For most of my life I've had creatures on each shoulder, whispering conflicting advice in my ears. I can't see them, I can only hear them, so I just assumed that the one who keeps saying things like "If you can't do something right, don't do it at all!" was the good one -- the one with wings. Now, though, I'm beginning to suspect that this advisor is actually the one with horns!
According to the little house fairy that's been hanging about ever since I first visited FLYLADY.net, most of us didn't end up with C.H.A.O.S. (Can't Have Anyone Over Syndrome) because we were lazy. It's actually because we let our perfectionism get in the way. Huh? Well, many of us grew up dealing with someone who was very difficult, if not impossible, to please -- someone who made us do things over and over until we "got it right", or came behind us and redid everything we put our hands to, and to this day, we are terrified of doing something "half-assed" or imperfect, of hearing that voice that says "If you can't do it right..." Know what that voice does? It causes us to procrastinate, sometimes to the point of paralysis. We think that if we cannot do something perfectly, there's no point in trying. Au contraire!
This new little fairy on my shoulder asks things like "Don't know the 'proper' way to mop a floor? Who cares?" She believes even an imperfectly performed task still blesses your home and your family. Sooo, when that little devil with the red dress on tried to convince me that, if I wanted to host a "proper" tea party tomorrow, I needed to serve little sugar cubes, and not just set out my sugar bowl, I told her to "Get real! Next you'll be tellin' me to run out and buy little silver tongs to serve those cubes with. Hey wait, here's an idea! Why don't you just loan me that little pitchfork of yours, and we can use that instead of tongs?" Then I told her that my friends would be much happier being invited to simple, casual, imperfect but frequent gatherings, than they would be if I succumbed to perfectionism, and the tea party became such an ordeal that I put off ever doing it again. "So, why don't you just take a hike?" I continued. "You weren't even invited to this party!" And she did.
P.S. Many thanks to depthperception.blogspot.com for the image above.
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