If Brene starts a club, I want in.

Perfectionism, frankly, sucks. We who are so afflicted believe that if only we work a little harder, faster, and better we’ll get there (wherever there is), and we always, always, always fall short.

I’m not sure where my need to pursue perfection originated. Maybe it was that whole “middle child” thing. Did I strive to do everything right in order to draw my parents’ attention away from my older and younger sisters? Or perhaps it was just the opposite, an effort to hide from attention. Whatever the reason, my sisters are among those who have found it all rather annoying: “You think you’re so peeerrrrrrfect.”

If only. If perfectionists truly believed they were perfect, they would sleep better.

Perfectionists tend to try to be all things to all people. It’s quite a dance. We can appear to be the ideal employees, friends, and partners…at least for a while. We’ll willingly serve on any committee we’re asked to join, we’ll go to any movie a friend wants to see, and we’ll handle all of the troubles that befall our families. Every now and then, though, there’s a moment of truth. Someone will ask me, “What do YOU want to do?” and he’ll really mean it, and my standard answer, “I don’t know, what do you want to do?” won’t fly. For perfectionists this can be a real problem because, in fact, we may have completely lost touch with what we like, want, or need. (Remember the scene in “Runaway Bride” when Julia Roberts tries to figure out how she likes her eggs cooked?)

Perfectionists can get past this craziness, though. It takes practice, and it’s not easy. My employer, friends, and family may not know quite what to do with this unfamiliar, sometimes unaccommodating, increasingly error-producing person, and they may tell me so. But they, like I, will figure it out.

I write…a lot. I’ve written regularly since I was a teenager. But most of what I’ve written has gone unread by anyone but me. None of it was ever quite ready, none of it was quite perfect enough for anyone else to see.

With an attitude of “good enough,” I can tiptoe out into the world with a blog. It’s a beginning.

Life coach and author Martha Beck recently wrote, “You can strain every fiber of your being trying to be flawless, only to face inevitable failure—or you can stop worrying about perfection, which instantly makes everything feel great” (O, The Oprah Magazine, March 2012).

And who doesn’t want to feel great? Certainly not this budding “good-enoughist.” Bring it on.

Brown, Brene (2010). The gifts of imperfection. Center City, MN: Hazelden.

I have never been an “a.m.” person. A highly choreographed start to the day allowed me to sleep as long as I possibly could and still get to work on time–that is, if the dance was executed flawlessly. Bad hair, spoiled milk, or a coffee spill would spark a frenzy that made me cranky the rest of the day. (Yes, I’m THAT person.)

But I like frenzy even less than mornings, so this year I decided to re-script my morning routine.

These days I get up at 5, an hour earlier than I used to. I acclimated to this new time by practicing with 5:30 for a few weeks.

A shower is followed by breakfast, same as my old schedule, except that I do not simultaneously eat my oatmeal and disappear into my MacBook anymore. In fact, computers don’t enter my day until I get to work. This was a difficult change to make but an important one. “Likes,” “retweets,” and downturns in the stock market are no longer permitted to set the tone for my day. Instead, I take a few moments to review my goals for 2012 and write a paragraph in a notebook (the paper kind) about how I’m progressing. (It’s amazing how much progress I can make on my goals when I look at them regularly.)

Then I spend some quiet, meditative time. It’s usually dark outside when I start and light when I finish. There’s something inspiring—magical—about that, seeing the day ease open.

During the final 20 minutes or so, I read. Words affect me, so I choose my morning books carefully.

When I get to work, I commit at least 5 minutes to a goal before connecting with the Internet. Usually 5 minutes turn into 20 or 30, and I’ve started the day productively and meaningfully. My e-mail notification is off. I get to messages, well, when I get to them.

These morning-maximizing ideas all came from blogs and articles and books, and so far they’re working for me, so I’m sharing them.

I wonder about the weeks ahead: What will it be like to observe morning’s transition from winter to spring? This year I’ll be paying attention.

The potential consequences for their openness are grave: violence toward them and their families, prison, loss of a job and unemployability, threats, constant fear. 

Amid these circumstances, the women display a steady resolve. One especially outspoken maid, Minny, exudes a particularly uncharacteristic calm. Her friend Aibilene reflects: “We done something brave and good here. And Minny, maybe she don’t want a be deprived a any a the things that go along with being brave and good. Even the bad.” 

Expecting and accepting pain and doing the right thing anyway. Courage and integrity.

The Help is a work of fiction, but it reminds us of the bravery that occurred throughout the Civil Rights Movement. Medgar Evers, Rosa Parks, the Freedom Riders, Martin Luther King.

How do we readers of The Help demonstrate courage in our own lives? Do we get to know a person, or do we prejudge? Do we abstain from and confront hurtful jokes? Are we open to acknowledging that our own child might be a bully and do we then accept the responsibility for changing his/her mindset and behavior? Do we publicly advocate for and contribute to a more just and humane community?

Like the maids, Eugenia (Skeeter), the white woman who compiles the maids’ stories, experiences consequences from writing the book, and the process changes her. She reflects:

“Sometimes, when I’m bored, I can’t help but think what my life would be like if I hadn’t written the book. Monday, I would’ve played bridge. And tomorrow night, I’d be going to the League meeting and turning in the newsletter. Then on Friday night, Stuart would take me to dinner and we’d stay out late and I’d be tired when I got up for my tennis game on Saturday. Tired and content and…frustrated.

Because Hilly would’ve called her maid a thief that afternoon, and I would’ve just sat there and listened to it. And Elizabeth would’ve grabbed her child’s arm too hard and I would’ve looked away, like I didn’t see it….And while I’d never lie and tell myself I actually changed the minds of Hilly and Elizabeth, at least I don’t have to pretend that I agree with them anymore.”

A New York Times Bestseller, The Help is a good read.* And it is so much more.

How did this book affect you? What books do you recommend?

*The Help is not without its critics, and their concerns also teach us. The Association of Black Women Historians posted “An Open Statement to the Fans of The Help,” and you can read it here.

Some people have never said that. It’s too embarrassing. Only weak people quit.

I work with college students who won’t quit. They would rather do poorly in all of their classes than drop one. They would rather half-heartedly belong to five organizations than quit four and commit fully to one. Recently a student offered to postpone graduation and take another semester of unnecessary classes rather than disappoint his campus employer by quitting his job and graduating mid-year.

Many people have been taught that quitting is failing.

But quitting, in fact, is sometimes the right thing, the only thing that makes sense. It can mean we are strong enough and smart enough to let go.

Quitting is a good thing when we realize we made a bad choice, when we made a good choice at one time but the situation has changed, or when we have said “yes” to too many things and we are stretched too thin to do any of them well.

Every year I coach a student or two to quit something. When I make it okay for them to quit (and they come to trust that I’m not leading them to their doom), their relief is both emotional and physical–their eyes open fully, their shoulders lift, they crack a smile. Quitting can be freeing.

We need to make it okay to quit, both for others and for ourselves. It’s not always about laziness or weakness. It isn’t necessarily about lacking the ability to commit. It may be about changing course, moving on, re-focusing, taking care of ourselves, consolidating energy and other resources, wanting to make a greater difference.

What does quitting mean to you?

Despite all this, I haven’t felt as passionate about my job as I once did. Our office has accomplished much over the years, and while there’s always more to be done, I have felt blocked and uninspired–on a year-long plateau of sorts. I’m motivated in part by challenge, and parts of my position have become routine.

I never expected to be in this role for a decade and more. My typical employment tenure was about four years. In the past, when I felt ready for new challenges, I left.

Several factors have kept me in my current position. My co-workers are committed, hard-working, and fun. The work is open-ended. Our benefits have been cut, but we still enjoy a package that is better than most. And although job security in this economy is less than certain, I feel relatively safe.

So, what can any of us do when we know we have good jobs but our energy flags?

I’ve found some guidance in Seth Godin’s book Linchpin: Are You Indispensable? He discusses the importance of not just doing work but generating “art.” How can we spend less time on checklists and paper pushing and more time on creating experiences that change lives?

“Perhaps the biggest shift the new economy brings is self-determination,” Godin wrote (p. 195). He’s big on personal choice.

My work, higher education, is at a crossroads–it can either tweak or leap. I can either join those who say “the old way is the best way” and who create barriers to change, or I can jump headlong into the unknown and stick my neck out for something a bit more, well, revolutionary. The latter excites me. This is where I want to be.

I’ve begun to make some choices:

1) To develop some expertise around optimizing technology for learning. There’s so much to know. To start, I registered for a conference.

2) To promote an emphasis on leadership development on our campus, for all students. Everyone–teachers, accountants, dietitians, and social workers–will benefit from learning about creativity, risk taking, group dynamics, influence, and resilience. I’ve made contact with our Dean of Professional Studies for an initial conversation.

3) To facilitate a campus discussion of Godin’s book, Linchpin.

Godin wrote, “Transferring your passion to your job is far easier than finding a job that happens to match your passion” (p. 201).

I think I’ll stick around awhile longer. I have art to create here.

More to come…

I’m seeking big change, a total overhaul (innerhaul?).

And so I’m learning to meditate. It’s hard. I’ve heard it described as simple but not easy. My Status Quo fights it. SQ says to me, “You’re not being productive,” “You’re not concentrating on your worries,” “You’re not moving,” “You’re not in control.”

And I’m learning to be okay with that.

Twice a day I’ve been participating in a guided meditation session. In this video, Jon Kabat-Zinn, founder of the Center for Mindfulness at the University of Massachusetts Medical School, addresses employees at Google. About 20 minutes of the video (23:00 to 47:30) is the meditation practice itself. The rest provides useful context.

Not knowing what to expect, I’ve been pleasantly surprised by how meditation affects my day.

My norm is rushing, walking briskly, thoughts fighting each other for my attention. After a morning meditation, though, everything seems to slow. My senses are heightened but not competing.

In the past, the walk from my car to the office has been a series of quick steps, with my mind turned in on itself. Lately, on that same walk, I’ve heard the whoosh of the wind and geese passing overhead. A truck’s tires left a pattern of green plaid on the lawn. I see a freshly cut tree trunk, rough and raw.

Substituting meditation for Facebook and Twitter in the first hours of my day has improved my attentiveness at work. I’m less apt to attempt to multi-task, more likely to focus fully on a person, a project, or a goal. I feel more tuned in.

As a beginner, my formal meditations aren’t yet carrying me though a full day. The awareness fades. As I improve, though, I expect the awareness to persist. If it wavers, I’ll know how to reconnect at any time.

Meditation isn’t about thinking; it’s about being. It’s easing oneself into full awareness. Stillness. Peace amid turbulence.

I’m excited to see where this practice takes me.

I was spontaneous once. Last June I registered to walk a 10K. Thousands participate in this event. Those who aren’t signed up to run start at the back. When we walkers finally edged over the starting line, I decided to run. Ultimately I ran the entire race. But here’s the thing, I don’t run. Ever. I walk.

Buoyed by the unexpected success of my daring do, I ran 17 miles the next week…and strained a muscle, one of the many that were unprepared for this kind of pavement pounding.

I returned to walking and rested my weary muscles for several weeks. As I recuperated, I reviewed running plans for beginners. I found one and started over–alternating one minute of walking with one minute of running, for a total of 30 minutes. Next came two minutes of running, one minute of walking. This continued until, at long last, I ran the full half hour. It took 10 weeks.

The result of my bold experiment followed by patient planning: I now run 12 to 15 miles a week injury-free (knock on wood).

I received an announcement for a half-marathon in May. I don’t do long races. I signed up. Action!

And I’m following a training plan.

A recent Tweet by leadership consultant Robin Sharma (@_robin_sharma) resonated: “Constant instruction leads to consistent progress.”

Boldness brought me to something new. Learning and thinking will keep me there.

If you remember the 1970s, you’ll also recall “The Waltons,” a long-running TV drama about a rural Virginia family living through the Depression. The show featured John-Boy, an aspiring writer who kept a journal. Inspired, I grabbed a notebook and started documenting my life, such as it was.

My early loopy cursive reveals a middle-class, suburban high school student with privileged preoccupations (friends, clothes, money) and generalized teen angst.

Thirty-five years later, the notebooks of my life fill boxes. I’ve never read them from beginning to end, but I do take a peek, on occasion.

I recently looked back at the pages describing my first year of college. I was reminded that this 18-year-old’s aspirations were to be a wife and mother. Because it was the 1970s, I did include a brief apology to feminists. Really.

Further reading revealed more: I wanted to be a learned family woman. I wrote: “I do want to graduate from college because I think an education is really important. I want to know things. I’d hate to not be able to understand something.”

That same year I made a fateful decision: I applied to work in the residence halls. This launched the course of my career (in higher education) and my education (bachelor’s, master’s, and doctoral degrees).

Also that year I met the man I would marry. Today divorced with no children, I have a life I couldn’t imagine at 18, living single and working every day in a job that I love, facilitating the growth and learning of college students.

In my diary, I have captured decades of thoughts and feelings, people and places, major events and random moments (sometimes in way too much detail).

And recently I started to blog, posting mostly on work-related sites. I’ve toyed with a personal blog. In fact, I’ve started and stopped and started again. I struggle with deciding which parts of me to put out there.

In my notebooks, I’m not bound by rules or conventions. I don’t have to be articulate, funny, insightful, inspiring, or organized. And Times New Roman simply can’t capture my mood (or my age) the way a pen in hand does.

Still I’m interested. I certainly didn’t know as a teen what my diary would mean to me decades later, so I remain open to the prospects of a blog.

I know I’ll keep writing in my John-Boy Walton way. Ask me in 35 years about my blog.

In Progressmakers, Clampitt and DeKoch (2011) suggest that improvement requires two separate but equally important activities: “refining” and “exploring.” They define refining as fine-tuning to optimize a service or product, and exploring as creating bigger, more revolutionary change. While refining is a tweak, exploring is a leap, such as the momentous move from newspapers to news on the Internet, or from the printed Sears catalog to amazon.com. (The authors contend that Sears could have preempted amazon if it had chosen to leap rather than tweak.)

According to Clampitt and DeKoch, “The most fundamental leadership judgment is determining when the organization needs to explore new opportunities and when it needs to improve (or refine) current practices” (p. 6). It seems to me that this statement applies to both business management and personal management.

I’ve worked in the same administrative position for the same university for nearly 10 years. This is the longest I’ve worked at any one place. I enjoy my job responsibilities and colleagues, and I’ve had a lot of time and ample opportunities to “refine” my work. I’ve become a stronger supervisor, leader, and educator.

I could keep fine-tuning in my current position, but it may be time to explore, both for my benefit and the benefit of my current employer, an organization that seems poised for a leap of its own. Where might I go from here? A relatively small jump would be advancing in my field, perhaps to a Dean of Students position. A longer leap would be moving from administration to full-time teaching. Entering an entirely new field outside higher education, such as managing a coffeehouse, writing a novel, or renovating a villa in Tuscany, would be the equivalent of crossing a chasm the size of the Grand Canyon. Is there a new opportunity that might give me a fulfilling stretch and allow me to make an impact (without ending all hope of retirement)?

How does this relate to you? In what ways are you  refining and exploring in your life? Which role feels more comfortable for you? How does your preferred role help and hinder you?

Clampitt, P. G. & DeKoch, R. J. (2011). Transforming Leaders into Progressmakers: Leadership for the 21st Century. Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage.

Among the words my friends have selected are simplicity, ignite, spirit, and possibility. Gentler and kinder than my old resolutions, these words motivate and inspire.

Choosing my word hasn’t been easy. The first one that popped into my head and stuck there was “should-less.” I’m fairly certain this isn’t an actual word, but it gave me direction.

You see, I am a “rule follower.” (Ask anyone.) I attend to the advice of knowledgeable people: my doctor, my supervisor, my parents and sisters, books/magazines, Oprah (you get the drift). As such, I eat oatmeal for breakfast, put aside money for retirement, de-clutter, prioritize, and floss.

Heeding this advice has served me well (mostly).

What I want for my life in 2011 is: Play.

What I’m talking about is leaving work early for a matinee, enjoying a Dairy Queen Blizzard for dinner, taking a road trip without a GPS, singing (even if I don’t know all the words), laughing to tears, cheering with abandon, splurging on occasion.

As my employer prepares for major budget cuts (and I approach a milestone birthday), play will provide balance and perspective.

Now and then, the “to do” list can wait. It’s playtime.