I ACCEPT WHO I AM WITH GRACE: Journal Guide from Week 3 of REFRESH!

7 min readMar 19, 2022

Rediscovery Course To Regain, Restore, and Reignite Your Life Because There is Life After COVID!

By Debra R. Thomas at livelifered.com

Journal Guide 3: HOW DO YOU UNLEARN UNHEALTHY HABITS LEADING TO “HIGH-RISK PERFECTIONISM”

Part 1: Let’s first address the issue of “high-risk perfectionism.”

Perfectionism becomes unhealthy when you take things to the “extreme.” Find the balance in perfectionism by discovering where your boundaries lie between “healthy perfectionism” and “high-risk perfectionism.” -Debra-

Question: Begin by asking yourself, “at what point does my perfectionism become high-risk?”

Take a look at the different aspects of perfectionism and consider the areas where you might need to set some boundaries for yourself:

Area One: In your ability to feel personal satisfaction:

Healthy Perfection: you can stand back and admire your work; celebrating the victory of your success

High-Risk Perfection: you are never satisfied with your achievements and feel that your work is never enough

Area Two: In your ability to deal with reality:

Healthy Perfection: you can see the big picture to focus on necessary tasks to complete your work; including not getting caught up in minor details

High-Risk Perfection: you ignore sticking to priorities and focus on tiny details that don’t play a significant role in the final product

Area Three: In your goal-setting endeavors:

Healthy Perfection: you feel hopeful, motivated, excited, and joyous about your goals

High-Risk Perfection: you feel burdened by your dreams, fearing that you will need not succeed.

Area Four: In your ability to balance your life:

Healthy Perfection: you can divide your focus between your health, relationships, play, and rest

High-Risk Perfection: you disregard all to complete your perfect work

Area Five: In your ability to initiate tasks (take action):

Healthy Perfection: you begin your jobs with the idea that you can always make improvements as you go

High-Risk Perfection: you struggle with procrastination and keep putting off things waiting for the perfect moment to do something

Area Six: In your view of human error (yours and others)

Healthy Perfection: you embrace your mistakes because they are attached to new learning

High-Risk Perfection: you feel deep remorse over mistakes from the past, and it affects your current mood quite often

Area Seven: In your general outlook toward failure vs. success

Healthy Perfection: if you fail, you know you have not genuinely forgotten because you have learned something new in the process, which will eventually lead you to success

High-Risk Perfection: you cannot accept failure, and you have trouble letting go of it

Part 2: Reprogram yourself to “Be A Healthy Perfectionist” by rewiring your brain to embrace strong health habits

The first step in rewiring your brain to adopt strong health habits is to get rid of the “if I can’t do it all, then I don’t want anything to do with it” mindset

Perfectionists tend to function under disciplined guidelines; some may refer to perfectionists as “black” and “white.”
Removing this stringent mindset is, generally, a big problem amongst perfectionists.
Perfectionists have difficulty embracing the philosophy that no one achieves success smoothly without failure.

Perfectionists have convinced themselves that they can beat the odds to create great work without struggle. They sometimes misunderstand that everything happens step-by-step, not in an all-or-nothing manner as they might believe. Perfectionists don’t realize that the “all-or-nothing” mentality often ends as “nothing.” -Debra-

If perfectionists can learn to change their focus from “perfection” to shooting for high levels of progress, they might feel a stronger sense of accomplishment.
Perfectionists need to prepare and plan for some failures, as it is an important stepping stone to future success.

The second step in rewiring your brain to embrace strong health habits is to stay clear of brain traps.

Decide upon your projects' appropriate depth and breadth before you begin; the mind is a complicated and detail-oriented apparatus.
Make an overall plan you can refer to if you get lost in the details; perfectionists tend to find themselves stuck due to the constant focus on unimportant information and requirements.

Avoid getting “stuck” by taking action despite the overwhelming amount of possible details running through your mind; procrastination is a sign of analysis paralysis. -Debra-

Focus on the crucial details that will carry the most impact on your goal
Don’t try to force and nitpick every little thing that ultimately will not affect the overall final product.

Learn to ask yourself key questions:

Question: What am I trying to accomplish here?

Question: How have other people achieved this task?

Question: Are those people succeeding in this task now?

Question: What did they do to gain success?

Question: Are the successful actions of those people based upon details similar to what I’m spending endless hours completing?

Question: Are they pivotal to the success of my goal?

Question: If not, am I willing to move on to the details in which others have found success?

The third step in rewiring your brain to embrace strong health habits is to use your target goals as guides, not absolutes.

“Guide” means that it provides you with a form of assistance along your path towards your mission; to keep you from losing your way.

“Not absolute” means that you may adjust your target goal as the course of your life requires it.

A target goal is an end to a means. Sometimes target goals expire, and it is time to set a new target goal heading you in a new direction.

It’s time to STOP:

STOP taking your target goals as a representation of your worth.
STOP abusing yourself with negative self-talk when things don’t go well for you.
STOP giving up on your target goals altogether.
STOP falling into depression over the incompletion of a target goal.

It’s time to REALIZE:

REALIZE that there might have been things that cropped up.
REALIZE your approach might have been wrong.
REALIZE what you’re shooting for isn’t compatible with you, and so you need to set a “more compatible” target- goal.
REALIZE your target goals guide; they are not absolute

You are living your life backward if your target goals define you. If they are not working, that does not mean that you are a failure. More often than not, it probably means that you need to rethink your target goals; to realign them with what you want in life.-Debra-

Remember, the ultimate “real” goal in life is to continue on the path to becoming your most fabulous you. Your goals are merely guides to assist you in accomplishing that.

The fourth step in rewiring your brain to embrace strong health habits is to place the highest value upon your relationships.

Reprioritize your life by placing relationships at the top of your list
Schedule in time for relationships, just as you would your projects
Reserve energy for your relationships so that you are alive, attentive, and emotionally invested.
Make room in your budget for fun and enriching events to enjoy together.
Be physically demonstrative in your relationships.
Treat your loved ones as unique individuals who are not required to live by your expectations or perfectionist standards.

These actions will, in turn, help you to:

Regain focus on what matters to you most
Restore inspiration and momentum
Reignite invigoration in your life, which will spill over into all of the other areas of your life; including perfecting your craft

The fifth step in rewiring your brain to embrace strong health habits is learning to celebrate every accomplishment and failure.

Why Celebrate?

Celebration counteracts the natural tendencies of perfectionists to focus on the “negative.”
Celebration helps the perfectionist recognize the great qualities of something.
Celebration offers the perfectionist a brief moment of pause for peace and joy in their progress.
Celebration offers perfectionists satisfaction in their work.
Celebration causes the perfectionist to look for what is good.
Celebration encourages the perfectionist to strive for better.
Celebration acknowledges the perfectionist’s strengths and abilities and helps them harness them better.
Celebration makes life a lot more fun, joyful, and enjoyable.
Celebration instills an abundance mentality.
The celebration goes a long way in building positive well-being, self-love, and emotional happiness.

The sixth step in rewiring your brain to embrace strong health habits is learning to assign some of your duties to others and then allow them the space to complete the task.

Accept that it’s not possible to accomplish all tasks by yourself, especially when you are:

Planning for big projects
Hoping to continue your tradition of high-quality work
Desiring to succeed while maintaining your wellness and balanced relationships

Give up your old paradigm that you must remain a one-person show:

Even though you think it’s easier
Even if you are worried about maintaining the integrity of the vision
Even when you are concerned about possible communication breakdowns

Embrace a new paradigm by realizing that you don’t have to do things alone if you:

Find qualified people

Emphasize vision as you train others

Open your mind to the talent of others

Gain the people skills to build strong relationships with a team

Search for commonalities to build upon amongst your team

Create an organized plan as to how you need assistance

Find people who have expertise in the areas you need help in

Avoid confusion by making your expectations clear and then building from there

Offer your team ample space to learn and grow within your vision

Set up a plan for the team to communicate freely

Allow your team to stand on their own by allowing yourself to let go

The seventh step in rewiring your brain to embrace strong health habits is learning to accept who you are with grace

Accept who you are with grace by:

Exchanging negative self-talk for positive self-talk, especially when the going gets tough.
Exchanging self-blame for self-love and appreciation; giving yourself credit for what you have done
Exchanging self-sacrifice at the moment for self-care for a lifetime
Exchanging focus on goal achievement for focus on life-mission fulfillment.
Exchanging focus on your mistakes for more focus on what you are doing right.

Perfectionists require grace, just as all others in the human race do.-Debra-
It is time that perfectionists allow space for grace in their lives.-Debra-

For more information go to livelifered.com