I have been participating in an online workshop this week that is part of Dr. Amy Boyd’s Write the Damn Dissertation series. I’ll put a link below if you want to check it out. One of the tasks this week was to recognize the thoughts in your head that don’t serve you in your efforts to be the best version of yourself and that keep you from doing the work that brings value and meaning to your life.
I have been challenged to think a lot about perfectionism and what is good and bad about it, how it shows up in my life. I sometimes love and take pride in being a perfectionist. Perfectionism makes for beautifully folded sheets, gleaming antiseptic counter tops, grammatically correct speech and writing, and dinner parties planned to the smallest garnish atop creatively-plated hors d’oeuvres.
There is a downside, however, to this relentless pursuit of Instagram-worthy pictures of jobs well done. Perfectionism in its shadow form stops writing in its tracks. That is a problem when attempting to make progress on big projects–a dissertation, for instance.
I have been trying to write the literature review for my dissertation for the past six months. The section that I am working on, Depth Psychology and Religious Myth, is small–only about 10-12 pages. I have written and rewritten it. Do I organize by topic, concept, author, or book? Should this be the first section of the literature review because it covers the core propositions of depth psychology that are the theoretical basis that grounds my topic? It all sounds so simple when you read the how-to books on writing the review. Turns out it is not that easy, at least for me.
When I get traction on a concept or idea, the mean girl shows up out of nowhere! You might have a mean girl, too. In fact, I’m almost sure you do. She is a diabolical combination of your mother-in-law who thinks you’re not good enough for her son, the queen bee from the popular clique in your high school who could demoralize you with one withering look despite your best efforts to make yourself likable or at least invisible, and the really frustrating teacher who is more concerned with showing you what they know than helping you learn what you need to know. She wants to be right. She wants to maintain control. She is the voice inside your head that provides ongoing critical commentary on everything you are trying to do, especially things that require stretching and growing, going deep–like writing a dissertation…
My inner mean girl is named Lisa R. Now there are lots of Lisas that I love as friends, almost as sisters. This Lisa R. wants to make my life miserable. Doing hard things makes her feel like she is losing control so, if she senses that I am about to do something that challenges the status quo, she tells me to roll over and play dead, or procrastinate, or bake cookies or homemade pretzels, or have a sudden and urgent desire to wipe out all the meat juice that dried in the bottom of my refrigerator over a month ago because someone didn’t take the time to put it on a tray before shoving it in the fridge. She reminds me of all the reasons I will fail. You know them. She screams them in my ear and haunts me in my dreams with her taunts:
You are not smart enough.
You are too old. Who do you think you are to try to earn a doctorate in the small sliver of time you have left between productivity and senility?
You don’t have enough information to write yet.
You have to learn the most up-to-date information management system to organize your notes perfectly before you can possibly start.
You have never finished anything this substantial before.
What you want to write about is too controversial. It will upset the people you love the most and destroy your most cherished relationships.
You are being selfish when you aren’t there to take care of everyone who depends on you. Your kids need you (BTW, The youngest is now 22 and thriving on her own!)
You won’t be able to do anything fun.
Everything you have accomplished before was just a fluke. YOU ARE AN IMPOSTER!
Sound familiar? You probably have a mean girl with a different name and different rants. Is there anyway to make peace with this demon posed as perfect saint who only means well?
Your mean girl, like mine, serves a purpose. Honestly. She is trying to protect you, to keep you from being disappointed in yourself when your efforts are less than successful. She doesn’t want you to roll up into a little ball and eat a pint of Haagen Daz mint chip ice cream while watching depressing romcoms on the Hallmark channel and lamenting that your lover doesn’t sweep you off your feet and certainly doesn’t look like the hunk on the screen. She remembers when you watched the Miss America pageants with a giant bowl of buttered popcorn and a glass of chardonnay in your hand and made catty comments about the contestants and texted your sister about how fat you felt.
Lisa R. has been trained–and you have trained your resident meanie–to put her hackles up when she feels you are stressing because the words to describe complex concepts don’t come easily and you have to rewrite yet again.
The truth is that perfectionism, after the first blush of pride at having done something well, becomes procrastination if the price of perfectionism is having to do the next thing as well or better than the previous effort. Ultimately it becomes failure, and not the good kind of failure. Good failure is when you fall and get up again and again and don’t stop. Bad failure is when you give up before you even try because you know in your heart of hearts that your work will never be perfect. Someone will always be smarter, more talented, prettier, just more. Perfection is the ultimate excuse for not showing up.
Have I mentioned that writing a dissertation is difficult?
A link to Dr. Amy Boyd’s Face Book page can be found here: