New Program Day 15: Mastery Experience

I’ve not heard of Kinsey Milhone but I love her already. Who’s the author?

 

Sue Grafton who passed a away last year. She wrote a book for each of the letters of the alphabet but died before she got to Z. If you like mysteries with not too much violence, these are for you! Kinsey has been my best fictional friend for over 30 years.

 

The key for me here is “allow yourself to celebrate the accomplishment”....as a someone who leans towards being a perfectionist task master, it’s usually not a matter of getting myself motivated to do something (and the next thing after that)...it’s allowing myself to celebrate the accomplishments before the fear thought have a chance to get a hold (ie “I could be doing more” “what’s next” etc). It’s hard to get the beneficial emotions and chemicals related to empowerment flowing if you don’t give yourself a chance to recognize your wins. So, that is an area I shall try to build more awareness around! Thank you for this program

 

Ugh! Did you have to use the 2004 Red Sox as an example. As a Cardinal fan (and my wife a Yankee fan), we watched our teams get chewed up and spit out by the Red Sox, as they won 8 games in a row. I can fix it. I'll just replace it with an image of the 2006 and 2011 Cardinals... .

But seriously, Alan's Pain Recovery Program has been extraordinarily helpful. Thank you for this generous gift!!

 

It's been said by many, and it rings true for me, which is the importance of stopping to acknowledge and enjoy the accomplishments. My standard response to achieving something is 'that's nice... what's next?' I've accomplished so much, yet I'm definitely not the happiest of persons. I'm the perfectionist who sees the 1% that could've been done better and this is not helpful when dealing with pain, or trying to recovery and solve pain issues. I've read all the books. Now I'm finally doing the work daily. I'm hopeful. I'm here. I'll try and celebrate that.

 

Yes! It's never too late to start appreciating yourself. You nailed it, about how we perfectionists operate. Stopping to enjoy the accomplishments. I struggle with that too, and it's not loving. Not self-loving. So, right now, I'm going to name some recent accomplishments. * I've walked every day for three weeks or so, now up to almost a mile. * I'm returning all my library items on time. * I finally bought a water-pik. * In this second round of injuries, I have not had even one multi-day flareup. * I appreciate the things I do that are less than admirable (like getting caught in West Wing, all seven seasons) and am laughing at myself about it.

What are your accomplishments?

 

Nice work, Susan! You're a good example of making progress. Thanks for sharing.
For me, over the last 6 months I've finished building and moving into our dream home and made solid progress in a course I'm taking at the local university. Both of those would have been enough work in themselves, to do both was a little too much.

 

Yes, those are very major achievements. I hope you stop now and then and revisit your solution to one of the many thorny problems you faced in building (my husband finished a tricky old-house addition-remodel before he died, and I remember those challenges). And doing coursework too!

The good side of perfectionists: we get a lot done! My answer to neuropathy has been to work on a collection of short stories I’m writing. The bad side: we don’t stop to celebrate.

once I finish the many books I’m reading right now, the next one is The Body Keeps The Score. There’s a lot of score to keep, for us.

 

Thank you for the Red Sox example! As a lifelong Red Sox fan I had been there the year before when they were about to win and they left Pedro Martinez in too long. In 2004 I thought for sure they were done. I remember that stolen base and I watched until David Ortiz hit that home run! One of the best baseball games I've ever seen. I'll remember it forever.