Most of our attempts to become better people, fitter and healthier, more moral/ productive/ organised, and so forth, make this problem worse– because it's basically impossible to pursue any program of personal change without the thought, somewhere in the back of your mind, that successfully completing the change will catapult you into a new and

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One antidote is to allow yourself to imagine what it might feel like to know you'd never fully get on top of your work, never become a really disciplined exerciser or healthy eater, never resolve the personal issue you feel defines your life's troubles. What if I'll always feel behind with my email? What if listening attentively to other people

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Contrary to self-help cliché, the thing we perfectionists need to learn isn't that we're probably going to experience failure. It's that we've already failed, totally and irredeemably.

It’s tempting to label a start as “good” and a stop as “bad.” But really, I’m just trying and learning — and what better time of year to remember that?

None of this is good. None of it is bad. It just is. (This, I need to repeat to myself many times.)