Nikki’s Story with The Intrinsic North Star

I’m so proud to be able to share my first EVER client’s first EVER testimony from my program. This has been a long time coming, and I’m so incredibly proud of Nikki (who I’ve only known for a short time, yet have come to graciously appreciate and whose feedback I trust greatly) and how she’s committed to finally letting go of all the things she never knew were holding her back.

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What’s been the biggest shift you’ve noticed since starting?

“I’m only on the third week of the program, so from the outside, it doesn’t look like there have been massive changes. But the way I think has already started to shift in significant ways, which has been really helpful. I’ve always been a perfectionist, which is the cliché “greatest weakness” for a reason -- I do a perfect job at everything I do, but if I don’t know for a fact that I’m capable of doing it before I start, I don’t do it at all. Which means a lot of things don’t get done.

So even starting to shift away from that thought process is a huge deal for me. Being able to see an imperfect job as anything other than a failure is a huge deal. Even just being consistent with something for three entire weeks is a huge deal. It’s not an overnight success story, but it is an achievable, sustainable success story, and that’s better than magic.”

What surprised you about this process?

“Honestly, that I can see a difference already. I’ve been trying to find ways to not be this way my entire life and nothing has really worked, so I came into it with a lot of skepticism. So the fact that I’m seeing progress already, changing my perspective already, finding a little bit more motivation every day already, has been shocking in a very, very good way.

I’ve also been surprised a few times by the emotional perspective shifts. I’ve had a few startling realizations about myself and my life that have helped me make progress, but also made me take a step back and look at everything a little differently. Like in Step 6, there’s one line about over-planning being perfectionism in disguise, and then a little later on, the suggestion that maybe that perfectionism is a defense mechanism -- that hit me pretty hard, because I realized it was exactly true.

Perfectionism is not a hard-wired, intrinsic cornerstone of who I am as a person, it just made me feel safe for most of my life. But it’s not keeping me safe anymore. It’s the thing damaging me. So it’s time to let it go. I cannot put into words how shocking and freeing that realization has been.”

What would you say to someone who feels the way you used to?

“That feeling does not define you. It’s not something you just have to accept and live with forever. There’s nothing wrong with you, it’s not impossible to change. It’s certainly not easy to change, and it’s okay if you aren’t ready yet, but whenever that day comes -- and it has come for me many, many times before this program helped me start to truly change -- these lessons and the community will be here for you.

You’re not alone. You’re not broken. It’s okay to ask for help. It’s okay to not be perfect. It might not feel like it, but it is. It only takes one step to start changing.”

Take the new goal-setting work we’ve been doing–how would you have done it 3 months ago, and why is it different from how you’ve done it in the program?

“I have done very similar goal-setting activities before -- I didn’t necessarily really know this is what I was doing, but the general concept of “what does my ideal look like” is absolutely something I’ve tried to do before.

Three months ago, my ideal was literally Superwoman. I decided that the best way to make a change was to just do it, just decide how it’s going to be from now on and then do that -- so I decided that somehow, magically, overnight, I was just going to become the kind of person who gets out of bed the first time the alarm goes off, does yoga and meditates, gets my work done, fulfills all family obligations, is a perfect partner, a perfect pet parent, and does every single cleaning task necessary to maintain my home, every day. I made lists, I made schedules, I found the most obnoxious alarm tone on the planet, I did every single thing I could think of to make Day 1 of The Rest of My Life go absolutely perfectly.

I failed instantly. That horrible, obnoxious alarm tone went off, and I hit snooze 15 times like I always do, because I am simply not the kind of person who gets up the first time the alarm goes off. I tried over and over before I decided, well, I’ll just set a bunch of alarms starting an hour before I want to get up! But I still knew that I’d done that the next morning, so I hit snooze 100 times and slept even later. I never magically became someone who does yoga and meditates first thing in the morning. I never magically became someone who can fit 50 tasks into the time it would take other people to accomplish five. And I have always seen that as a failure -- even when recognizing that the goal was unrealistic, I felt like I should have been able to do it anyway.

In doing this exercise over the last couple of days, I’ve had to really face how many of my expectations for myself are still wildly unrealistic. I am still not magically going to become a completely different person overnight, but now, instead of seeing that as a failure in myself, I’m adjusting my expectations and what I actually want my life to look like.

Maybe I don’t want to be the kind of person who can do everything every single day. Maybe I just want to be the kind of person who can stick to any kind of routine instead of trying for a few days, forgetting, and thinking a single missed day means the whole idea is pointless. Maybe I want to be the kind of person who can recognize when I’m going to be extra busy or tired and do some of the bigger cleaning tasks earlier than planned instead of being so dedicated to an impossible schedule.

Maybe I want to build a life that works for me, that makes me happy, even if it looks different from a “normal” life, and just be happy with that instead of worrying about whether I’m doing things “right” or not. The only opinion about my life that matters is my own, and if that means I do things in a different order than other people, at different times, in different ways, or simply not doing some things, that can be okay. I want to be the kind of person who can say “it works for me, and that’s enough.”

I’m never going to meet my own unrealistic expectations. I’m never going to have an “Instagram perfect” house. I am never going to be Superwoman. I’m finally learning how to be okay with that.

Being Superwoman won’t make me happy, it’ll just make me exhausted and stressed out. Becoming the best version of myself is what will make me happy.

I’m still learning what that looks like, and maybe my best version today won’t be the same as the best version a year from now, but a better me is someone I can start becoming right now.”