Whinypaluza Wednesday - Embrace being Imperfect

Hello everyone, happy Winey Palooza Wednesday! Bon appétit!

It's Winey Palooza Wednesday! Have some wine and join us on the Winey Palooza Wednesday with the Green family.

Tada! Chicken!

Thanks, honey. Give it to Daddy if you're leaving. You're out of here? You don't want to talk about being imperfect? You're pretty perfect. Perfectly imperfect, as Miss Kristen would say. Okay, trying to get you on here, baby.

There you go.

Okay, so it is quite the week. We are having quite the week. We have Martin Luther King Day. Tanner, behave. We have, um a new president, we have the Bills in the playoffs this weekend, and Max turns 14 this weekend.

More baby!

I know, he's so old.

Max, not me. I get younger.

Max is so old, he's turning 14 and he's going to high school next year. How did that happen? Well, that's a whole nother vlog. Yes.

I'm sure you had some feelings about that.

I have lots of feelings about everything.

Pretty much. Trying to keep up.

I'm sorry. I have, I have big emotions.

Yes, you do.

I have very happy emotions. Okay, so let's get to the topic.

Topic.

So the topic this week that I chose, and it just came to me while I was driving one day, that I need to embrace being imperfect. You can sit on your father.

Where is the rest of your shirt?

Okay, so let's not talk about Lily's shirt. Okay, we're gonna talk about being imperfect.

So it's an imperfect shirt.

You have probably heard me say this before, but I am the firstborn of two children, myself and my brother, and If you know anything about birth order, I, I have read birth order books. I find birth order fascinating, and I was, am, was, am a typical firstborn child, and I took school very seriously. I took my grades very seriously. I aimed for a 4.0 when I was getting my bachelor's and master's degree. Can you please not do that, Seth?

I'm trying to get the dog to move.

I'm sorry. Well, you can take him out if you need to. So I was in school striving for straight A's, thinking that I needed a 4.0, which is ridiculous. Who puts that kind of pressure on themselves? I did. I did. And then it continued into parenting. Got married. Had Max. I expected my house to be perfect. I expected Max to look perfect. Expected myself to look perfect. I had just had a baby, and Max would repeatedly spit up on his clothes.

And yours.

And mine. And Seth learned that he had to teach me not to get attached to Max's clothes and not to get attached to my clothes. So it became this joke of me wanting Max to look perfect as a baby and him, I would say, spitting up all over the place.

Why don't you get the spit-up outfit first, put him in some crappy clothes so that when he spits up you're not upset, and then you can change him in the outfit you actually want him to wear to wherever we're going.

So 14 years later, he's still spitting up on our clothes. He's not. No. 14 years later, doesn't it sound ridiculous talking about this?

It does.

Like, looking You know, it— when I was writing this blog, I actually gave myself a pat on the back because I realized the progress that I had over the last 14 years. Stop. I went from somebody who expected my baby to look perfect and myself to look perfect to really lowering a lot of my standards. And I think having the second kid taught me that I was too tired to care about the house looking perfect. I was too tired to care about what they were wearing. Why don't you move back in? Yeah, let's sit on Daddy and let him in. I'm not gonna have this fight with Lily every week. I need both of them in. So second child lowered my standards. Third child Lowered them more. Have 3 pets, lowered them more. There is dog hair all over my house. Do I clean constantly? Yes. Do I achieve a perfect house? No.

But you got a fabulous new vacuum that's going to help you with all that dog hair.

Okay, so, um, anyways, totally lost my train of thought. So I realized as the years went on that I was trying to achieve the A, trying to achieve the A in marriage, trying to achieve the A in parenting, trying to achieve the A with my house. And it was like constant pressure, pressure, pressure. And I realized that it wasn't working for me and that I had to lower my standards of myself. And if I lowered my standards of myself, then my family was going to be happy because it meant I was lowering my standards for them. And didn't we all deserve room for mistakes and for not being perfect? And did I really want to teach my kids to try to achieve this weird, strange word perfection that I would like us all to like get rid of? I just want us to take the word perfect and stomp on it. And I want us to all embrace being imperfect and be— what did Miss— what did Kristen say? She called it imperfectly perfect. Whatever.

Perfectly imperfect.

Perfectly— oh, perfectly imperfect, that's what she said. Thank you. So not only did I realize that I needed to lower my standards, but I also realized that there's these 3 sets of eyes that are always watching me and learning from me, and that I didn't want them to learn that they needed to put these huge high standards on themselves. That wasn't okay. And I realized that they were learning from me how to go about their day, what to achieve, how to feel. And I— and it is the most motivating thing in my life. Do you feel that way? I'm asking your father.

I'm sorry, do I feel which way?

Do you feel pressure to model certain things for your children?

Oh, absolutely, yes. I feel pressure, happily, to be a good role model for Max and show him how a future husband, as well as a dad, should treat his wife and just to be a good man. And I feel happily self-imposed pressure to show my daughters what I want them, what I hope for them to look for in a future spouse of whatever kind.

Okay, but what about the perfection? Talking about the perfection, do you feel like you're teaching them how to treat themselves, how to treat others? Do you think about that?

How to treat others, I think they get by watching. Um, however, in terms of— I have not thought about it the other way.

I'm sorry, the dog is distracted.

I see that, it's okay.

Okay.

No, I don't think about it in terms of how to treat themselves, but I probably should.

So I realized that I didn't want my kids to think that I expected, first of all, for them to be happy all the time. I didn't expect them to be smiling all the time. I wanted them to see me— I think they have seen me experience all of the emotions.

Lots of them.

And I wanted them to learn that all of the emotions are okay. We're gonna have all of the emotions forever. And if I started to show them now how to have them and be okay with them and to sit with them and to realize that there's happy emotions and good emotions and there's also negative emotions. And I wanted them to see that I didn't expect to just feel happy all the time.

And you can't appreciate it if you don't have the other side.

That's true too. But I, I just feel like we don't want our kids to be these happy robots who think that they have to be happy with everything going on in their day all the time. And I want them to be able to feel everything and talk about all of the feelings and share the feelings and learn to cope with all the feelings. Feelings. And sometimes just sit with the feeling. You're feeling anxious? Okay, well, that's a normal emotion. Like, let's normalize it. Let's feel it. Let's talk about it. I just realized that, you know, people would say to me, oh, you're smiling all the time. Well, I'm not smiling all the time. And I don't feel that— I don't feel like I have to smile all the time. Am I happy a lot of the time? Yes, thankfully. Do I have the gamut of all of the emotions? Absolutely. And I wanted to— I was motivated to change and to do better because I want better for my kids and I want them to see— they're watching Seth and I every day. And I don't know that Seth realizes it to the extent that I do, but I realized that they're seeing how to go about their day, how to talk to people, how to feel, and they're learning how to be married. And, you know, I've also learned through my studies and through my— and through books and through experience that the way that Seth and I treat each other is huge to how they're going to go out in the world and treat other people. So it just motivates me so much. And, and I screw up every day. You've heard me say that. I screw up every day. Lily and I fight. Seth and I fight. That's the main— No, we don't. But when we fight, yes, I will— sometimes I will handle it well, and sometimes I will leave the fight and say, oh, you did a shitty job. Oops, that's poor. You did a bad job. And, and why? And what you want to work on and what do you want to do differently? You know, as far as achievements, that's a huge thing in parenting, that my kids do so much stuff, you know, um, grades, school, theater, dance, tumbling, Girl Scouts, soccer, you name it. Hebrew school, you name it, and they're doing, they're doing so many things. And I have work to do because I realize that, you know, Max feels like I think that he should get all— I don't want to say hundreds, but close. And I think he feels a lot of pressure. So it's a double-edged sword for me. There's two sides to that. I want my children to learn and I have to teach them more that what they achieve and what they're doing has nothing to do with how important they are or how much I love them.

Or who they are.

Or who they are.

Your achievements are not who you are.

Yes. And while it's wonderful, you know, Max easily achieves a 95. Let's just use that as an example. And he wonders why You know, maybe, maybe someone brings home an 85, and I'm like, "Good job, you've worked your buns off. I'm proud of you." And he gets frustrated with me for saying that because he knows I won't say that to him. Well, it's a double-edged sword. I want him to work hard, and I don't want him to be lazy, and I don't want him to take the easy way, but I also don't want him to think that my love has anything to do with his grade. So there's just, there's so much to teach them every day. And you probably feel the same exact way. So I want my kids to learn that their worth and my love for them has nothing to do with their achievements. If Ella performs in a musical and does a fantastic job, that's fabulous. But that doesn't make me love her. And when Lily is singing in her beautiful voice, That's fabulous, but that doesn't make me love her. Who they are makes me love them. Their heart makes me love them. Just being my kids makes me love them. So, you know, I don't want, I don't want them to think that they have to achieve the A or achieve the A in their day or achieve the A in what they're doing to be a good person. I want them to just be and just be happy with who they are. And to learn to embrace messing up, making mistakes, being imperfect.

It's how you learn.

It's how you learn, and it's, it's being human. It's not— I always say this line because I love it so much: we aren't human doings, we are human beings. And I just want to teach myself and my kids more about just being. I think Seth does— well, you, you do both. You have the doing side and the being side. Yes, you have a better balance than me, but I'm working on that, and you're rubbing off on me. And you know what you're rubbing off on me the best? I'll tell you the best thing. One of my favorite, favorite lines that you have taught me. Are you ready for this?

I'm, I'm sitting down.

Okay. It's good enough.

Yes. Good is good enough.

It's the best line that he has ever taught me. And when I started writing, I'm laughing at myself thinking back. I would obsess. I can obsess sometimes.

What?

Never. And I would read it over and over and revise it and revise it. And Seth would see this and he would be like, "It's good enough, stop." And I thought he was crazy. And now 7 years later, 7 years of writing later, I get it and I agree. And I think that in life in general, I have totally embraced that line. So I used to have to buy someone the perfect present. I used to have to have my house perfectly clean. Like I had all of these, like super high straight A, 100% standards. And now I'm like, It's good enough. You know what? The present is something that they're gonna like. It's good enough. And someone said to me, I will take this with me forever. They said, aim for the B minus. And I was like, what? I want the A plus. Well, I don't want the A plus anymore. It's not realistic. It drives me crazy. I'm gonna aim for the B minus, and I'm good enough, and you're good enough, and I realized through writing this that I am making progress, and all we can do is move forward and every day do— what was I told to do? 1% better every single day. So I will strive for that. Anything else, Mr. Green?

Yeah, I'm reading a book right now, uh, recommended by my coach about, um, the system used for creating and managing teams at Google and some other huge companies. And even at Google, they set goals, and their goal is to achieve 70% of the goal. They're not trying to get to 100% of what they set. They're like, 70% is a success. So you're absolutely on the right track.

Well, I have learned that the A+, 100%, will drive you insane, right? Yes. And isn't realistic and isn't something that I want to teach my children to do. And I want them to love themselves and love life and find joy in their day. And, you know, I used to be in the kitchen cleaning and doing dishes, and I used to look into the dining room and see Seth playing a board game with the kids. And I would feel like I want to cry. Well, why did I do that? So now I know, put the dishes down, who cares about the dishes, and go play the game. Play the game, find the joy, embrace being imperfect. And the more that you can do that and love yourself, the better kids you will raise because they will see you doing that.

Beautiful.

So have a fabulous, fantastic week.

Go Bills!

We, we have a super exciting playoff game this weekend. I hope that the Bills can win. We have a birthday celebration to celebrate with Max, and I have an interesting podcast this Friday. Every— I have all these interviews set up, and I love talking to other people, and it's so fun and so great to hear what they say. But every so often, I'm just going to do a a solo episode. And I'm just going to talk about a topic that I may want to talk more about. So this week I talked about all the lessons that I learned from having COVID and learned more about myself doing that solo episode. The following week, I believe, is Melissa Brown. And the following week, I believe, is Audrey Monkey. So I have lots of good stuff set up. So thank you for listening. And thank you for watching. Have a fantastic week. And Lily, you can say something and then you can sing us out.

I really like this topic today because I really liked about what we talked about and it just made me feel so comfortable.

Aww! Do you want to tell me anything that you learned from today? You want to talk about it later, or you have something you want to share? Okay.

Would you like to sing us out?

Sing us out, baby.

Thank you for watching. I'm Teresa. Wednesday with Debbie and family.

Ciao ciao, chicken!

See you next week, everyone.

Have a nice week. Go Bills!

Go Bills!