What if Perfection is not required this holiday season?

Last year, at the start of the holiday season, I asked whether you would be inviting the Twin P’s over for dinner this holiday? It seems that many of us – especially women and caregivers – turn in to control freaks during the holiday season. We become frantic and tend to experience a tremendous sense of overwhelm, because we believe it’s our job to create “the perfect holiday celebration” for our family. What that usually looks like, is we want everything to be perfect – whatever that means? –  we refuse to ask for or accept help from others, and we become control freaks, so we become impossible to be around.

The best example I saw of that recently, was in one of my favourite shows, The Bear. One of the episodes was a flashback to the past. The whole family was together for Thanksgiving, and the mother (matriarch of the family) was preparing Thanksgiving dinner. She was running around in the kitchen like a mad person, and there were messes and spills everywhere. Everyone kept asking if they could help, and she refused help; all the while complaining that she had to do everything herself and that no-one appreciated her. At one point she yelled at her daughter and told her to leave the kitchen, because she was useless and of no help…

So, as you can imagine, by the time it was time to sit down for dinner, the general mood had soured, and some relationships were damaged by all the fighting and screaming. The mom felt resentful, because from her perspective, no-one seemed to appreciate all the effort she had gone through to prepare “the perfect meal”. But was it really perfect? I suppose it depends on what your definition of “perfect” is…

Now, to be fair, this is an extreme example, because the show depicts a dysfunctional family, and my point still remains, how often do we put unreasonable pressure on ourselves to create “the perfect holiday celebration”, only to end up damaging relationships, or hurting ourselves and others? How often do we assume that this is what our family expects of us, and they never asked us to sacrifice our time and energy, or they would have been willing to help if we only asked?

Where does this tendency come from? Why do we do it? My sense is that it is deeply ingrained in our culture. Many cultures cast women as the caregivers and what that tends to mean, is that women are responsible for cooking, cleaning, and tending to everyone’s needs. Over the holidays this is amplified through the expectation that we are supposed to do it all by ourselves. We are supposed to prepare the perfect meal and buy thoughtful gifts for every member of the family. We are supposed to get up early and slave away in the kitchen and prepare elaborate meals and desserts for people to feast on. And we are supposed to do it all while being smartly dressed and with smiles on our faces. We are supposed to love taking care of everyone else.

Without us even realising it, we adopt the beliefs and values of our mothers and grandmothers, and we continue traditions that don’t always serve us or our families. I’m not saying don’t cook a meal for your family or don’t buy gifts for your loved ones. If these things bring you joy and they are your choice, then do them with enthusiasm and disregard everything I say here.

However, if part of why you do all you do over the holidays is because you feel obligated or because you are trying to please others or win approval, then you want to slow that down to consider where that comes from. What has you wanting to please to the point of self-depletion?

 

So often I catch myself sacrificing my own joy, and harmony for the sake of perfection. I strive for completely impossible or unattainable standards of perfection and push myself too hard. And ironically, I also end up resenting those around me for not giving me a hand or for expecting these things from me. When I slow it down, I realise that of course no-one is expecting this of me. I’m placing those expectations on myself.

And even if others do expect me to be the perfect housewife, caregiver, or Christmas festive maker, that doesn’t necessarily mean that I agreed to it. Somehow, it has become this tacit agreement that we hold ourselves to. And yet, when we slow it down, did you ever sign on a dotted line or agreed that you would be solely responsible for creating the magic of Christmas or Hannukah or any other holiday celebration for your family? Did you ever explicitly sign up to be the Holiday Cheer Giver?

What is actually happening here, is that we are operating on expectations instead of agreements. Steve Chandler has a beautiful audio on this that I share with all my clients. Steve explains that we have two choices in life when we relate to other human beings. I can either have expectations of others. Or I can create agreements with others.

Being able to recognise that I have this choice to either have expectations or make clear agreements can be life changing. For most of my clients, learning this distinction for the first time is like waking up from a deep zombie state. It sounds so obvious, and yet, they all ask themselves why they didn’t realise this sooner?

And of course, it also sounds simpler than it is, because once they start putting it into practice, they start bumping up against other people’s expectations and the expectations that are deeply imbedded into our social fabric. They find themselves being confronted with the tacit agreements they have created with their family, friends, and loved ones about the roles they would play. And often when we are no longer willing to participate in the roles we have tacitly agreed to play, this causes upset for others. You are essentially disregarding the social contract.

This is not necessarily a “bad” thing. Getting clarity on agreements, or having clearer boundaries, or inviting others to co-create and carry some of the responsibility for the experiences we all end up having, is a gift. It might be the greatest gift you give someone – the gift of responsibility and choice. When I give myself permission to choose; when I stay in integrity with myself, I also give others in my life permission to do the same.

Steve postulates that expectations are toxic, and they ruin your chances of having sustainable relationships with others. When I build my life on the rocky foundation of expectations, I set myself up to be constantly disappointed by those around me, because the truth is that no-one can read my mind. No-one knows what I expect or what I want, unless I make my expectations clear through a request.

And even when I make a request, the other person is free to choose whether they want to agree to my request or not. They get to say YES or NO. And I need to be ok with either choice. Holding a grudge against the other person for not wanting to agree to my request, is like holding myself hostage to a false reality.

Being on the receiving end of expectations is just as toxic. Think about any situation where you have tried to live up to the expectations of others? All that ends up happening, is you end up feeling resentful towards the very people you are trying to please. There is this experience of not being truly seen, valued, or appreciated.

And if you are the person holding expectations of others, how you experience their efforts, is that they either do what you expected, or they disappoint you. Not understanding that it is unreasonable in the first place to expect anything, places you in the interesting position, where you are unable to appreciate the effort someone else has put into pleasing you or winning your appreciation or approval, because you are taking for granted as fact that they had wanted to please you without checking in with them about whether they really wanted to grant your often unspoken request or not.

I have an annoying pair of twins that tend to ruin most happy occasions or special events for me. I’ve noticed that I love to invite the P Twins to special events or family gatherings. The P Twins are Perfectionism and Pleasing. I strive for perfectionism and put tremendous pressure on myself to get an insane number of things done, all the while thinking these things are important for us to have a meaningful Christmas or New Years. The truth is these things tend to send me into a spiral of stress and I become a monster. No-one wants to be around me when my Perfectionist self is running the show, and I’m miserable too.

And then there is the need to please. The need to earn approval. The need to hear that I did enough or that I am enough. I bend over backwards and sacrifice my own needs to please others in the hope that they will appreciate all the sacrifices I have made, only to be disillusioned by the fact that they didn’t even notice how hard I was trying. This of course leads to resentment. Why does everyone else get to rest and have fun and I have to work so hard?!

So, these twins tend to wreak complete havoc in my life when I invite them to special occasions. The expectations I hold about how the holidays are supposed to unfold, is what has me feeling angry, resentful, disappointed, or disillusioned in the end.

When I choose presence, joy, love, and gratitude over perfection and control, I tend to go in with NO expectations of how things are supposed to unfold. Having no expectations has me be pleasantly surprised at the magic that is there in the moment. And every moment is special, because it’s not pre-planned or pre-anticipated. It simply unfolds as it needs to.

Most of my clients tend to have a set of Saboteurs that show up during the holiday season.  In conversations we have discovered a pair of P and A Twins – i.e., Perfectionism and Achievement – and even a pair of P and C Twins – i.e., Perfectionism and Control. No matter how your Saboteurs choose to partner up over the holidays, my invitation is to consider not having them host the party.

Instead, what if they could just be like that annoying aunt who everyone invites but no-one one spends too much time talking to, simply because her negativity drains your energy. You invite her, because she is family, but she doesn’t get to host the party, because that would just lead to chaos. Instead, you let your Wiser Self host the party, and you allow the annoying aunt to keep things interesting without turning it completely unpleasant.

And what if instead of having expectations this holiday season, you made ONE request of someone – one request for help or one request of something YOU would like – and stay curious to see how it unfolds? Can you have no expectations of another, and open yourself up to be totally surprised by how generous and loving someone else can be…?