Embiggening My Good Qualities

Perfect:                 Complete in all respects; without defect or omission; sound; flawless. 
Perfectionist:       A person who believes in a doctrine of perfectionism.
Perfectionism:    Any doctrine that holds that moral, religious, or social perfection can and should be attained in this life. (Ed note: Apparently in the next life you can be a total screw-up).


I spend way too much time considering where I've fallen short and way, way, WAY, too much time embiggening my faults and defects.  It takes a conscious effort for me to bring my not inconsiderable powers of concentration back around to what I've done well and, like most of us, I've done many, many things well.  For me it's akin to turning around a huge aircraft carrier  steaming ahead at under full power; there's a lot of forward momentum that has to be arrested.  There's the sound of the klaxon blaring its warning alarm and lots of strong men, naked to the waist and covered with tattoos, glistening with sweat, muscles heaving as they spin wheels and rush around and throw the vessel's massive engines into reverse.  That's what it feels like to me.  The urge to plow ahead in stormy seas to the forbidden island of Total Negativity is that powerful.


Which is pretty much total bullshit.  All of us have plenty of good qualities and characteristics.  For some reason the alcoholic in me doesn't think so.  One of my regular practices is to review my day before I go to sleep.  For me -- just for me -- I'm usually able to say I remained sober and clean; I didn't smoke cigarettes or drink 17 pots of coffee; I ate real food; I got some exercise and enough rest; I spent a chunk of time on my recovery; I read or wrote or did something else to give my mind a work out.  I don't do all of these things every day but I work away at it.  There's some good stuff in there.  I force my mental aircraft carrier to reverse course and $#!! think about this good stuff despite my desire to fish out anything I did wrong during the course of the day and like, totally obsess over it.


At the meeting yesterday I complimented a woman whose 15 year old son I have seen at a couple of parties.  He behaves better at that tough age than I do today.  Of course, she brushed off the compliment, preferring to imbue her son with some innate qualities of polite goodness that she assumes that she had no part in imbuing.  While there are some kids that are by nature easy to raise I don't think any parent can discount the effect they have on the kids they're raising.  I could see by her reaction that she didn't spend much time considering this.  She seemed genuinely surprised and very pleased.


Today I can give myself a break.