Ray's Daily

Expecting perfection inevitably leads to disappointment.

Kemmy Nola

I sometimes think that we are our own worst enemy. Some of us have been so conditioned to strive for perfection that we are bound to regular self-criticism for our failure to reach unrealistic goals. The most effective people I know, and also the happiest are those who do not get bogged down in an excessive commitment to never making a mistake, they get on with the job and make corrections if needed along the way.

The people who understand that alright really is alright get things done and are happy in the process while the perfectionists struggle to get much accomplished while blaming themselves for their lack of success.

Here are some tips on how you can be more effective and happier with what you accomplish.

Go Easy on Yourself: 4 Tips to Help You Do What Matters in a Self-Kind Way

by Henrik Edberg

Here are 4 tips that helped me to become kinder towards myself, to get more of the most important things done and to feel better about myself and my life.

Remind yourself of the negative effects of this attitude.

To just remind yourself of how damaging being hard on yourself has been is in my experience a very effective way to replace the old habit with going easier on yourself.

Go for more human and smarter standards for yourself.

Movies, books and the people around you may push standards on you that are just pure fantasy or some kind of perfect dream. But life is life, not a fantasy or dream and to set such extremely high standards that no one can live up to just leads to what you may see as failure and disappointment in yourself and in your life.

Instead, relax a bit and accept that everything and everyone has flaws and things don’t always go as planned. Accept that you can still improve things but they will never be perfect. And realize that you won’t be rejected if things or you aren’t perfect. At least not by reasonably well-balanced human beings, like most people actually are in reality.

Focus on the positive and helpful feedback in setbacks.

It is very common to be hard on yourself when you make a mistake or fail. But it is also a very destructive habit because it can magnify one such event into something that makes you feel depressed for weeks or makes you quit altogether. So when you are hard on yourself for a failure or mistake then relax a bit and go a bit easier on yourself. Remind yourself of why this is a much better strategy to keep the motivation and self-esteem up.

And ask yourself:

• What is one thing I can I learn from this situation?
• How can I use what I learn from this to not make the same mistake again and to move forward in a smarter way?

Celebrate your small steps of progress.

If you are in the habit of only celebrating when you reach a big milestone or a perfect moment or two then you may lose your motivation and feel like you are never happy or arriving where you want to be.

So make a habit of celebrating your small daily and weekly successes too.

This will help you to keep the soul-tiring monotony away and help you to stay enthusiastic instead of getting more and more unmotivated until you may even consider quitting halfway to that big milestone.

~~~

Being in control of your life and having realistic expectations about your day-to-day challenges are the keys to stress management, which is perhaps the most important ingredient to living a happy, healthy and rewarding life.

Marilu Henner

~~~

John, went into a convenience store to prepay for gasoline and returned with two plastic bottles of soda.

As he filled the tank, his wife opened a bottle. To her dismay it fizzed and foamed all over her lap.

Several miles down the road, John asked for his soda. Handing it to him, She warned, “Be careful. These are really over-carbonated.”

But when John opened his bottle, it barely hissed.

Eyes on the road, he nonchalantly said, “You must have gotten the one I dropped.”

~~~

A smart husband buys his wife very fine china so she won’t trust him to wash it.

~~~

A vacationer e-mailed a seaside hotel to ask its location. “It’s only a stone’s throw away from the beach,” he was told.

“But how will I recognize it?” asked the man.

The reply was, “It’s the one with all the broken windows.”

~~~

An attitude is contagious.  Is yours worth catching?

~~~

A man approaches a very beautiful woman in a large supermarket and says,

“You know, I’ve lost my wife somewhere in this huge supermarket. Can you stay right here and talk to me for a couple of minutes?”

“Why?” she asks, suspiciously eyeing the guy.

“Because….. every time I talk to a beautiful woman, my wife suddenly appears out of nowhere, and right now I’m tired of looking for her!”

~~~

She told me “I got rid of my husband. The cat was allergic.”

~~~

A golfer asked his friend, “Why are you so late?”

The friend replied, “It’s Sunday.  I had to toss a coin between going to church or playing golf and it took 25 tosses to get it right!”

~~~

Curiosity killed the cat, but for a while I was a suspect.

Steven Wright

~~~

A flight attendant for a major airline, watched one day as a passenger

hopelessly overloaded with bags tried to stuff his belongings in the

overhead bin of the plane. Finally, she informed him that he would have to

check the oversized luggage. “When I fly other airlines,” he said

irritably, “I never have this problem.” She smiled and said, “Sir, when you

fly other airlines, I don’t have this problem either.”

~~~

“Sometimes it is not right to wait for the right train. Take any train instead of rotting at the station! In other words, be realistic!”

Mehmet Murat ildan

~~~

Stay well, do good work, and have fun.

Ray Mitchell

Indianapolis, Indiana

Management is not responsible for duplicates from previous dailies. The editor is somewhat senile.

Ray’s Daily has been sent for more than fifteen years to people who want to start their day on an upbeat. If you have system overload because of our daily clutter, let me know and I will send you the information via mental telepathy. If you have not been getting our daily you can request to be added by e-mailing me at raykiwsp@gmail.com. Back issues are posted at https://raykiwsp.wordpress.com/ currently there are more than 2000 readers from around the world.