Lynne S. Gots, Ph.D.
Licensed Psychologist
It Doesn’t Count
By Lynne Gots, posted on September 16th, 2011.
Finding the time to exercise is a challenge for me. I work very long hours, so I either have to get up at 5:00 am to fit in a workout before I leave for the office or muster up the energy—and ignore the fact that I’m starving—to go out for a run when I get home at 7 or 8. Neither solution is ideal, which means my fitness often takes a back seat to other more pressing needs—like sleeping and eating.
My dilemma is hardly unique. So many time-crunched, sedentary workers struggle with the same problem that the health section of the Post devoted an entire front-page spread to exercises you can perform at your desk. Anticipating the objections people might raise, it rated the moves on “silliness,” among a few other factors.
But it didn’t speak to my main concern, which is one that comes up a lot when I try to fit heart-pumping or strength-building interludes into my packed schedule—the It Doesn’t Count factor.
This morning, for instance, I’d planned to take advantage of a later than usual start to my workday by getting up at 5:30, taking the dogs out for an hour, and doing a strength workout. But I ended up hitting “snooze” five times instead. By the time I dragged myself out of bed, it was too late to follow through with my plan. I could only manage to squeeze in a brisk, forty-minute walk with the dogs.
As I write about this now, I can see how unrealistic my expectations were. Forty minutes of walking raised my heart rate and cleared my brain for the day ahead. And I did it in the rain (bonus points for effort!). So why did I think it doesn’t count?
Negating our accomplishments is a by-product of the unreasonable standards many of us aspire to and the nasty little word, “should.” When we do less than we think we should have done, we feel disappointed in ourselves, and our inner drill sergeant screams, “ It doesn’t count!”
Whether it counts or not is, of course, entirely a matter of perspective. I keep a yoga mat and resistance band in my office, and I used them religiously last year when I was going through physical therapy for a back injury. Because I was allowed only 15-minutes of prescribed exercises each day, I never doubted that my silly desk pushups, chair dips, and resistance maneuvers counted. And I had far more muscle definition then than I do now, when the mat gathers dust behind the file cabinet because it doesn’t count unless I’m doing thirty minutes of lifting with heavy weights.
Telling yourself it doesn’t count can undermine your best intentions. After all, if it doesn’t count, then what’s the point? In the next post, I’ll talk about how to make it count. In the meantime, I plan to dust off that yoga mat.
Tags: perfectionism
Posted in Perfectionism |
Human Error
By Lynne Gots, posted on September 9th, 2011.
As a follow-up to my Labor Day post, here are some of my favorite workplace faux pas. I did not make these up.
• The veterinarian who pulled the wrong chart and mistook an 80-pound, male Golden Retriever for a 10-pound, female Havanese
• The hairdresser who didn’t check the bottle of color and turned a honey blonde into a brassy redhead resembling Bozo the Clown
• The surgical resident who, after 36 hours on call, fell asleep on his feet during an operation while holding a hemostat to stanch the blood flowing into an open abdominal cavity
• The manicurist who mistook a bottle of peroxide for nail gel and bleached her client’s fingernails white
• The public relations vice president who wrote an email to her account manager complaining about a difficult client—and hit “Reply All” with the client’s name on the address list
Ouch. None of these mistakes—even the young surgeon’s—had disastrous consequences. But the workers who made them were all highly embarrassed and had to deal with the fallout from their errors.
What’s your worst work mistake? You can share it with me by confidential email. I’ll report the responses in a later post.
Tags: accepting imperfection
Posted in Perfectionism |
Labor Day
By Lynne Gots, posted on September 5th, 2011.
Nobody would call what I do for a living labor, but it is hard work. Sometimes I leave the office feeling as beat as if I’d been on my feet all day swinging a pickaxe instead of sitting in a chair.
Friends, family, and even patients say they envy me. “You’re so lucky,” they tell me. “You don’t have projects hanging over your head. When you’re done for the day, you’re done.”
Seriously? I’m grateful to have a job I love. It’s stimulating and challenging. I get to work with interesting people, and I’m my own boss. There are many enviable aspects of my job, but being able to leave it at the office isn’t one of them.
Doing therapy isn’t as easy as the TV shows and movies make it seem. Or as tedious. (I know a lot of people who are devoted followers of In Treatment, but I couldn’t get through a single episode.) I spend a lot of time after hours thinking about my patients, reading up on treatment techniques, figuring out the best approach for a particular problem, and reviewing what worked and what didn’t. And when I realize I’ve made a blunder, I get really upset. After all, when you’re dealing with the human psyche, the stakes can be quite high.
In my business, mistakes aren’t nearly as clear-cut as, say, in surgery, when you know instantly and with dramatic effect that you’ve nicked an artery. As schooled as I am in reading people, I’m not clairvoyant. I may make a remark that is misinterpreted or push harder than someone is ready to be pushed. I may not discover a misstep until it’s brought up weeks later– or, worse, when a patient abruptly, with no explanation, stops coming to see me.
Sigmund Freud used to sit behind the couch where his patients reclined to pour out their deepest secrets. He claimed that this hidden vantage point, by eliminating the discomfort of eye contact, encouraged the flow of free associations. But, really, according to psychology lore, he liked not being seen in case he fell asleep.
Drifting off during a session is every therapist’s worst nightmare, the equivalent of suturing up a surgical incision with a sponge still inside. It might never get noticed or, if it does, might not have any serious consequences. But sometimes it can cause major, even irreparable, harm.
It happened to me once, to my knowledge. I was tired that day, having been awakened frequently during the night by my new puppy whining in his crate. I was with a patient I’d known for a while and liked very much. We had been doing good work together. His was the first appointment after lunch, and the combined soporific effects of the L-tryptophan in my turkey sandwich and the previous night’s sleep deprivation finally overwhelmed me. My eyelids decided to stage a mutiny, and I succumbed to the overpowering urge to shut them. I instantly jerked to attention, but the damage had been done.
Later that evening I got an email from the unfortunate person who had been at the receiving end of my narcoleptic lapse. To my horror, he told me he had seen my eyes close and informed me that, despite having benefitted a great deal from his treatment with me, he wouldn’t be returning.
Mortified, I sent him a note of profuse apology for my unprofessional behavior and urged him to come back at least once so we could talk. He did, and he was gracious enough to forgive me (much more quickly than I forgave myself, I might add). He decided, after all, to finish out his therapy with me, and my fade-out even became a running joke between us, though it took some time before I could laugh about it without feeling my cheeks redden.
I realize I’m taking a big risk by posting this story and laying bare a mistake that tarnishes my professionalism. That’s why I decided to do it. If I expect to have any credibility when I counsel others to accept their imperfections, I have to come to terms with my own.
In the words of martial artist and Eastern philosopher, Bruce Lee, “Mistakes are always forgivable, if one has the courage to admit them.” And, I would add, to make peace with them.
I’ve been doing an informal survey of workplace errors and will share some of them in my next post. Stay tuned.
Tags: acceptance, mistakes
Posted in Acceptance and Mindfulness, Perfectionism |
