Life Lesson Archives - Page 11 of 11 - Stephanie DelTorchio

Chasing Perfection

Achieving perfection is nearly impossible.

The other day I got a hair-brain idea from Pinterest to make scented candles poured in reclaimed mason jars, embellished with rustic details. All the comments made the process seem monkey easy.

Let’s just say I’m satisfied when the day ends and I haven’t totally burned the house down. Note to friends on my holiday candle list: Expect a nice box of packaged chocolates. Perfect!

Being called a perfectionist (which I am kind of when it comes to bathroom cleaning, not candle making) isn’t about things being perfect in your life. It’s the perception that you’ve got it all together and therefore everything in your life must be perfect, which is rarely true.

A social perfectionist yields to external pressure to get everything just right. We can thank Martha Stewart, Pinterest, and every HGTV and Food Channel show host for making us believe a kitchen renovation or the perfect meal can be completed in thirty minutes, with commercial breaks.

Perfectionists cite past mistakes, criticism and expectations from parents, teachers and supervisors for driving their need to perform better than the next guy or gal. In reality nobody’s perfect.

Self perfection is the breed of perfectionists who set their own bar high. They’re motivated to get it right and not make mistakes. They avoid failure by claiming to give 110% and if that doesn’t get the job done they’ll work until the skin on their fingers chafes and bleeds. It’s a never ending treadmill which if unchecked, leads to burnout, or worse. For a perfectionist, at stake is the dissolution of self-esteem.

Supporters of perfectionists see you as someone to emulate which further keeps you motivated to fulfill their perceptions of you. To a perfectionist “average” is a failure.

This perpetuates a cycle of doing for self satisfaction. Nothing is ever good enough, no matter what physical evidence, achievements and accolades a perfectionist earns, they can always do more, be more. Just ask them.

For the rest of us mere mortals, we are unfairly judged by perfectionists. We can’t (please tell them we don’t want to) compete in their arena. For that we are judged as less than.

If perfectionism is unobtainable, is chasing it a bad thing? Absolutely not. I hope my doctors and tax accountants are perfectionists!

But perfectionism is not a badge of honor if it drives you to the point your physical and mental health suffers. That goes double for the non-perfectionists on your candle list.

BE F-G AWESOME TODAY!

Original graphic: Stephanie DelTorchio
Image: Tony Wallstrom
Lyrics: Leonard Cohen

Thank You, Good Morning

BE F-G AWESOME TODAY!

Original graphic: Stephanie DelTorchio
Image: Unsplash

Be the Helper

Lip service. We’ve all gotten it. It’s when someone tells us the thing we want to hear and never follows through by actually doing the thing they promised. “Sure I’ll help you move on Saturday.” And then they don’t show up.

Maybe their intentions were honorable and something unforeseeable happened. Tough to believe this, but perh

aps their words were meant to appease us, to shut us up for the moment and shoo us away. In either case we’re disappointed because a couch is really hard to carry up three flights of winding stairs!

In the real world, I call this “The Little Shit”; annoyances and aggravations, the stuff that momentarily pisses us off but we’ll get over. Then there’s what I call “The Big Shit”. Trust me on this one, you’ll know the difference.

When life throws a major curve-ball that hits us like a sucker punch to the soul. Everything we know is turned upside down and our life is thrown into a flux. We’re shocked, paralyzed and suddenly alone, living in a bad B movie. We’ve not prepared for this. Who does?

You’d choose to carry 10,000 smelly couches up three flights of winding stairs if doing so would make the big shit go away.

This is when lip service is harmful.

We must choose to seek out comrades for their wisdom and knowledge and guidance. And accept help.

Whether professionals, friends or complete strangers, we need to hear from The Helpers. They’ve crawled around in the trenches, walked the walk and will show us their battle scars, only to prove by standing in your presence, they’ve survived and so will you.

Call them The Helpers, Angels, God-sends, Blessings, Companions, or Supporters. They will show us the way, the path to healing, from experience. No lip service.

They can’t do the hard work for us. But they will be the solid foundation, the resource we go to over and over.

Whether the eventual outcome is what we hope and pray for, or not, is anybody’s guess. But along the way we’ll have learned some valuable lessons on compassion, love, strength, courage, humility and survival.

And then it’s our turn to be present, hold a hand, bring resources; grab the other end of the smelly couch. No lip service. Be the helper.

BE F-G AWESOME TODAY!

Original graphic: Stephanie DelTorchio
Image: Volkan Olmez/Unsplash

Be 100 Percent

If you agree with quotes from famous people like former newsman Sam Donaldson, the great basketball player Larry Bird and actor Will Smith, to name a few, winners give 110 percent.

Which makes the rest of us who only give 100 percent what? Losers? Slackers?

Let’s call us “realistic achievers”– hard workers who give everything they’ve got, 100%, to their professional work, family, sport, passion, recreation, etc.

“But my observation has been, certainly in the news business, you’ve got to give 110 percent.”

SAM DONALDSON, newsman

Is it fair to chastise an Olympic sprint runner who finishes in second place and point to his giving only 100 percent effort as the cause? No. It’s stupid.

To win a Silver Medal or (gasp) Bronze and call the effort less than best, only diminishes the blood, sweat and tears of a highly motivated achiever. After years of body conditioning, elite level training plus personal sacrifices, I’d say anyone who’s made it to the Olympics gave every ounce of their human potential to their performance.

“You never make any of the shots you never take. 87% of the ones you do take, you’ll miss too. I make 110% of my shots.”

LARRY BIRD, Hall of Fame Basketball Player

For argument’s sake let’s call “Give 110%” just a figure of speech. You gave everything, and a little bit more, something extra. But that extra 1 percent, or 10 percent if you insist, is not measurable. It’s a fluff term.

“If you’re not willing to work hard, let someone else do it. I’d rather be with someone who does a horrible job, but gives 110% than with someone who does a good job and gives 60%.”

WILL SMITH, actor

Consider the the story of Langston Coleman who gave 100 percent to his dream of becoming a college football player. A tough, African-American kid from the slums of Washington, D.C., in 1963 Coleman hitchhiked to the University of Nebraska. He “walked-on” at football practice hoping to make the Husker football team. His efforts were rewarded with a scholarship and a position on the squad. Coleman went on to become one of the most legendary recruits for the Nebraska Huskers.

“Luck is what you have left over after you give 100 percent.”

LANGSTON COLEMAN

Saying you give 110 percent is a joke. It’s 100 percent impossible to give more than you have….

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Can we let this silly quote go once and for all? Anyone who demands of their team or employees to give 110 percent most likely flunked math class.

“All I ever wanted really, and continue to want out of this life, is to give 100 percent to whatever I’m doing and to be committed to whatever I’m doing and then let the results speak for themselves.”

JACKIE JOYNER-KERSEE, Olympic Gold, Silver and Bronze Medalist

It’s not a case of winners versus losers, World Champ versus Runner Up. Effort is what matters. Your absolute best is your 100 percent. A totally achievable, noble goal. Go and do that.

BE F-G AWESOME TODAY!

Sources: Langston Coleman
Original graphic: Stephanie DelTorchio

The Secret of Life

Is…As soon as you find the answer let me know, will ya?

The Secret of Life is different for everyone. But it has a common theme. It’s the realization that your life matters; you matter. And you get a lifetime to figure that one out. Here’s a hint:

The secret? It’s the “thing” (or person or place, etc.) that makes you aware that you are a living and breathing human being.

And whatever secret you discover is the key that unlocks your best life. Not mine. Not your partner’s. Not your boss’s. Not your country’s. Not your parent’s (or their ghosts). Meaning you never need to explain it or defend it. Ever.

Here’s the kicker: Time. You don’t know how much you’ve got.

I think some of us have an easier time finding the secret to our life. Maybe you knew at age six you wanted to be a veterinarian. Your Dr. Dolittle office filled with stuffed animals in need of care. During school years you volunteered at the animal shelter. Then on to Vet school and now you are a bonafide animal doctor just like you knew you’d be. Then there’s people like me.

I spent most of my life being scared shit. That I would die without ever understanding the purpose and meaning and “secret” of my life.

I ran here and there, zigged this way and that, went up the hill and over the mountain looking for this elusive secret. Maybe it will never make itself known. Or worse, it does and I miss it! I’m aware of that too.

I’ve wandered around the planet, a deranged potpourri brain trying on a zillion masks to see which one fits best.

Remember that famous Confucius line? “Life is really simple; we insist on making it complicated.” Sometimes we inject unnecessary drama. We overthink.

We try too hard to seek what’s already there — you know all that constipated lip service about counting your blessings, gratitude, blah-blah-blah, etc.

It’s all good, okay? But only if you believe it at your core. It does no good to tack up a poster on your wall because the pictures behind the words are pretty.

Time to discover the secret to your life. Before time is up.

(To me) one of the best takeaway lines on finding The Secret of Life comes from the 1991 movie City Slickers. This isn’t new but it’s worth revisiting…

Here, text from the screenplay, where Jack Palance’s character Curly asks Billy Crystal’s character Mitch the following:

Curly
Do you know what the secret of life is?
(holds up one finger)
This.

Mitch
Your finger?

Curly
One thing. Just one thing. You stick to that
and the rest don’t mean shit.

Mitch
But, what is the “one thing?”

Curly
That’s what you gotta figure out.

BE F-G AWESOME TODAY!

Video source: 1991 Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer Studios Inc.

Nov 24 2015

Walk Across the Bridge

I live in an island town that is attached to the mainland by a bridge. The locals joke about “going over the bridge” as if crossing to the other side leads to some vast foreign abyss. And for some people it might be. They stay, from birth to death, with or without regrets. I don’t know. What is clear is that many people only toy with the idea of trying something new; someday, right?

Whatever the bridge represents to you — new job, begin or end of a relationship, health choice, a new home, etc. –- requires you to face your fear of the unknown. Fear can be paralyzing. Fear keeps us stuck on this side of the bridge. The side where we know every crack in the street and how to side step them. Where the old man sitting on the street corner waves when we drive by because he knows us by name. It’s familiar, and safe.

By staying on this side of the bridge we may never know what else is out there. Maybe it’s better, maybe not.

Don’t buy into the “grass is always greener” nonsense. This is spoken by people afraid to try a different brand of sliced bread.

Any deviation from the same, regular, predictable behavior is blasphemy. I heard this when I dared to move off the island.

You are here to explore and expand beyond your fenced in safe little yard. To not do so is to cheat yourself of what could be.

The challenge is to go over the bridge. Pack up your fears and worries and stomach butterflies and go. Crawl, walk, run or skip over. It doesn’t matter. Just go.

You can always come back over the bridge, but never in the same way.

BE F-G AWESOME TODAY!

Poem and original graphic: Stephanie DelTorchio

The Five Minute Rule of Civility

It takes balls to stand in the same air space as a person you’d rather squeeze the life out of. Still, my mother, a woman with great big balls believed anyone can survive a civil conversation for five minutes.

We’re grown-up big people. We know civility aligns with the rules of law and the Almighty. This is how mature adults (should) behave. Five minutes will ease you through a dreaded receiving line or a chance meeting at the deli. Five minutes is the average time it takes to floss your teeth, take out the trash and phone in a pizza order.

As an alternative to total avoidance, she suggested another, albeit radical approach. Go at it head-on. Be the friendly aggressor. Stick out your sweaty, shaking hand first. Say hello.

This is one of those situations where it sounds better on paper. Retreat in the opposite direction is more my style.

I have a certificate from the Absence/Avoidance Institute.

Despite a near panic attack, I sucked it up at a funeral service when it would have been very easy to give my condolences to the family and slip out the side door.

An older woman, the source of many nightmares, sat a few rows away glaring in my direction, buzzing to the people around her. In my mind they were talking about me. Because ego always shows up first. In the past she’d meddled in my business where her only stake in the outcome, to make waves. Her disloyalty ended a lovely friendship, although honestly, I couldn’t remember the exact details that caused us to not speak for years.

Occasionally our paths crossed. We avoided each other in opposite rope lines at the bank or the same grocery register. Easier to look the other way or recheck the list than attempt civility.

I paid my respects and approached the woman, interrupting her mid-sentence. She looked up and examined my face for a moment, trying to place me, then returned to her conversation — parking suggestions for the next day’s church service. My ego got booted out the door on its ass, where it belonged.

I stood in her air space and held out my sweaty hand. To my surprise she stood up and took it. Her frail, boney handshake drew me into a sweet hug. She still favored Jean Naté. Twenty years had rendered its penance. Her slight frame thinner than I’d remembered, now as fragile as a China doll. I thought a good sneeze might shatter her into a million bits.

She softened even more when I mentioned just having made her One-Bowl-Banana-Bread recipe. That the well-worn, stained card she’d written when I was a new bride is still a family favorite. “I don’t bake anymore, ” she said.

And just like that it was over.

We parted, in less than five minutes, with no daggers or bloodshed or promises to see each other anytime in the future. It was a civil conversation, that’s all. I’d like to think we were both better for it.

My mother’s contention: