Beautiful JuiceFest/Detox Day 7- Perfectionism With a Side of Rationalization

I am imperfect.. in case you were wondering. I was pretty sure that there would be some departure from my own prescribed juicefest guidelines and there were. See what you think of my experience and if you would have felt differently or not. Last night, at the start of the holiday weekend I went out with my husband to our favorite nearby restaurant and bar. It’s truly gorgeous there. It’s an incredibly refurbished old barn on an expansive green green meadow with a herd of black angus cows dotting the greenness. Honestly it just couldn’t be prettier. They also have a separate barn for functions and there was a bridal party.. I still love to see brides, something about that rite of passage, and the big white dress that is so archetypal and beautiful to me.

Anyways.. we went out for a drink. Not a green juice drink. You know the kind I mean! But this was kind of funny.. on the menu they had a Cucumber Kiwi Gimlet. Which basically had some of my green juices components.. plus some vodka. I don’t think it had simple syrup in it because it didn’t say so on the menu, where as some of the other martinis listed it in the ingredients. But did I ask? No I did not. I ordered, I drank. It was good but anticlimactic. While I’m confessing I ate a few of their homemade thick potato chips. Good but not having had any salt all week they were very salty to me. Not saying they weren’t good though. I had a little stomach ache afterwards. My digestion was not used to grease or salt or vodka…Still it was nice to get out on the holiday weekend with my man, to a beautiful spot, and diversify a bit.

I was conflicted I admit. Perfectionism is a good friend of mine. It’s also a huge theme in my work with clients as I firmly believe that it drives overeating and most addictive behaviors more often than not. There’s no point in working on the surface behaviors like overeating if you don’t work on the underlying pieces that “feed” or drive them. Right? Sorry.. I digress. Anyways, I did torture myself a little over having the drink and those incredible homemade chips.

Just as perfectionism is well known to me.. it’s counterpart rationalization is too. Here is what it sounded like in my head. “Nobody reads your blogposts so it doesn’t matter.. they won’t see when you write about the holiday night out”. Or…”It’s good to not be perfect, then you can write about it and people will relate even more”.. Uh.. ok.

The truth is.. the truth. It was a holiday weekend, a Friday night, we wanted to go out and perfection was becoming boring and meaningless to me. Doing it for the sake of doing it was getting less interesting to me and I needed a little night out with Andy. One drink some chips. A stomach ache.

Today.. juice, watermelon, water. To me the best part of deciding to be imperfect is not having to lapse into some form of “all-or-nothing” thinking or behavior. I am still juicing. I am still in the midst of my beautiful JuiceFest and Detox. Nothing has changed in the big picture.

I watch my clients go through these moments all the time. They make a choice and use it to beat themselves into such shame and loathing that it’s impossible to then just do the next right thing, to proceed lovingly and stay the course. So many of us can relate to this part I know. But the truth is, and I know you know this but I’m going to say it anyways, is that it’s okay to make mistakes, to be imperfect. You still get to get back on the path and continue .. without dragging along extra shame and judgment. Don’t do it.

I am loving writing about all of this daily.. love the daily blogging discipline.. may even do it longer than 10 days.. who knows. I reserve the right to do what feels best intuitively each day and you should too.

 

With great love from my intuitivebody to yours..