Want to be successful? Stop trying to be perfect.

We might understand that perfectionism does not make us happy, but we may still believe that it will make us successful. After all, we have all heard phrases like “No pain, no gain,” or “What doesn’t kill you makes you stronger.” It often seems like we have to go to extremes in order to become successful.

I certainly used to believe so and 10 years ago, I threw myself into my career, working long hours without breaks and sacrificing my personal life in the process. And while it did not bring me a lot of happiness, I was hoping that it would bring me success. If I suffered now, it would be worthwhile if I could be happy later, right?

The problem is that while perfectionism may propel us to perform some great feats (and there are certainly perfectionists who are successful), it is actually limiting.  In “The Pursuit of Perfect”, Tal Ben-Shahar provides 4 reasons while perfectionism can keep us from success.

1.    In order to learn and grow, we must fail. There are examples throughout history, including Thomas Edison and Abraham Lincoln, who have shown this to be true. However, perfectionists want to look good and appear flawless. So making mistakes and failing do not become an option, keeping them from reaching their full potential.

2.    Research in peak performance has shown that we perform best when we feel moderate excitement. But because perfectionists are so resistant to failure, they are often paralyzed by an intense fear and anxiety, which does not allow them to perform at their best.

3.    It takes many years of work to become an expert at something and then more effort to sustain success. It is very difficult for Perfectionists to sustain this kind of effort, because they are focused on the result (the destination) and are unable to enjoy the journey. Because they do not feel happy during the long journey, they often get overwhelmed by the strain and sacrifice of sustaining the effort, and are more likely to give up.

4.    Finally, the perfectionist has an all-or-nothing approach – if it’s not done perfectly, it is not worth doing.  This can lead to procrastination or paralysis, thinking “If I don’t try, I can’t fail.”  The result is a very inefficient use of time, and progress becomes much slower or is halted altogether.

Do any of these seem familiar to you? I recognize all of these symptoms, having lived through them myself. Learning to fail and make mistakes is something I have been practicing over the years, and it’s still something that’s not easy. I still notice when I am afraid to try something new or reach out, not wanting to get rejected.  But now I can choose to take some risks that I weren’t able to tolerate before. I still feel fear and anxiety in certain situations, but it is much less than before, since I am much more accepting of failure and mistakes. I am very familiar with procrastination as well, but telling myself that it doesn’t have to be perfect helps. And while I certainly burned out before in my corporate career with such an intense focus on the destination, I am now really focused on enjoying my daily journey in my coaching business, so I don’t fall into the same trap.

So while success does take some work, it does not mean sacrificing joy and happiness on the way there. If we are just willing to stop trying to be so perfect and accept detours and setbacks as natural, we can enjoy the journey as well as increase our chances of success. Let’s embrace imperfection! 

Manuela loves helping others bring more happiness into their lives!  Check out her upcoming 5-week “Secrets to Happiness” Workshop!

Is Trying To Live a Perfect Life Keeping You From Living a Happy Life?

“I am not really trying to live a perfect life,” you might say. “I don’t have to be a multi-millionaire or an award-winning actress or live on my own island.”  So maybe you are not an extreme perfectionist, but you may be surprised to learn that perfectionism comes in many flavors. Check the questions below, inspired by Tal Ben-Shahar's book "The Pursuit of Perfect", to see if you are actually pursuing a “perfect” life, rather than a “happy” life.

1.       Do you believe that your path toward a goal should be direct, smooth and free of obstacles and get frustrated when it isn’t?

2.       Do you believe that a happy life is composed of a stream of positive emotions and don’t want to experience anger, disappointment, sadness or fear?

3.       Do you always strive toward the next goal, but no matter what you have achieved, it doesn’t seem to be enough and you don’t feel successful?

4.       Are you being hard on yourself and others? Have you noticed that you get defensive when others criticize you?

If your answer is “yes” to any of these questions, you may be pursuing a “perfect” life. Ironically, while we think that a “perfect” life will bring us success and fulfillment, it is actually keeping us from living a happy life.

I have been guilty of all of these beliefs at some point. I used to think that life was a straight line that continues to slope upward and whenever a setback occurred, I would think that this was just one outlier! After this stumbling block, if I tried hard enough and did everything “right”, life would invariably finally begin to move up again in a straight line. Of course, that’s not how life works. Maybe it’s movies and fairy tales that give us the illusion that this is the way things are “supposed to” look, but as many of us have experienced, life is actually a journey with ups and downs and spirals. 

And each of the “detours” is a natural part of life and a necessary experience on the way to success. Without failure and mistakes, we don’t learn and grow. What would shift if we actually saw getting laid off, falling sick or arguing with a friend as part of a full, fulfilling and happy life?

Similarly, happy people are not always full of positive emotions, but they also let themselves experience painful feelings.  When we block painful emotions, we keep ourselves from feeling, and in the process also block pleasurable ones. Furthermore, painful emotions expand and intensify when they don’t get released and when they finally break through, they overwhelm us. In order to be happy, we need to allow ourselves to experience the full range of human emotions.

Not taking pleasure in our accomplishments is another way we keep ourselves unhappy. If we are constantly in a rat race, always pursuing the next goal, we don’t take time to experience gratitude and don't acknowledge ourselves for each accomplishment. Also, as I explained in How To Set Goals To Make You Happy, it is the habit of really enjoying each step of the journey, rather than the achievement of the goal that brings us the happiness we are looking for. 

Finally, being hard on ourselves and others comes from the belief that it is possible and necessary to go through life without any errors. But while nobody likes to make mistakes, it is of course part of life. Trying to lead a life where everything goes smoothly and not accepting failures as healthy and necessary, brings extra stress and unhappiness.  If we are being hard on ourselves, chances are that we are hard on others as well. If we easily find fault with ourselves and others, it’s easy to become defensive when others criticize us. The kinder and more compassionate we become toward ourselves, the more kindness and compassion we can show toward others and the happier we feel.

So, it's your choice: Do you want to live a perfect life or a happy life? It’s ironic: Many of us strive for perfection, because we are under the false belief that reaching the perfect life will actually make us happy. But in reality, trying to be perfect is what keeps us from finding the joy we are looking for! 

Are you willing to live an “imperfect” life, knowing that it would make you happier? 

Manuela loves helping others bring more happiness into their lives!  You can visit Manuela's Website for Personal Success Coaching and check out her upcoming “Secrets to Happiness” Workshop!

Happiness is Available in the Present Moment

"We can smile, breathe, walk, and eat our meals in a way that allows us to be in touch with the abundance of happiness that is available. We are very good at preparing to live, but not very good at living. We know how to sacrifice ten years for a diploma and we are willing to work very hard to get a job, a car, a house, and so on. But we have difficulty remembering that we are alive in the present moment, the only moment there is for us to be alive."

~Thich Nhat Hanh

All of our lives we have been trained to work toward our goals and look toward the future to fulfill us. But we have been chasing after an illusion: it is not the reaching of a goal that makes us happy. It is the enjoyment of the present moments on the way toward reaching a meaningful goal that fulfills us.

It sounds so simple, but it takes work and retraining to live life in a way that lets us focus on and savor each present moment. I am still practicing, but I am able to enjoy more and more moments, little by little, every day. I hope you get to take a moment, too, to smile and breathe, on the way towards your goals. You don't have to wait - you can find happiness right here, right now. ♥

Manuela loves helping others bring more happiness into their lives!  You can visit Manuela's Website for Personal Success Coaching and check out her upcoming “Secrets to Happiness” Workshop!

How to Set Goals that Make You Happy

Have you ever felt that something was missing in your life and if you only reached this one goal, you would finally feel fulfilled and happy? If only we got that promotion, reached our ideal weight, found our ideal partner, moved into our dream home, or won that award, we would finally find the happiness we have been seeking. 

Unfortunately, reaching these goals oftentimes does not bring lasting happiness. A friend of mine recently got promoted at work and at first she was ecstatic. It was something she had worked so hard for over a long period of time, sacrificing her personal life in the process. But she was surprised by how short-lived her excitement was. A few days later, she no longer felt happy about her accomplishment.

Dr. Tal Ben-Shahar, one of Harvard’s most popular lecturers and author of “Happier”, describes a similar phenomenon after he won the Israeli national squash championship. At first, he was happier than he had ever imagined himself being. After five years of hard work, training, and pain, he had finally won the title! But the next day, the feeling of bliss disappeared and his feeling of emptiness returned. He despaired, not knowing what to do next, since clearly the goal that he had thought would make him happy, did not. Did this mean that it was useless to pursue any goals?

Actually, the problem does not lie with having goals, but with the kind of goals we set and how we go about pursuing them. To be happy, we need to choose goals that are both pleasurable and meaningful, and we need to take time to enjoy the journey. 

From an evolutionary perspective, we have learned that pleasure or pain follows immediately after behavior, so we have trouble connecting that the actions we take now lead to success in a few months. But when we focus on the pleasurable feeling we get as we make progress toward a goal, we now have a series of happy moments every step of the way.

So goals are really just means, not ends. Rather than expecting that the attainment of a goal will make us happy, we need to recognize that it is really the pleasure of the journey that increases our well being and happiness. The key is to enjoy the here and now while we are working toward a goal.

It also matters what type of goals we set. Research by Kennon Sheldon shows that we would be happier if we focused more on self-concordant goals. These are goals that we pursue because of deep personal conviction or strong interest. We choose them because of a desire to express part of ourselves, rather than a need to impress others. Often these are goals that involve growth, connection and contribution.

So we don’t have to stop setting goals, but we can choose them wisely. If we select goals that are important and meaningful to us (not somebody else) and remember to savor and enjoy every step of the way, we can not only reach them, but make ourselves happier in the process! 

I am going to take a minute now to enjoy this moment and then go off and choose some meaningful goals for next week!  :-)

Manuela loves helping others bring more happiness into their lives!  You can visit Manuela's Website for Personal Success Coaching and check out her upcoming “Secrets to Happiness” Workshop!

Happiness Is The Way, Not the Destination

"All our lives we think happiness is a destination, only to look back and realize that it was the way."

~Robert Brault

Many of us are trapped in the rat race of life, thinking that if we reach a certain goal or a particular destination, we will finally be happy.  However, when we finally arrive at our destination, we often just feel relief that we are no longer under pressure or we feel happy for a brief time. So we quickly focus on our next goal, hoping to catch the next glimpse of relief or happiness, and never really get to enjoy the present. 

In order to experience lasting happiness, we need to enjoy the steps we take on our journey toward a goal that is important to us.  We need to take time to enjoy each day and all the little moments, as we are moving forward toward our dreams and goals. 


Manuela loves helping others bring more happiness into their lives!  You can visit Manuela's Website for Personal Success Coaching and check out her upcoming “Secrets to Happiness” Workshop!

Secrets to Happiness: The Happiness Trap

Who doesn’t want to be happy? For many of us, it seems like the ultimate goal in life: We just want to be happy. I hear it from my clients and in my workshops all the time. But if we want it so much, why does it seem so elusive? 

There are a number of things we can do in order to increase our happiness, such as finding meaningful work that uses our signature strengths, participating in activities that allow us to be “in the zone” and feel flow, having strong social relationships, practicing optimism, etc.  However, many of us actually live our life strongly pursuing goals that work against our own happiness. How can this be?

We often work harder to move up in our careers and make more money, rather than taking more time off and spending it with our family and friends. We are looking to move into a bigger place, even if it means increasing our commute times and spending more time in traffic. We try to get by on the short vacation times provided by our employers, rather than taking longer vacations. We are tempted to buy newer and more luxurious appliances, clothes, cars, watches, etc. forcing us to work even harder to afford them. 

I felt trapped in the corporate world for a long time, because I just couldn’t see a way out of this cycle. I thought I really needed the bigger salary in order to afford my living expenses and to be able to save for the future. Somewhere in my mind I seemed to think that living in a bigger house in a nicer neighborhood and having more money to spend would make me happier. But the truth was, I wasn’t feeling happy. So I began to question what I really needed to be happy.  

Why do we get caught up pursuing goals that essentially work against our own happiness? Economist Robert Frank has a simple explanation. This type of “conspicuous consumption” is about acquiring things that are visible to others and are seen as a sign of a person’s relative success. So we strive, work hard, and buy things in order to be seen as successful.  And psychologist Jonathan Haidt explains that we have been shaped by evolution to win at the game of life by impressing others, gaining their admiration, and rising in relative rank. So we are actually conditioned to care about prestige, not happiness. As a result, we end up automatically pursuing goals that do not make us happy.

Once we are aware that some of our natural instincts may not be guiding us toward happiness, we can stop and look at some of the decisions we are making in our life. What are the things that are truly meaningful in your life and actually make you happy? Are you spending your time pursuing them or are you caught up in doing things because you feel like you “should” or “have to”, to feed your ego or to “look” better?

It took me a while to get out of “feeling trapped” in my corporate career. What really helped me was looking at my brother, who was living a much simpler life than I was. So I began to question what I thought I needed to be happy. 

It took going against what society, the media and advertisers were telling me. But I knew that there was another way. It's not that corporate careers are necessarily bad, it's just that I was working against my own happiness without knowing it.

Be aware of the happiness traps and don't get in the way of your own happiness! =)

Manuela is practicing happiness every day and loves helping others bring more happiness into their lives! You can visit Manuela's Website for Professional Life Coaching and Personal Growth Workshops.