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SUSTAINED!
Peace, Not Perfectionism: Overcoming the Myth of
the "Right Way"
By Leann Guzman
April 25, 2005
Ladies and gentlemen, I'm here today to reveal to you the key to achieving success in any endeavor. It’s a little thing, or person, called Flylady. Okay, maybe she’s not key to success in any endeavor, but she’s certainly convinced me that she’s my key to keeping up with my housework and, just maybe, the key to overcoming perfectionism.
In her book, Sink Reflections, and on her website, Flylady.net, Marla Cilley (a.k.a. Flylady) teaches her legions of fans that you CAN have an organized home and life based on the system she has created. When you look at the steps to her system, they don’t look like anything so spectacular as to warrant attracting thousands of members to her website. But the reality is Flylady does more for her fans than teach them how to clean their house. I believe the key to her popularity with so many people is the way she wages war against perfectionism.
Like so many others, I can’t keep up with her housekeeping system every single day. In her “Morning Musings,” the email sent to all members of the website, Flylady fights against our natural tendency to give up because we have bad weeks or tough days. When giving us a chore to do, she tells us that there is not a “correct” way to do it, just get it done. She battles our tendency to believe that if things are not done exactly the way we were taught, then we’re not doing it right. She teaches us that if we just get the job done, we will feel more peace in our homes.
As I was thinking the other day about Flylady and her words of encouragement, I thought about how much her message of anti-perfectionism is needed in every area of our lives, especially in our families.
Each of us is raised with ideals of how families should operate, who should do what within the family, and when those things should be done. Some people pattern their ideals on how their family of origin was. Other people’s original families were dysfunctional, and so they make up some impossible ideal for how things are going to be when they have their own family. Each one of us has a different set of ideals that forms our perfectionism toward our relationships. And when two people with different ideals come together in a marriage, it creates a situation where conflict is just waiting to happen.
As a personal example, in the home where I grew up the chore of taking out the trash included putting the new trash bag in the trash can. In my husband’s house, taking out the trash involved only carrying it outside. You didn’t have to put the new bag in the trash can; you just took out the trash. After six and a half years of marriage, it’s still irritating when I go to throw something away and there’s no trash bag there.
This example is small, and, most of you are thinking, somewhat petty. I’ll freely admit that it is petty. If you apply Flylady’s anti-perfectionism principle here, then there is no right way to take out the trash, as long as it gets done. It isn’t the means to the end that’s important; rather it’s the end result that matters.
But the trash is just one thing out of hundreds where you and your spouse can view things differently. Is there a “right way” for the chores to be divided between husband and wife? Is there a “right way” for how the bills are paid? Is there a “right way” for how your intimate relationship should be? These issues are the top reasons why husbands and wives fight, mostly because everyone thinks his or her own individual way is right. But think about it: why is your way automatically right? What if the “right way” is whatever you find that works for your family so that everyone is in a win-win situation?
Another more serious example in my home is that I am a saver and my husband is a spender. In most relationships, there is one of each of these, so many of you can identify. It’s easy for me to say that my way is right because saving is being a good steward of God’s blessings, saving will protect us from financial problems, and saving will create a good future for us. However, over the years I have discovered that my husband’s way is not all wrong (Notice I’m still not saying it’s completely right--we haven’t been married that long!). We have been able to enjoy some nice material things that on my own I never would have possessed because I would have saved the money rather than spent it. Likewise, he has realized that my way is not all wrong, and has become more careful with our money and only spends what we can afford to spend. In this way, God has used each of us to balance the other.
The point is that because of our perfectionist ideals, we sometimes create a high standard for the way our families should operate. The result is that when others don’t behave in compliance with our perfectionist ideal, conflict naturally arises. This is not to say that true conflict doesn’t occur due to other reasons; certainly in many relationships there are issues that exist that don’t have anything to do with ideals. I’m also not saying that all ideals we hold are absolutely wrong. Some ideals are correct and biblically-based. But in many cases of conflict, we get upset because the other person isn’t acting in accordance with the “right way” we think he or she should act, and that “right way” is based on nothing more than our inappropriate perfectionist ideals.
Next time conflict arises in your home, whether over something big or small, ask yourself what ideal you hold that is causing the conflict. Where did you form that ideal? Is it biblically-based, or is it based on your personal history or preference? Is there a compromise to your ideal that would work just as well to get the job done? Are your perfectionist ideals worth destroying the peace in your home?
Flylady says, “Housework done incorrectly still blesses your family.” And that is the result we should all be striving for: blessing our families with peace, not perfectionism.
ninetyandnine.com
© 2005, Leann Guzman
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Leann Guzman is ninetyandnine.com’s new “Family / Work Issues” columnist. If you have suggestions on topics to explore, email her at Family@ninetyandnine.com. Leann is wife to Jonathan and mother to Olivia, and she lives and goes to church in North Texas. She is a licensed attorney who works as a municipal court prosecutor. Although fluent in English and Legalese, the meaning of the term “spare time” escapes her.