Choose progress not perfection

High achieving women entrepreneurs take pride in their drive to be perfect.

Oh, how well I know this to be true. I struggled with this one for the better part of my life … and I didn’t like it 😫

Doing a good job isn’t the same as seeking perfection. Seeking perfection can be a curse.

Understanding and implementing the steps bellow can help you avoid perfection and accomplish more 🔥

🤜 Perfection isn’t possible. Nothing has ever been perfect in the literal sense of the world. You might as well go looking for a unicorn.

🤜 Perfection is a waste of time. You’re not allocating your primary resources intelligently if you’re trying to be perfect.

🤜 You get less done. When you try to be perfect, you cut yourself short of enough time to get everything done.

🤜 The need to be perfect is a sign of insecurity. When you believe you aren’t good enough as you are, it’s common to believe that doing everything perfectly will prove that you are capable and adequate.

🤜 The need for perfection leads to procrastination. It can be tough to even take the first step if you believe that the outcome must be perfect.

🤜 Perfection is unhealthy. Perfectionists are more prone to heart disease, anxiety, and mental health issues.

🤜 You can’t work well with others if you need to be perfect. People have little patience for perfectionists. Everyone else wants to get things done and get on with their lives.

🤜 Perfection is an enemy of success. Perfection is the desire to avoid failure. Success often includes failures along the way. Perfection and success aren’t compatible.

🤜 Perfection is rooted in anger. Perfectionists feel contempt for anything less than perfection. This isn’t healthy. It also makes you unpleasant to be around. No one will ever meet your standards and your anger towards them isn’t appreciated.

Perfectionism requires tremendous amount of time and gets in the way of happiness and success. No one wants that, right?

Let’s put our best food forward ladies and let’s make the next part of our journeys smarter rather than harder.

It wasn’t our wedding anniversary

Thank you everyone for wishing John and I ‘Happy Anniversary’ on my last post.  

It wasn’t our wedding anniversary LOL!  

The post was a background story on how we went from break up to a fulfilled relationship…

Starting a new relationship is full of butterflies. 

Re-starting of an old relationship is full of butterflies; a sense of familiarity and at the same time it can feel terrifying as you remember that things didn’t work out the first time around.  

Now imagine re-starting a PTSD relationship where you need to navigate all the mental health aspects of it as well.

Let me tell you it definitely was a journey!

We have done so much work on our relationship because we both believed it was worth it for us and our kids.

We have seen the professionals and received their support.  We have worked on our boundaries, we have worked on our communication skills, we silenced the ‘what if’s’, we dealt with the opinions of others and everything in between.  

However, the single biggest component in our journey of getting back together was – Fixing Ourselves First Before We Could Be a Couple.

This is how I did it:

• Looking Inward

I DECIDED to be happy!  I suspected that what was happening in my marriage and the break up was a reflection of me.  As hard as it was to admit I realized this was happening for me and not to me. 

Knowing that I had to change in order to become a better, more desirable version of myself, I looked for help.  I hired a coach; I started seeing a psychologist, I read every book, listened to every podcast, watched every video, took every course on self-improvement that I could get my hands on.

 As I started applying the new knowledge, little by little my life started shifting.

I started to forgive John and I started to forgive myself. 

I started to look at John with compassion and love.  Even though I wasn’t longing for him or being with him I reminisced about our life together. 

I started to let go of the resentment and stopped the judgement towards John.

• Stepping Out of Victimhood

It would have been so easy for me to solely blame John and his PTSD for the break-up of our marriage and just to move on.  But the key here was to discover my part in it.  

Maybe it was me who ‘attracted’ people who ‘needed fixing’ at the first place?

Maybe I was the enabler of John’s certain behaviours by not respecting my own boundaries for example?

This is where I have done a ton of work on healing my childhood traumas.  I finally understood, how my younger years shaped me to be the co-depended person who relayed emotionally and psychologically on my spouse. 

• Changing-To Be A Person I Would Love To Be With

I started observing the people who I admired. I started to cherry pick the qualities they represented and installing practices for myself to be more like them. 

I literally checked on myself daily on behaviours I demonstrated and if they were in line with the person I would want to be in a relationship with. 

This was the start of the biggest transformation for me.

I then decided that I wanted to share my new knowledge and tools with the world and work with women, so they can create the same results too.

I authored a bestselling book; Bent Not Broken.  Finding your Power, Passion and Purpose.  A Family’s guidebook to Surviving PTSD.

And during all this time John was going through his own metamorphosis. He also has done a ton of work on himself that let him to be the man that I love and admire today. 

Please don’t get me wrong, I am not encouraging anyone to get back with their ex.  I am not encouraging anyone to stay in a toxic or abusive relationship ether. I know that it is very rare for a couple to do what John and I have done and we definitely took the harder way to happiness. 

All I am saying is that if you want to be in a loving, fulfilled relationship with your partner you need to have a loving and fulfilled relationship with yourself first.  

Here is the link to my original post 🙂

https://bentnotbroken620.wordpress.com/2022/01/10/is-it-more-difficult-for-high-achieving-women-executives-to-find-success-in-love/

Is it more difficult for high achieving women executives to find success in love?

Is it more difficult for high achieving women executives to find success in love?

Do they tend to attract partners that aren’t best for them? 

What if they are already in a relationship and their partner is battling a mental health challenge?

Back in 2015 when my 10-year marriage to John failed, I would have never thought that we could be friends again, let alone a couple crazy in love again who builds a second marriage full of respect and gratitude…

That’s right, I married the same man twice lol!

How It Started

It all began in 2001 in South Korea. We fell in love, traveled the world together, got married and became parents to two beautiful children.  John was a military man, a veteran paratrooper who had served Canada honourably.  He was also loving and compassionate and had my heart from the very first day.

However, that was also the first day of living an incredible battle between my head and my heart. John was suffering with PTSD (post-traumatic stress disorder)

As we began living our lives together I learned about feeling deserted while sleeping with a total stranger. I also was to learn and experience many other new disruptions in life as I discovered what it is like to be in a PTSD relationship. 

I learned how to scramble financially and deal with companionship loss. 

I learned how to snatch my kids away from perceived danger and to sleep with a knife, covering all bases. 

I learned the everyday struggle involved in surviving while also raising two small children and running a business. 

I felt extremely alone and developed a lot of shame around not having the ‘picture perfect’ family I always dreamed about.

Fast forward to 2022, John and I will be celebrating our 4^th wedding anniversary (in our 2^nd marriage), loving and respecting each other more than ever and bringing our relationship to new heights. 

So how did we do it, you ask?

If you are interested, please drop the word ‘more’ in the comment section below and I’ll share the work that was needed to be done to get to where we are today. 🙂

20/20 Vision in 2022

Since this is the first week of the new year, I have been asking clients if they set their business and personal goals for 2022 and a better number of them stated that they haven’t. I remember when I was like that too. I didn’t feel the need to set goals, simply as I didn’t want to get disappointed when I didn’t reach them 🥺
I am also a ‘big picture visionary’ and I often struggled with chunking down my goals to translate them to the everyday tasks.

Most successful women however, create a set of goals that they strive to reach, which helps them stay on track as they work toward success. Without setting goals and applying effort to long-term improvement, you won’t get very far even if you do work hard.

This is especially true if you’re trying to balance maintaining a busy household with helping your business for career flourish.
Here are some tips that may be helpful to women entrepreneurs while setting goals for themselves and their business.

🔥Consider Using Visual Aids
You may not think of visual aids like graphs or progress charts when it comes to forming a professional plan. But, these things are more effective motivators than you may think. Looking at a visual representation of the progress you’ve made can make a bigger impact than simply looking at the numbers.
You probably heard of people creating vision boards, yes?

🔥Be Optimistic, But Realistic
It’s important that the goals you set for yourself or your business be things that you can realistically accomplish. If you strive to do something that isn’t possible for you to do (like making a million dollars in the first month of running your business), you’re only setting yourself up for disappointment in the future.
If you can’t imagine yourself possibly achieving a goal, you may want to set your sights lower for the time being. However, it’s also important to challenge yourself with the goals that you create. If you set goals that are too easy to achieve, then it will create the illusion of success without motivating you to do everything that you can.

🔥One Thing at a Time
Motivating yourself to complete a complicated project can be daunting. When you try to deal with every aspect of a problem at once, it’s very easy to become overwhelmed. Try to break each project up into as many smaller parts as you can in order to keep your short-term goals as simple as possible. This will give you something to feel accomplished about at every successful stage of the project, rather than only once everything is finished.

🔥Keep Track of Progress
Once you’ve laid out your goals, you need to stick to the plan in order to make them happen. Make sure that you keep track of what you’re doing in order to achieve your goals and see how much success you’ve had. Take some time each week and month to go over the progress you’ve made and adjust your goals according to your current needs.

🔥Celebrate Victories
Every time you have a win, big or small, celebrate the shit out of it 🥳
Celebrating can contain of a fancy day at the spa or sipping your favorite tea while listening to jazz and looking out the window for 10 min. Celebration and gratitude is the best way to align yourself with success.

You should always be comfortable with the goals you set. The process of setting goals doesn’t need to be an arduous task. Take time to think about what you really want to accomplish this year and go for it.

If you struggle, ask yourself this:
‘What would I regret if it was Dec 31, 2022 and I didn’t change anything about my life or my business? ‘
Like my mentor says: ‘Let your commitment to your mission be stronger than your commitment to your fears’.