Chapter 22

You Are Not a Fixer-Upper

I love that show where a couple takes the worst house in the neighborhood and turns it into the crown jewel. It’s one thing to take down walls of a house. It’s quite another to do that with a person. Here lies the dilemma for those who suffer from perfectionism: By comparing yourself to others, you are inherently saying there’s something wrong with you. If only you could be thinner, faster, stronger, or even smarter, things would be perfect. Those “if only” statements can be dangerous because they push your thinking into the future, taking you out of the present moment.

In reality, you don’t need any fixing up. Thinking of yourself as flawed is flawed thinking. You are perfectly imperfect as your unique self. Yes, you can improve on certain areas of your life, but your thoughts should not be that you are broken. You are whole and wonderful, just the way you are. The one place where you can be separated is in your mind. The world of Zen talks about two brains: the logical thinking brain and the abstract observing brain. The thinking brain is like the toddler who is told not to eat the cookies on the counter. All she can think about is the cookies. So trying to control the thinking brain can be difficult, at best.

Most problems happen when both brains are acting as one. Someone does something you don’t like at work, for example. If both brains are on the same track, your emotions can ramp up enough to lash out at Joe for taking the last bit of coffee or at Carol for taking the last pencil from the cabinet.

What you want to do is separate out your thinking brain from your observing brain. Your observing brain would see that yes, someone is bugging you at work, but instead of thinking Joe took your coffee, say to yourself that you have the feeling that Joe took the last bit of coffee. You have the feeling that Carol took the last pencil from the cabinet. Just rephrasing how you think about things encourages your brain to observe instead of react.

One more way to get you into the observant brain is to pretend your problem is outside of you, like a television show or a movie. You are just watching the characters play out (with or without a laugh track; your choice). Think of what actors you would want to play the people you are thinking about. Then see your problem as a cartoon, perhaps with a SpongeBob or Scooby-Doo voice. This will defuse the situation, make you laugh, and eliminate the highly charged negative emotions connected to those feelings. Observing your life as a sitcom or romcom gives you the opportunity to step back from the problem and see it in a more objective way.

Lastly, laughter really can be the best medicine. I work in the news business, and we have something called “newsroom humor.” It is utterly inappropriate and gross. It’s probably the only way we get through a lot of the tragic stuff we have to talk about every day, but it can be so helpful in processing what is actually happening. Most of it I can’t talk about publicly, but when they were electing a new pope at the Vatican, we had a pool. My engineer, Richard, who is one of the funniest people I know, made a pope hat and smoked his vape pen in the studio in response to the smoke that comes out of the chimney when they have picked a new pope. Then there is the usual death pool, where we pick which famous person is going to kick the bucket next. I know, it’s pretty gross, but if you’ve ever worked in a newsroom (or an emergency room, for that matter), that is how they deal with what life throws them.

If you can laugh at yourself and others in a healthy way, you’ll be able to take the bumps and bruises of life in stride. If I only knew this in high school, when I fretted over everything I said and did. I look back on those times now and wonder why those things mattered so much. I could have used these techniques to defuse a number of situations that I handled poorly. I should have asked myself, would this situation or person matter next month, next year, or in five years?

Probably not.