NLP Being Perfect

So, building on that theme where last week we looked at goal excitement. And what I meant by that is that we set a goal, we get excited about setting it so, we up the ante. We make it bigger and bigger and bigger until it gets so big, we become overwhelmed by what we now need to do, that we end up doing nothing. Let’s have a look at being perfect this week.

There’s a real danger of wanting everything to be perfect. So, what do I mean by that? Well, this perfectionism, this standard we’re holding ourselves up to, seems to have no room for failure. So, what do I mean by that? So, let’s say you’ve started a diet and you’ve been very successful. You’re three weeks into the diet, you’ve kept on eating the food that you agreed to yourself to eat and then one morning you’re feeling tired.

There’s an event on at work and you get offered food there and you gorge yourself on all the free food: the cakes, the cookies, the sandwiches. And you think to yourself, “I’ve failed.” And then for the rest of the day you eat just junk food, you eat huge amounts of food because you slipped up once. It doesn’t even have to be that big. You might be out with a friend and they say, “Can I buy you a coffee? Would you like a cake with that?” And you go, “Oh, okay then.” So, you have just one cake and then you think, “I’ve failed.” And then for the rest of the day you eat everything in sight. And the next day you think, “Well I’ve failed my diet”, and you stop dieting.

You’re crazy being perfect

Sounds crazy, doesn’t it? But that’s what happens. It’s the same if you’re going, “Okay, I will exercise.” I’m going to exercise four times a week and I will do it on a Monday and on a Wednesday and on a Friday and then on a Saturday. And then you miss a day. You think, I’ve blown my routine for the week and you end up doing no exercise that week. What’s going on here? It’s this perfectionism we hold ourselves up to.

Watch out for that. And what I’d recommend is, give yourself a break. Go easy on yourself. And let yourself sometimes fail. We’re human, you don’t need to be perfect. If you have a cake with a friend, you have a cake with a friend. Just get right back on it, no matter how many times you fall off. Get right back to your goal. Let’s be easy on ourselves.

Share your experiences, leave any comments below. Love to hear your stories. We also have the dates out now for the NLP Master Practitioner. So, if you’ve already taken the Practitioner, and you’re looking to take your NLP skills to a whole new level, I suggest you look at our NLP Master Practitioner.

Until next time, have an outrageous week and I look forward to catching up with you soon. Take care, bye.

Book of the Week:

This book brings together for the first time the recollections and thoughts of some of the main protagonists from the very early days of Nlp. In 1971 when Richard Bandler and Frank Pucelik were students at the University of California Santa Cruz, they both had a strong mutual interest in Gestalt Therapy. Frank because of his traumatic time in Vietnam and because he had been working with drug-addicted kids, and Richard because he had been working on transcribing and editing Fritz Perls’ seminal works. They started a local gestalt group and started collaborating and experimenting with the language of therapy. They soon achieved some brilliant results but were having problems transferring their skills to others and so Richard invited one of their professors, John Grinder to add more structure to their theories. In due course, the three of them formalized what is now known as the Meta Model. Nlp, or Meta as it was known then, was born. In this volume, John and Frank and each of the other contributors give their own personal account of this period of collaboration when something magical was happening in northern California. Of particular interest is the role Gregory Bateson played, particularly in bringing John and Richard together with Milton H Erickson. Contributors to this volume include: Robert Dilts, Stephen Gilligan, Judith Delozier, Byron Lewis, Terry McClendon (author of the first history of Nlp, The Wild Days, and others. An extremely insightful and riveting read for anyone interested in Nlp.