When Stephen talked about stalking chamois his whole expression changed. The features became more aquiline, the nose sharpened, the chin narrowed, and his eyes-steel blue - somehow took on the cold brilliance of a northern sky. I am being very frank ...
A Gift for You I send you... A cottage retreat on a hill in Ireland. This cottage is filled with fresh flowers, art supplies, and a double-wide chaise lounge in front of a wood-burning fireplace. There is a cabinet near the front door, where your fav...
She had abruptly flipped from the southern belle and was now putting on the extremely businesslike air of those perfectionist women who'd only worked in the professional world for two or three years before stopping to have children and were now terri...
Man is flawed; universe is imperfect; the functioning of the cosmos is defective! Everything seems to be severely punished by the imperfection! May be the real challenge of men is to correct all these flaws! It is possible to think that God is an evo...
I want to focus on each scene. I'm a real perfectionist, and I don't want to feel like I didn't consider every possible variation of a scene. I come from a theater background, so I'm used to a lot of repetition, and I'm used to really attacking somet...
'Mrs. Doubtfire' is still a fun movie, and it's still fun to watch, but it is hard to watch myself sometimes. I get very critical. And people will say, 'Mara, you were five.' And I'm like, 'Yeah, but I still should have known better!' I'm a lifelong ...
I would have thought that I would have become one of those parents - just because it's my nature to be such a perfectionist - that anything falling short, I would have seen as a failure. But something has happened to me over the past few years - it's...
One of the by-products of being a perfectionist and constantly trying to improve myself are sobering feelings of low-grade anxiety and a nagging sense of inadequacy. But this is not anxiety without a purpose. No, this anxiety keeps me humble. It crea...
A Gift for You I send you... The gift of a letter from your wise self. This is the part of you that sees you with benevolent, loving eyes. You find this letter in a thick envelope with your name on it, and the word YES written boldly above your name....
Perfectionist parents seem to operate under the illusion that if they can just get their children to be perfect, they will be a perfect family. They put the burden of stability on the child to avoid facing the fact that they, as parents, cannot provi...
Jesus tells us: ‘Love your neighbor as yourself’ (Mk 12:31). How can we love our neighbor if we can’t or won’t love ourselves, at least a little? When we hold ourselves to unrealistic standards, that perfectionist attitude can’t help but tr...
The masculine ideal of perfection creates a hyper-sensitivity to any nuance of imperfection. Any man who commits his life to the perfectionistic ideal of masculinity is going to feel like a failure. The people around him will feel abused and oppresse...
Holding myself to perfectionistic standards, I used to think I had to become lifelong friends with everyone who entered my life. This was exhausting, and I now know it’s not true. I believe the old saying that people come into your life for a reaso...
When we realize that the world has enough love for everyone, we will quit competing over being better, more beautiful, or whatever it is within us we’re competing to have. We will allow ourselves to let go of the perfectionist attitude, because we ...
I am a perfectionist but I know how to live life. When I'm working, it's 100%. When I'm with my friends, I put everything away and enjoy life. When I come home to my kids, it's pure joy and everything's worth it. Every time, I really focus 100 percen...
I'm astounded whenever I finish something. Astounded and distressed. My perfectionist instinct should inhibit me from finishing: it should inhibit me from even beginning. But I get distracted and start doing something. What I achieve is not the produ...
Suppose I were to give you a key ring [...] with a hundred keys, and I were to tell you that one of these keys will unlock it, this door we're imagining opening in onto all you want to be, as a player. How many of the keys would you be willing to try...
We were women in transition, raised in one era and coming of age in another, very different time...here we were, entering the workplace in the 1960s questioning--and often rejecting--many of the values we had been taught. We were the polite, perfecti...
There are no perfect circumstances, just circumstances that can become 'perfect' because you choose to act upon a platform. Trusting that the first brush stroke is one closer to the finished painting. You can alter as you work. But you must take that...
there is still a kind of unique loneliness to child rearing for women. We so often do it in isolation. Add to the fact that in our competitive, perfectionist culture, in which the price woman are required to pay for freedom still seems to be martyrdo...
Over and over we lose this sense of feeling we are wholly in our skins by means already named as well as through extended duress. Those who toil too long without respite are also at risk. The soulskin vanishes when we are not paying attention to what...
