When Your Strength Becomes Your Weakness (About Perfectionism)

 Last Sunday, I had an amazing journey across the planets, the solar system, and the galaxy, where I experienced the wildest weather conditions. At the planetarium I, my husband and my daughter watched an IMax movie, The Wildest Weather in the Solar System, produced by National Geographic. We had a spectacular journey through the solar system, witnessing the most powerful of the most powerful; “From a storm the size of a 100-megaton hydrogen bomb, to a 400-year-old hurricane, to a dust tempest that could engulf entire planets. Storms on the sun, liquid methane showers on Titan, and anticyclones whirling at hundreds of miles per hour on Jupiter”.

It was not only an educational and exploratory  journey, but also a breathtaking, beautiful, powerful and mysterious experience.

Even my 3-year old daughter was watching it SILENTLY and passionately through the entire movie. It was just astonishing.

But actually, it’s not the cutting-edge science facts as such that was so amazing to me; it’s more the attitude, the style of telling it, as well as the eye-popping visuals that made the movie so spectacular to me. It had the perfect proportions, the perfect length, the perfect telling voice, and the perfect video cuts- truly high standards! There was perfection in all, which made my experience so amazing.

 This perfection fascinated me… as it always does.

 Therefore, after the movie, I was having some reflections upon it.

It made me wonder whether being a perfectionist is a strong or weak quality of personal character.

Why does it matter at all?

If I am to claim that I wrote a perfect master thesis, I often point toward the fact that  I was very focused on details, and that I supported all my arguments with relevant and correct calculations. For somebody else, a perfect master thesis is about the spelling, layout, length or the writing style. It can be the method of working and the time of completion that should count. There is also the way of presenting and persuading, the relevance of a topic, or its originality- you name it. If I am to claim that my master thesis was perfect, I would actually mean that I was satisfied with my result, because I met the high standards, set by myself. But the outsider will just call me a narcissist and how I actually dare to “call myself perfect”?

I believe we all have a very limited understanding of perfectionism. From a negative point of view, it is being associated with narcissism, self-importance, and over-confidence.. From another hand, it is being associated with excellence, high results and achievements, as a driver for quality work, and thus- in positive context.

So, we will have different perception of perfectionism, which, in turn, can result in conflicts, misunderstandings, underestimation and/or wrong illusions about peoples, as well, and judgments and wrong conclusions.  Being a perfectionist can have severe consequences, such as low self esteem, depressions, obsessive and compulsive behavior. Eating disorders, can also be a symptom of perfectionism.

Frankenstein Genskab (Review)

What I like in art is its thinking, boosting and energizing power to our mental grasp. Besides, the voice of art is very robust, however dubious at the same time. You can perceive it however you like and feel it, prejudiced by your own real circumstances, your moral sensibility at that moment, or just enjoy it excluding any reasoning and logic behind. Besides, nobody can say you perceive it wrong. Had a bite of it last week, the slice of my birth day present. “Frankenstein Genskabt”(Frankenstein reborn) was the art. Watched it with pleasure. Couldn’t stay away from writing my own reflection upon it, as it made me think, fantasize, imagine and criticize.

So, here is my own review on it.

Do We Really Need Self-Confidence Boosting Advices?

Often we are given Self-Confidence Boosting Advices from lecturing books, and the self-help sections in weekly magazines. Confidence, usually positively associated with character strength  is rarely examinedfrom its backside. But where does confidence come from? Take a look with me, and tell me whether you agree with me upon it.  This will be my advice on confidence.

On Poul Krugman’s blog, I have recently read his own reflections upon his own career choices. Being a columnist at New York Time, a leading economist among academics, a professor, an author and editor of bestselling books, and not least, a Nobel Prize Laureate, he is nominated for a Secretary of Treasury position.

13 Writing Lessons Learned From Stephen King’s On Writing [Infographic]

Like this infographic? Get more writing inspiration on HowToMakeMyBlog.com.

The power of our sexual impulses…at work

We often underestimate and neglect the power of our sexual impulses at work. We have dress codes, social norms and clear limit on it. Often, the topic of sex at work is unmentionable, flirt is no-go, so is sexually appealing clothing, make-up and behavior.

 But sometimes I feel that sexual influence is just all around, even if we don’t see it. From the job interviews, to the firings, a person's looks or movements, or their voice or smell attract attention- thus having an impact on somebody’s willingness to hire/fire, cooperate, help, promote and share information. Moreover, the attraction may be enhanced by a person's adornments, clothing, perfume, hair style and anything else which can attract the sexual (let’s focus on non-innocent) as well as non-sexual interest of another person. This attraction forms the environment on which we build our relationships on.

My secret revealed...

It’s Christmas time. It’s time for miracles. Or not.

It should not be harmful for us to believe in miracles, at least for a day, or minute, or a second.

With all your good Christmas spirit, I would like to ask a second of your time to help me create a miracle.

In return I will share my secret with you:

My Big Loss; Or How Women Can Save the World.

Recently I experienced a big loss, only because a company - let’s name it XXX – had server issues. The result was that I lost my online creative project, which I had been working on until 2 AM for multiple nights. I evaluated that I had invested about 100 hours of my time, over-exhausted the creative part of the brain and lost effectiveness at my work as a result of sleepless nights. This project was supposed to be a Christmas gift to my lovely 3-year old girl. And one day it just disappeared. My dear friend, who just happened to be around at that moment, helped me go through the crisis and assured me that the company probably had backup of their servers and that the problem could be fixed. We wrote a letter to them, explaining how important it was for me to recover the project. At least, I kept hope up until one evening (which I will probably never forget) where I was informed that my project was irrecoverable. In order to comfort my frustrations, they compensated with a gift certificate, on which, of course, again, I would have to invest another 100 hours and lots of sleepless nights.

I was outrageously angry. I didn’t need another headache. What I needed was just a little understanding of my feelings, moral support and motivation to start again from scratch. The company XXX had chosen a strategy of solving the issue by giving me a gift certificate, a rational choice, I would say. However, neither did they succeed in restoring my project/frustration, nor in returning my customer satisfaction.

So was this gift certificate what I really needed? If they had just showed their understanding of my feelings, I would most likely have been more motivated to start over again from the beginning. But their apathy towards my feelings was overwhelming. So for now, I will never go back to them. 

“Soft” vs. “Hard” Leadership