Episode 135: The Myth Of The "Right Way"
In today’s episode, we’re talking about doing things the “Right Way” and—surprise!—how there’s no such thing.
Today, we’re talking about doing things the “Right Way” and—surprise!—how there’s no such thing.
Unsurprisingly, many of my clients live for “doing it right.”
For them, there is nothing more amazing as hearing: Yes, you’re doing it right. In fact, one of the most popular phrases I hear from clients is: I did okay, right? They’re always looking for affirmation that they did it right.
So why is the need to do things the “Right Way” such a common experience of people with High Functioning Anxiety?
Doing it right, following the rules, and being a good girl keeps us from criticism. And growing up—either in our family of origin or through school and church—we learned that following the rules earns us LOTS of praise.
Not only that, but it protects us from the anxiety of not knowing what to do next. It keeps us safe—at least that’s what we convince ourselves of.
What rules have you created for yourself? Let’s explore this together in this week’s episode and find out what we can do about it.
Listen to the full episode to find out:
Why there is no such thing as doing things the “right way”
How the quest for doing things the “right way” leads to judging others
What we miss out on when we constantly try to do things the “right way”
How curiosity is key if we’re trying to understand why we’re afraid of getting things wrong
Some of the resources mentioned in this episode:
Transcript:
I remember the first vacation we took after my dad died. When I learned that always believing there is a right way isn't helpful. First, a little background, my dad strongly believed there was a right way and a wrong way to do anything. You name it, he knew it--needing to mow your lawn--wanting to invest in the stock market. He knew the right way. Hoping to grow a wonderful garden--he had it down. Needing to plan a perfect vacation--he knew exactly how to do it. Yes. I realized that objectively his right wasn't necessarily everyone else's right. But in my dad's world, there was a right way and a wrong way, regardless of who you were and what you preferred. Not surprisingly, he passed the need to do it the right way on.
He had a lot of rules for traveling where to eat, what time to eat, how to get there, how early to arrive, what to order on and on and on—a lot of rules. And I being a dutiful daughter, I knew how to follow the rules. Because the praise I received when I followed the rules, was like candy to a baby.
I lived for it. So before he died, I would be the one who made all the reservations, planned the perfect place and time for dinner and lapped up all of his praise.
So back to the first vacation we took without my dad, just me, my mom and my husband. As we're walking along the beach, headed to a new dinner spot, I was sharing what I had researched about the place with my mom and my husband and regaling them with the rest of the week schedule. Unknowingly, I was going through a familiar routine, share all the right things I'd done, and get ready to lap up the praise. Except my mom and my husband, they don't care about eating at the right place or at the right time. They are not rule followers. They are fly by the seat of your pants, people. So they didn't give me any praise. They just said, "Well, that sounds good. I'm sure whatever you pick is going to be great."
I will never forget that moment. As I stood there, the wind blowing on my face, sand beneath my feet. I realized how much energy I had spent on doing it right. How hooked into it I was and how much this value controlled my life. And I started getting curious about it.
You're listening to the Happier Approach, the show that pulls back the curtain on the need to succeed, hustle, and achieve at the price of our inner peace in relationships. I'm your host, Nancy Jane Smith.
When I first realized that I had inherited this need to do it right for my dad. I was sad. I realized no matter how hard I worked to do things the right way, I would never again get the praise from my father. And then, as I got more curious, I could see how this desire to do it the right way infiltrated almost all of my life. On the one hand, doing it the right way gave me peace. And on the other hand, it kept me in check.
This month, we're exploring the unique values of someone with high functioning anxiety. Last week, we talked with Beryl young about the value of creativity, and this week I'm talking about the value of doing it right. Many of my clients live for doing it right. There is nothing as amazing as hearing. Yes, you're doing it right. In fact, one of the most popular phrases I hear from clients is "I did okay. Right?" Or "That's okay. Right?" Looking for affirmation that they did it right.
So why is the need to do things the right way, such a common experience of people with high functioning anxiety? Doing it right, following the rules, being a good girl keeps us from criticism
And bonus growing up, either in a family of origin or through school or church, we learned the following, the rules will get us lots of praise. It protects us from the anxiety of not knowing what to do next. It keeps us safe. At least that's what we convince ourselves. So what rules have you created for yourself?
Do you have rules around travel plans? Do you have rules about how to load the dishwasher? Do you have rules about where to park in a parking lot or how to do the grocery shop? I bet you have rules for just about everything. Here are three things I want to cover about the idea of doing it right.
The first thing is there is no right, way. Not surprisingly, people who are looking for the right way. We tend to be a perfectionist. We rationally know there is no one way to do anything. There is no right way yet we spend our lives looking for it the right way to drive, eat workout, cook, do a project, trim a tree. You name it. We're looking for the right one.
This belief leads us to a life of black and white thinking where there is an absolute right way and an absolute wrong way. In all situations, our monger believes finding the right way will protect us from being attacked or criticized external. Here are a few examples from my own life to show how sneaky these myths can be.
There's a right way to walk the dog. First thing in the morning, before 8:00 AM for 30 minutes, there's a right time to wake up, waking up early, meaning before 7:00 AM bonus points. If I can get up before 6:30am. Yeah. There's a right thing to eat for breakfast. Now I go through phases with this one, but right now, it's oatmeal with fruit.
There's a right order to do the morning tasks. There's a right time to fall asleep. There's a right amount of sleep. Eight to nine hours. That's ideal. There's a right way to work out and a right amount of time to work out. 60 minutes is the amount of time, and it must be cardio with a little bit of weights.
These rules become even more rigid because if you can't do it right, there is no sense in doing it. For example, if I can't work out for 60 minutes, then I won't do it. There's no sense working out if it's not for 60 minutes. Hello, rigidity. When you start to pull apart these right way myths, you start to see the faulty logic.
Well, who decides right when it comes to doing it right? The ironic thing is that right is very subjective. Your definition of right is different from mine because right is based on personal preferences, values, ideology, et cetera. And also, even if we meet our own standards and technically do it right, there will be no celebrating because we can always improve.
We can always do it better. Even after my dad would praise me for picking the right restaurant for dinner, I would spend the rest of the evening scooping out the best table to request the next time we came in, because you can always improve on right.
A great example of this doing it right is efficiency. Efficiency is a right way measure for me. When I go to the grocery store, I have a lot of rules on how to do it right. But even if I accomplished my task in the most efficient way possible, I still beat myself up for something. I just never celebrate the win. Maybe I didn't pack the groceries in the car right. Or I forgot to pick up the soap, or I picked the wrong checkout line. I always fail.
The second thing I want you to know about doing it right. Is the quest for right can lead to more judgment of others by the BFF. She loves to come out and share how others aren't doing it right in order to make you feel better.
Well, they aren't working out right. They didn't pack for their trip, right. If only they knew how to pack correctly. They are running late, a better person would have left early. They walked out of the house in wet hair. What were they thinking? They're smoking. I mean, at least we don't do that. They picked the wrong grocery line.
As I've said before, when your monger is out in full force, that usually means your monger has been out in full force as well. So judgment, especially unnecessarily super petty judgment is time to get curious. Some questions. I ask myself when I noticed the BFF. What am I judging them for?
How do I see that judgment in myself? Am I being a little rigid here? Does this really matter? What's the bigger picture and where do I need to add some kindness for me or for them?
The third thing I want you to know about doing it right. Is duty versus joy. The thing about the quest for the right way is it keeps us stuck in duty.
We miss the joy in life because we're so busy worrying about doing it right. For example, this podcast, I love writing my podcast. Honestly, I just love writing, finding the right words, digging deep for the underlying meaning asking myself, but how do I challenge myself to go deeper?
And yet often, my writing, especially on these podcasts, gets too bogged down for me in doing it right. Writing the right message, using the right language, hitting the deadline. I get so caught up in the duty of it. I miss the joy and acquest to protect myself from criticism. I miss the joy.
This concept of duty versus joy has been a big one for me. The idea of choosing duty over joy makes me sad. I see how it plays out in my life, and I see how it plays out in my clients' lives. We missed the train. Okay. So what can you do about it? There are lots of messages out there about "break the rules." "Stop being a good girl," but this is bigger than just a mindset shift. This requires us to get curious and start picking at the rigidness that surrounds our lives. The part that gets overlooked by the theories that say, well, just stop doing that is that we get something for doing it, right? Whether that be a sense of security praise or less anxiety, when we stop doing it, it feels unsafe.
It feels overwhelmingly scary. That's why we just can't stop doing it. It's too scary, which is why curiosity is so key after you noticed the right way value rearing its ugly head. Get curious, ask yourself, what is this protecting me from? What am I afraid of? Am I choosing duty over joy? Be kind to yourself and loosen up that rigidity.
Our tendency will be to judge ourselves to say, good grief. Here you go again. You're so rigid and judgy too. You know, there is no right way. Come on.
Instead, try. Wow. This is really hard finding the right way is hard-wired. I know it helped me in the past, but let's loosen that up a little. Or it's so hard to feel this tied down to doing it right.
Is this rule really needed? Can we rebel against the rule? Can you find some joy here? Because this line of thinking gets us stuck in absolutes. One way to notice this value playing out in your life is when you make if-then statements. If I don't go to the grocery store on the way home, then I'm a bad one.
If I don't work late, then I will get fired. If I commit to a dinner date, then I will be stuck the whole night. If I don't work out today, then I will be out of shape forever. See how their statements are absolutes of right and wrong. Your monger will never give you the win. You could always have done it better, but in all honesty, there is no right.
There are no absolutes. When you catch yourself engaging in all or nothing if-then statements, challenge yourself to come up with as many options as possible. Even if they seem absurd, get in the practice of expanding your options. Give yourself a checkmark. Every time you choose joy over duty, or every time you notice that if-then statement and loosen it up, aim for three checkmarks a day.
This type of exercise works with the love of checkmarks and accomplishment, but in a positive way. For example, if I don't go to the grocery store tonight, then I can go tomorrow after work, or I can ask my partner to go, or I can bring a cooler to work and grab a few things on my lunch hour and do the big shopping on Saturday.
If I don't work out today, then I can look at my schedule and find the best time to fit in a consistent workout. Maybe it would be best to do it in the morning or at lunch or turn some of my regular work meetings into walking meetings. Practice practice practice recently, a client of mine said, I wish you could just give me the freaking five step approach.
And then poof, I would be healed. Practice. Practice. Practice is annoying. Yep. I hear you. It certainly is. This is one thing I love about my work with clients via Voxer because I can regularly remind them of how they're making progress. It's hard for us to see our own progress. So it is helpful to have friends, family, or a coach there to say, wow, look how far you've come.
This is another form of positive reinforcement and a way to keep us doing this work. The work is more than just changing your mindset. It's really getting in there and changing hardwired patterns of duty praise and worthiness messages that we heard and swallowed for our own protection benefit, or because we had no choice.
And now we know they aren't serving us anymore. So it does take practice, practice, practice, but let's pick joy over duty. Let's be kind to ourselves. Let's remember this takes practice, but most of all, let's remember we got this.
Helping people with High Functioning Anxiety is a personal mission for me. I have a special place in my heart for this struggle because it’s both something I dealt with unknowingly for years, and because it silently affects so many people who think this is just how it is.
Working with me this way is an incredibly efficient and effective way to deal with your anxiety in the moment--without waiting for your next appointment.
I have been doing this work for over 20 years and Coach in Your Pocket is the most effective and most life-changing work I have ever done. My clients are consistently blown away by how these daily check-ins combined with the monthly face-to-face video meetings create slow, lasting changes that reprogram their High Functioning Anxiety tendencies over time.
Over the course of the three-month program, we meet once a month for a face-to-face session via a secure video chat, and then throughout the entire three months, you have access to me anytime you are feeling anxious, having a Monger attack, celebrating a win, or just need to check-in, and I will respond to you during my office hours (Monday through Friday, 9 am - 6 pm EST). Learn More