You Can't F--- It Up!

I remember when COVID first hit (around Spring Break time), many educators were hopeful that this may only be our reality for the remainder of the school year, which at that point was only around 2 months away.

A short time later, towards the beginning of the summer, I saw a post on social media from a fellow educator about how most meetings between educators and school administration sounded something like this:

- We don’t know much.  

- What we do know we can’t really tell you.  

- Everything is going to change.  

- Given the above, please make a plan.

The post was only half-joking (if even that much). I was hearing exactly the same thing in several forums and meetings I was attending, too; and my clients were coming to me with concerns about the seemingly impossible task of making a plan despite it all.

Fast forward 5+ months later and not only are we still trying to figure out #thiscovidlife, but we’re also deep in the throes of back-to-school season. 

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Educators, the reality is you’re in a prickly predicament - there is so little you can control at this time.

And feeling like you can’t control anything is really hard for a perfectionist.

Here’s what I know: Many educators are perfectionists. 

Does any of this sound familiar?

• We obsess about end results.
• We leave ourselves no room for mistakes and we can easily spot mistakes that others miss.
• We procrastinate on putting stuff out there because it only might match that HUGE and detailed vision we have in our heads.
• We’re super hard on ourselves - I’m talking a level of negative self-talk that nearly borders on self-abuse!
• Because we are so attached to end results, it hits us hard when we miss the mark.

Basically, we are controllers!

And here we are: living through a global reinvention, lacking closure from the abrupt end to last school year, and now having officially started the weirdest school year in history without any concrete answers about what we can expect and with no clear path for how to plan for it. 

All of this can really easily open the door for feeling like we are not getting it right, that we are doing it wrong.

Can you resonate with that?

What else do we know about perfectionists? 

• We are passionate, driven, and focused.
• We are detail-oriented and we put our best into everything we do.
• We have high performance standards and focus on excellence.

So in our new reality, void of clear guidelines for excellence, standards, and expectations, how does a perfectionist fit in?  How can a perfectionist make it work? 

If you’re a perfectionist, take a breath because I’m gonna lay something on you…

...YOU GET TO RELAX!

This is your permission slip to take a break!! And I don’t mean check out and go on vacation (although you can do that too!) What I really mean is you get to take it easy on yourself.

Perfectionists never stop. Sure we can procrastinate like hell, but our brains never stop - we never stop thinking, we never stop judging, we never stop criticizing. All the conversations going on inside our heads - it’s like a construction zone in there! That’s exactly why I started meditating. Because the tape was so damn loud, and I was always feeling like I wasn’t doing enough and whatever I was doing, I was doing it wrong.

So, right now, we’re living through this pandemic that has turned our careers completely upside down and left us unable to most of it. But we can still shift out of the “I’m doing it wrong/f-ing it up” mindset, realign ourselves with our ultimate visions, and make our BIG impact this school year.  Here’s what you need to remember:

1. Understand that the only thing we can control is how we respond.
2. Understand that everything is possible IF we believe it is possible.
3. Understand that everything happens as it should (and if you find yourself going through the same situations over and over, its because you haven’t learned the lesson yet!)
4. Understand that everything happens to serve your highest good - and if there is anything on your plate that is NOT serving your highest good, YOU get to choose to remove it!

It’s a short list, but these are all BIG things!  If you’d like to dig into any of these on a more personal level or want some support on living into these concepts to maximize your professional impact and your personal growth, let’s connect!  Schedule a call with me here.