Why Your Best Is Good Enough by Dr. Kevin Leman

Author:Dr. Kevin Leman
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: SEL021000
ISBN: 9781441212566
Publisher: Baker Publishing Group
Published: 2010-03-01T00:00:00+00:00

6

Is It Time to Lower Your High-

Jump Bar of Life?

We’ve been talking quite a bit in this book about rejection, failure, and the inability to measure up. More specifically we’ve been talking about those people known as defeated perfectionists. These are people who can never bring themselves to settle for merely being excellent. They want to be perfect.

One thing I’ve mentioned about the defeated perfectionist is that his successes never satisfy him. If he succeeds, he immediately tells himself the goal he set wasn’t tough enough. Otherwise, he never would have been able to do it! This is what I call raising the “high-jump bar of life.”

You know by now that I really love sports, and as a psychologist, I see many competitions and events in the sports world that are analogous to daily life. Every time I see the high jump in a track meet, I think of the defeated perfectionist.

Here comes the high jumper, running as fast as he can. At the last minute he pushes himself up . . . and over the bar. He’s cleared eight feet!

What happens next? The bar is raised a quarter of an inch, and another quarter, and so on, until there is only one competitor left. All of the others have failed in their attempts to get over the bar at that height. Of course, if none of the competitors could get over the bar when it was at six feet, it would be lowered.

Here comes the defeated perfectionist . . . huffing and puffing . . . arms flying as he speeds toward the high-jump bar. Now he’s up, and up . . . and over!

Immediately, he’s up and yelling at the officials:

“Hey, what’s wrong with this thing?”

“What do you mean? There’s nothing wrong with it!”

“There must be! I got over it, didn’t I! Raise it up another six inches!”

“Six inches? Why—“ “No, wait, Raise it another foot!”

So the bar goes up another foot.

Here he comes again, putting everything he has into the jump. Only this time he fails to make it.

“Leave it where it is. I’m going to try again.”

And again, he fails.

“Maybe we should lower it a little bit,” suggests one of the officials.

“Nothing doing. I’m going to clear this bar if it kills me!”

And it probably will. Time after time after time he tries without success to clear the bar. He’s exhausted, he’s bruised, and he’s angry. But still, he won’t listen to a single word about lowering the bar.

In my mind’s eye, I can see him, late at night, after the crowds and all of the other competitors have already gone home. He’s running much slower now and not jumping nearly as high. I hear the clank of the high-jump bar as it falls to the ground one more time.

It is, to be sure, a sad, pathetic picture, but it’s not as much of an exaggeration as you might think. For this is the way the defeated perfectionist operates.

He reaches for the stars when planets are

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