Do you have a hard time making decisions? Do you avoid situations out of fear of what others will think? Do you procrastinate so much that it interferes with your daily life? Do you give up easily if things get tough? If you answered yes to any of these questions then you might just be a perfectionist. Veteran journalist and accomplished athlete Kim Foster Carlson gives you the tools to overcome the obstacles that have been holding you back from living your best life. Kim Foster Carlson is an award-winning broadcast journalist, having spent the last 27 years as a member of the San Francisco Bay Area radio and television media. Kim Foster has worked as a traffic reporter, news reporter, news anchor, sports anchor and talk show host. She has covered a wide range of stories from 9/11 to the tech boom in Silicon Valley. In 2011, she was named the mid-day anchor at KGO radio and led coverage of a breaking story "Oikos University Shooting". KGO's coverage of that story won a National Murrow Award. Good Enough How to overcome fear of failure and perfectionism to live your best life. By Kim Foster Carlson Balboa Press Copyright © 2018 Kim Foster Carlson All rights reserved. ISBN: 978-1-5043-9599-1 Contents Introduction, ix, The "P" Word, 1, Problems Are a Good Thing, 3, Too Blessed to Be Stressed, 7, Relaxed Confidence, 11, It's Not about You, 15, It's Okay to Be Average, 19, 90 Percent, 23, Moment by Moment, 27, Me, Myself, and I, 33, If You're Not First, You're Last, 37, Can't Get You Out of My Head, 41, The Small Stuff, 45, The Twenty-Four-Hour Cleanse, 49, Here Comes the Judge, 53, It's Everything, 57, Go with the Flow, 63, Don't Just Say Yes, 67, Embarrassment, 69, Smith College, 73, I Can't ... I'm Too Busy!, 77, Write It Down, 81, You Are Not a Fixer-Upper, 85, So What Would You Do if You Were Good Enough?, 89, CHAPTER 1 The "P" Word We live in a society that celebrates being perfect — from beauty to brains. We all know someone who in our minds is the ideal person: the person in school who had all the friends, the friend who can whip up a gourmet meal with ingredients found in the refrigerator. In an ideal world, we would like to be happy with ourselves, but in the real world, we don't feel we are good enough. The best solution to becoming the best version of you — with all your foibles and quirks — is to embrace your imperfections. This doesn't give you permission to become a sloth and do nothing. But how great would it be to embrace your flaws — love the parts of you that you once thought of as your shortcomings — and see them as uniquely you? Perfectionism keeps you from your true expression and creativity as well. It invites fear and doubt. Being flawless doesn't help fill you up. Being real and being flawed invites real connections to others. So what can you do to combat a bad case of the perfection? You can see mistakes as information that you must have to become successful. Learn something from them that you can improve on. Don't be proud of being perfect. Don't confuse perfection with high standards. Healthy standards are better. Practice being imperfect. Take a day to do everything imperfectly. Mistakes mean progress. Apple founder Steve Jobs probably had a few bad versions of a cell phone before he and his team invented the iPhone. Be kind to yourself. Perfectionists are critical of themselves and others. Be perfectly imperfect with being yourself. CHAPTER 2 Problems Are a Good Thing In his 2016 book The Subtle Art of Not Giving a F**K, Mark Manson's counterintuitive approach preaches that life is essentially an endless series of problems. The solution to one problem is merely the creation of another. Instead of asking, "How can I get rid of my problems?" the question should be "What are the problems that excite me? What are the problems I am willing to sacrifice for, to work for?" Manson offers an example of wanting to get in shape: You can solve this problem by buying a gym membership, which gives you a set of new problems: finding time in your day to go to the gym and budgeting the extra expense. Both are not bad problems to have but are problems, nonetheless. And that is the key to Manson's mantra: Find problems that you are interested in solving. Here is where perfection comes into play. If a problem arises, you have two choices: decide on a solution or distract yourself from the problem. Distractions are a perfectionist's best friend. They can help you to pretend that the problem is not really there. What are your favorite distractions: watching television, playing video games, getting high? Deciding on a solution seems like the much better way to go. Solutions are active decisions to move you forward. Distractions keep you right where you are: miserable. The key here is to honestly identify the problem and the distraction. If you have a job, for example, where you work long hours with a horrible boss who ignores you, promotes everyo