what would that mean about you?”

She didn’t hesitate to answer. “It would mean I’m STUPID!”

Feeling stupid, less than others, or not up to a task is painfully crippling. If every time Andi sat down to pay bills, she ran the risk of feeling that way, it’s no wonder she put it off.

“I don’t think you’re lazy,” I told her. “I think you’re a perfectionist.”

Andi looked at me like I was crazy. “No way,” she said, “Perfect people get things done!”

Short-Term Gain, Long-Term Pain

Andi’s misconception about perfectionism is a common one. As I’ve learned from my practice and my professional life, the central tenet of perfectionism is to stick with what you’re great at and avoid altogether the tasks that make you anxious. It’s a great short-term strategy. So long as Andi was distracted by social media, cooking, or doing anything that was fun or easy for her, she was not worrying about her bills. But in the long run, Andi’s procrastination was making her feel worse about herself and interfering with solving her budgeting problem. It was clearly a failed strategy.

As a cognitive behavioral therapist, I approach problems like procrastination as more than a behavior problem; it’s a thoughts and feelings problem too. Once my clients connect the dots, they are ready to imagine a new picture for themselves.

Three Strategic Steps

The first strategic change I asked Andi to make was in her thinking. Her present perfectionistic assumption—that overspending and paying bills late meant she was stupid—needed an upgrade to something more realistic. After all, lots of people have difficulty in this area. A non-perfectionistic mindset—or what I call an expansive mindset—is, If I spend too much and have late charges, it means I am human. When we view or shortcomings as part of our fallible human nature, we decrease our sense of shame and are better able to take effective action to address a problem.

The second change of strategy was regarding Andi’s behavior. Every time she tried to sit down to pay her bills, she felt overwhelmed. Rather than expecting herself to settle all her overdue bills in one big session, I suggested she break them down into manageable pieces. When we limit ourselves to a short time frame, after which we will stop even if we haven’t finished, we are way more likely to begin the task. To practice, I had Andi set the timer for ten minutes and start to pay her bills, right in session.

Thinking and behaving in any new way is bound to cause feelings of discomfort, and facing up to her unpaid bills, without getting rid of them was painful for Andi; she felt ashamed. In response, I asked Andi to employ a third strategic change: to pat herself on her back and repeat her expansive mindset out loud. She felt silly, but I reminded her that what is really silly is berating ourselves. When we do something that is hard, we need to be encouraged. With self-compassion, we can get so much more done!

Less Than Perfect, More Productive

Andi wasn’t a lazy person, and she wasn’t stupid either. But like so many other perfectionists, she had fallen into the trap of seeing herself that way. These harsh self-judgments won’t die easily, but with practice, anyone, including you, can beat procrastination with these three strategic steps:

1. Change Your Mindset from perfectionist to expansive
2. Break Tasks Down into manageable pieces
3. Give Yourself Praise instead of punishment

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This article first appeared on the Blog @ NewHarbinger.com

When I read this headline on the front page of the Press Democrat this morning, I assumed that it was a mental health crisis line to deal with the increased depression and anxiety that many of us experience around the holidays. I was mistaken. Or was I?

In fact, the hotline in the article was dedicated to holiday anxiety and depression—in nervous cooks! One newlywed phoned in from a closet, “paralyzed by fear” because she did not want her mother in law to know she did not know how to cook a turkey.

The reason we get more anxious, stressed and worried around the holidays is we have been hijacked by our limbic system, which slams us with fight-or-flight neurochemicals whenever the possibility of being judged or criticized arises. It’s the monkey mind’s call to action: Woo-woo-woo! No mistakes! So we try to cook the perfect meal, create a sparkling clean house, get all our gift shopping done, then finally we can relax and enjoy the holidays. Nothing could be farther from the truth. What this does is feed the monkey, guaranteeing that next year will be as stressful as this one.

But you can break free. It’s not too late! Here’s what to do at the first sign of holiday trouble.

Jennifer’s Holiday Hot Tips

1. Identify the values you most want to cultivate this holiday season. Circle the ones that are important to you.

FUN         CONNECTION         SPIRITUALITY         LOVE         COMPASSION

2. Redirect yourself to a more expansive mindset, one that supports your true values. Circle the statements that you would like to believe more.

If things do not go exactly as planned, I can practice flexibility.

My self-worth is not tied to a perfect outcome.

Allowing for mistakes makes me human and vulnerable, which fosters true connection with others.

It is more important to live this holiday season fully in the present moment, than to succeed at making things “just right”.

3. When you feel yourself getting stressed and anxious, stop and take ten deep breaths.
4. Now think about something that you can take off your holiday plate right now!

Examples: Limit gift buying time; get a prepared meal or take out; delegate holiday tasks and let others do things differently than you would; don’t clean the whole house.

The Turkey Trouble Hotline in the newspaper article provides nonjudgmental, solution-focused therapy for cooks in trouble. My Holiday Hot Tips does the same for the rest of us. This holiday season, give yourself the gift of self-compassion and do less, not more. This is how we cultivate those values that are most important to us, not just during the holidays, but any time of the year.

It was 11:30 am and I was halfway through my list of to-do’s. But when I saw what was next on the list, a Quicken session— I was three months behind— I hesitated. My impulse was I have to get this done! But while I like getting things done, I also want to cultivate more creativity, vibrancy and pleasure in my life. So, I decided to postpone balancing my budget, and to indulge myself with a fun project instead. I decided to learn how to fold a fitted sheet.

I know this sounds a little crazy but I’m one of those people who actually love doing laundry. The smell of the clean clothes, the heat taking them out of the dryer and folding them all feels very satisfying to me, as does the accomplishment of getting a little task done. But I am 59 years old, and I have never learned how to fold a fitted sheet. I was pretty sure there would be a lot of instructional videos on YouTube that would teach me the art of folding a fitted sheet. I was right!

I found a two-minute video that promised to teach me in four simple steps. I felt my excitement rising. It was posted by a woman about my age and I thought I could definitely learn from her. But thirty seconds in, I was floundering. She said to hold the two corners of the sheet length-wise with the right side facing me. Then she said to take the long end and fold the right corner over the left, then go down the width of the sheet and fold the third corner into the two corners already folded. What??? And damn, she really moves fast for a lady my age! I watched the video eight times, and still did not get it.

Arggggh! So, I found another video with the same simple promise. I watched it six times and I still could not do it. I tried a third video. Still baffled. So, I returned to the first one again. But I was still mystified and my frustration was building. I had thought this fun project would take thirty minutes tops and then I would have lunch. But I was too stubborn to quit.

Finally, after an hour I was actually able to do it. I wasn’t sure how I got there but I was holding in my trembling hands a pretty near perfect folded freaking fitted sheet! Exhausted and irritable, I went downstairs and had lunch. As my headache resided and my blood sugar returned to normal, I wondered, how did I manage to turn something that was supposed to be fun into such a stressful experience?

I retraced my steps. (No, I don’t mean the steps to fold a fitted sheet. I probably wouldn’t be able to replicate those!) How did I approach the task? I had an end goal in mind, that beautifully folded sheet. I assumed it would go smoothly and only take me 30 minutes and that it would be fun. I doggedly persisted, ignoring my hunger and frustration. Hmmmm. All of this sounded familiar to me. This is how I approach much of life, and it is this approach that causes me stress and gets in the way of what I am really after—creativity, vibrancy and pleasure.

After this reflection and having my lunch, I decided to approach the task that I had been avoiding, reviewing my finances on Quicken and paying bills. I made a plan, instead of focusing on the end point—getting it done—I would limit myself to 30 minutes. Whenever I encountered frustration, I would see this as part of the process and I would breath into the feeling, making room for it.

I sat down and set the timer for 30 minutes. I opened Quicken and when I tried to upload my bank accounts, the password wouldn’t work. My chest tightened and my breathing became shallow. Good, I said to myself, this is an opportunity to practice welcoming negative emotions. After ten minutes of trouble shooting, I got access to my account. When my timer went off, I had only balanced one month of the three months I was behind. I was sorely tempted to keep going, but I stuck with my plan. After I shut down my computer I patted myself on the back for approaching the task differently. I noticed feeling more relaxed.

It is my intention to break myself of the habit of prioritizing completion of every task. My life is about more than getting from point A to point B. The ultimate point B is death, where we all end up. I want to enjoy the process, whether or not I ever figure out how to fold a freaking fitted sheet again!

Do you, or someone you know, have trouble making decisions?  It could be as small as deciding what to wear in the morning, or big, like whether to buy a house or continue to rent.  You may spend countless hours going through pros and cons in your mind, asking others for advice, or simply putting off thinking about it.

Difficulty making decisions is associated with two of the three Monkey Mindsets, intolerance of uncertainty, (thinking you need to be 100% certain of your decision), and perfectionism, (the belief that making the wrong decision would be catastrophic).  Both of these mindsets are impossible standards to meet and create unnecessary agony, anxiety and avoidance when making decisions. 

By contrast, those who have an easy time deciding can tolerate the uncertainty and are comfortable with less-than-perfect outcomes. You can learn to do this. Here are three simple steps to follow when you are stuck with a difficult decision.

• Make a pros and cons list on a piece of paper and set a timer for 5-15 minutes. By using a timer, you are restricting the endless looping of pros and cons that you have likely been doing in your head.
• When the timer goes off, set it again for five minutes, the maximum amount of time you have to make the decision. Spending more than five minutes means you are falling back into the trap of attempting to be certain that you are making the right decision.
• If you have not made a decision when the 5-minute timer goes off, flip a coin. Yes, I am 100% serious! Flip a coin and whatever it says, stick with this as your decision.  Maybe it sounds crazy to do this, but it is not as crazy as avoiding making a decision because you are operating out of two flawed monkey mindsets.

Once your decision is made, you are no longer stuck, and you can move forward. If your decision brings the results you hoped for, good. If the decision did not work out, also good!  You’ll have an opportunity to practice coping with the outcome. Flexibility and resilience are two of the most important commodities in life!