aelle wrote on the health forums:
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I see around me too often that worrying too much about the minutiae of what we eat is likely to create an unhealthy relationship with food. I believe that a toxic relationship with your food, even if the food itself is perfectly healthy, is more damaging than a good relationship with food that may not always be the best choice on a purely nutritional standpoint. Pleasure, happiness and social interaction are serious contributors to your health, too, and overly strict or obsessive food choices may very well hamper these.
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I don't think I could have said it better, which is why I wanted to quote her lovely French wisdom to start off this post
Perfectionism: stop it.
I think we often get into a narrow-mindedness when we're looking to improve ourselves where we focus on details (the minutiae of an unimportant task, for instance) and miss the big picture (looking for the right market in which to focus your business efforts). If you want to stress yourself, it's perfectly possible to use every last drop of your energy in running in circles, and suffer while you're at it.
Don't WORRY about being imperfect. I find a better perspective is to aim to be highly effective and imperfect. You'll never control every last detail. But if you find out the most important things to do right now to get the results you most care about, you can take it relatively easy, enjoy the work, and get somewhere. Remember the 80/20 (Pareto) principle: look for the 20% of the work you can do right now that will get you 80% of the results. Until you've done that 20%, you don't need to sweat the rest for the moment. And in fact, you may never need to do more than 20%.
I'm working on earning income right now. I have many ideas and I don't want to limit myself much. Yet I found that one idea was consistently working out for me best, so I decided for the moment to focus on that 20% of the effort that was bringing me the results.
I'm working on marketing my blog. There are many things I can do to increase readership, but I finally decided not to sweat it and just aim to comment on three blogs a day minimum.
I'm trying to improve my health. I tried to go raw, but found it too complicated and difficult. I felt like I'd need to do loads of trials and experiments to get it to work. Seeing as health isn't my priority right now, I decided to focus on eating a lot of sprouts, vegetables and as much raw fruit as I feel comfortable eating. Then the energy I've saved by relaxing my diet I've spent on doing half an hour of exercise and 10 minutes of meditation every day. I was getting perfectionist in my health and missing the 20% that would win me the 80% of results. Right now I feel good in my body and clear in my mind: it was definitely more effective.
Remember being busy isn't the same as being EFFECTIVE. Relax, and focus on what you need to do to make things work!
Love and best wishes for your growth,
Andrew
