Tuesday, March 16, 2010

Less Perfectionism

I think I mentioned that I am doing a "Less Perfectionism" workshop at Massey. We meet every Tuesday and we are discussing ways to overcome some of the negative effects of striving to be perfect. While obviously there are some great benefits to striving to do well and setting goals for yourself, some people (such as myself) struggle with balance in this and can take it to the extreme.

We are using a lot of mindfulness/meditation techniques which are fabulous and I have already begun to see positive outcome in my experience. For example, today I took my science quiz online even though I still have until Monday to complete it. My natural instinct would be to study incessantly until Sunday and then take the quiz at the last minute. Instead, knowing that I had already devoted a large amount of time to studying these topics, I decided to just give it a go this morning so I could put it out of my mind and move on to more important things...The result - I got 19 out of 20 questions right! My conclusion - I would have spent another four days of cramming study in with the end result being exactly the same. I could not have done better, and therefore it would have been a huge waste of time.......(the same strategy applied to my Human Development quiz which I also took four days early and got 8.5% - 33 out of 40.) Point proven that this workshop is definitely helping me!!

While I note the positive effect of the workshop, I also acknowledge my continued need for improvement. I obsessed over my essay for almost five hours today before finally deciding that it should be good enough to turn in! ha.....(Okay, so I definitely need work on this area.) It was just hard because I thought I was done with the paper and then the instructor seemed to change his mind a little on what he really wanted our paper to reflect so I sort of had to re-organize the whole thing and it threw me way off....

Anyway, these are just some reflections that I have had today on how this workshop is helping me strengthen my weaknesses. (And hopefully find balance and contentment as I study.) This week I am starting a practice on "Loving Kindness Meditation". I'll let you know how it goes.

My mantra for today is:
"I allow myself to celebrate the positive changes in my life and to embrace the joy of the present moment. " ~ Namaste

1 comment:

Anonymous said...

I've lately been contemplating this very same issue when it comes to school. I spend a significant amount of time doing schoolwork, some of which I consider pointless, for what, a good grade? Lately I've been realizing that it's okay to devote more time to other things, like real experiences, and put school work on the back burner..especially the school work that's not requiring me to really think, but simply tediously memorize information. Sounds like a great workshop!