Aiming For Excellence

Are you aiming for excellence in more than one area of your life? Do you have high expectations that extend to those around you? Does seeing an A+ make you smile?

I grew up in a family with high expectations.

I often have high expectations of others.

I’ve recently realized that it’s not an endearing quality.

Others don’t think, “I’d really like to be judged more.”

I like to think that I’m fun to be around, most of the time. I like people and am very curious.

When I’m overwhelmed, however, I find inefficiencies particularly challenging and don’t hide my frustration well. Frustration with inefficiencies was modeled for me growing up. I’m not blaming my parents, only pointing out that I had excellent role models for what high expectations look like. As a kid, I was the one telling my parents to calm down. Now my kids are the ones telling me to calm down.

This past week I helped my kids move into their first apartments, one off-campus and the other on-campus, in different cities. I worked on setting reasonable (to me?) expectations and enjoying time with them.

Things went well when I was rested, however, the night before meeting up with my second son, there was a 12:30 am tornado warning and a big storm. I wanted to be in baggage claim to meet him knowing he was exhausted from his schedule but his flight landed before I left the hotel. I faced multiple comical quests on the way to the airport - I was stuck in the elevator at 6:30 am, finally got to the car only to realize my keys were still in my room on the 6th floor, and every third traffic light was without power. By 1 pm I was exhausted and under the impression I hadn’t been thanked enough.

Why didn’t my kids marvel more at my color-coded spreadsheets, amazing shopping prowess, and time management skills?

Now that I am back home and have started to catch up on sleep, I’m able to see that I was the one aiming for perfection. The goal was to move the kids into apartments and we more than met that goal.

The trip had many positives and I’m grateful to have been able to move them in.

The next step is to evaluate other expectations and continue to challenge what I see as success.

More on all of this in our September session, which will focus on how trying to be perfect can prevent us from reaching goals and thriving.

Overcome the Perfection Trap, Sept 12 at 11 am PT/2 pm ET (register here if you haven’t already)