The holiday season can be filled with both internal and external pressures to be perfect. Navigating these pressures can be hard but here’s some perspective as you turn down the racket.
Remember you are not alone. There is an actual name for this constant pressure we find ourselves under. First coined in Duke University’s landmark study by the Women’s Initiative in 2003, the concept of “effortless perfection” has spread since then, powerfully articulating the constant pressure felt by college women to be “smart, accomplished, fit, beautiful and popular,” all without “visible effort. That said, it is not just college women who identify with the term. Effortless perfection is a constant pressure that we feel if we don’t develop defense mechanisms against the messages we receive.
The holidays REALLY ARE overwhelming. The holidays are kinda wired to be wrought with pressure for three different reasons. The first is that there is so much expectation. We want things to be picture book and then our dog eats the Christmas tree, our tween is having a hard time, we buy the wrong thing and don’t realize it until it is time to wrap it 20 minutes before we are giving it. There is also so much going on and so we tend to pack it all in, running from event to event without any time to distill in the experience, recuperate or take care of ourselves. Finally, we are seeing people we haven’t seen in a long time and some old wounds might be exposed or some old ways of being might come up for us. That’s a combination that is ripe for feeling like anything but perfect.
Manage gift expectations. The holidays are a good time to help your kids with their expectations. Just because they want it doesn’t mean you have to get it for them. Ask your kids to rank order their preferences or even ask them to narrow their lists by giving their categories by which to identify gift suggestions. What’s something they need? What’s something they want? What’s something they can wear? What’s something they can read? And what’s something that gives to more than just them? By asking them to put giving into perspective, you help manage their expectations and the pressure that you feel.
Reframe any photo derailments. Cameras are flashing all over your holiday festivities and you just saw a picture of yourself from a party that makes your heart fall. You thought you looked so much better than this picture and now you cannot help but feel embarrassed. First, realize that, sadly, most of us aren’t wired to see the best in ourselves so if you thought you looked good than you most definitely looked good. The picture was just one moment in time and had 10 pictures been taken of that moment, you most definitely would have found some that you were comfortable with or even liked. Either your eyes aren’t being kind now or it wasn’t the best angle at the very moment. Let that picture go knowing that it was literally one second of a whole entire experience and it doesn’t deserve that power.
Quit punishing yourself. You receive an invitation to an event and you’ll see people you haven’t seen since you let your hair go gray, gained a little weight, or something else like that. How do you navigate invitations when you don’t feel great about yourself? We cannot wait our whole lives to do things in a different body because here is what that slides into. We give ourselves permission to go on a cruise when we lose twenty pounds.We either lose the twenty pounds and then give ourselves another goal like—I need ‘better’ skin—because we have bought into this idea that we can punish ourselves into reward or we never go and enjoy life because punishing ourselves into rewards doesn’t work. Punishment or banishment doesn’t work and it is not a way to live. Imagine if one of your children told you that they didn’t want to do something because of the way they looked. You would be devastated and do everything in your power to not allow them to give into that kind of pressure. You have to do everything in your power to not give into that pressure, too.
Remember there is no perfect or imperfect. We all know that perfection is a farce and doesn’t exist but that still doesn’t stop us from doing everything in our power to get as close to perfection as possible. Here’s the other part of the story— if perfect doesn’t exist, it’s opposite cannot exist either. Not only is there no perfect but there is no imperfect. We are each meant to be individual masterpieces, comparable to nothing or no one else. We have to stop the comparisons.
