Being Instead of Doing: How to Accept Grace and Release the Pressure to Accomplish More

What comes to mind when you hear the phrase, “being instead of doing”?

We live in a culture and a country that prizes achievement and success, which we attribute to working hard.  The “American dream” promises that hard work and sacrifice will bring you happiness and fulfillment.  I think about all the books and blogs out there about productivity and getting things done.  We are encouraged to “hustle.”  We wear 50 to 60-hour work-weeks as badges of pride.  “Doing,” and always “doing more,” is glorified. When something is broken, we want to find a solution, fix it, and make it better.

“Doing” can also look like filling our time to escape from painful emotions or experiences. You can numb out by watching TV, eating, shopping, or any other type of behavior that takes your mind off your present reality, but those behaviors often still leave you feeling drained.  You may not be achieving goals, but you’re still not allowing yourself to “be.”

I am someone who struggles with the idea of resting or waiting.  I feel much more secure and in control when I do something productive.

What are some ways you tend to get caught up in this attitude of “doing”?

As a therapist in private practice, I feel this pressure to “hustle,” both for the sake of my business and for the best care for my clients.  This drive to achieve can be a good thing in small doses – until I push it beyond what I can handle.  It can warp into pressure to work hard that can either paralyze me or drive me into the ground.  It can lead to perfectionism, overwork, and ultimately to burnout.

Like most behaviors we come back to in our lives, keeping busy with work serves us somehow.  We wouldn’t do it if there weren’t some benefit.  Maybe it’s the pride of accomplishment, the sense of control and order it gives us, or the approval of others.  Or maybe you’re constantly doing something because you’re running or avoiding.

How might you fill in this blank: “If I constantly keep myself busy, I won’t have time to stop and think about _________”?  You can run away from your own awareness of your weakness and neediness by chasing achievement and accolades.  You can run away from your loneliness or desires by working for the approval of others.  You can even run away from the responsibility that comes with success by filling your time with purposeless activity.

What might you be running from when you’re “doing”?

As I sit, listen, and “be” with my clients, what I notice is I am much more alive and authentic than I would be if I were trying to fix them.  I often find that my clients can perceive this attitude, and they are more willing to be genuine themselves. This idea applies with relationships in your life as well.  As you sit and empathize with friends or family, being present with them instead of thinking of what you’ll say next or what advice you’ll give them, you are bringing more of your true self and presence to the conversation.  This can extend to work too: how many times have you puzzled over the solution to a problem for hours, and the answer comes to you when you’re not thinking about it?

As a therapist, I can feel pressure to be perfect or “enough” for my clients.  To say exactly the right words, or to offer the perfect response.  I can feel the pressure to have all the right training and education, to get the PhD, or to know all the answers.  There is freedom in realizing that I will never be perfect.  On my own strength, I will never be enough for my clients or for the people around me.  And when I give up trying to be perfect and instead offer myself as a fellow traveler and support to clients or to other relationships in my life, I’m much more genuine and authentic to my true identity.

How would it change your relationships if you could be more authentic with the people you love?

We have to make an intentional choice to “be” instead of “do.”  Personally, I had to make this choice while writing this post.  My original intention was to stay up late and get it done so that I’d have it completed by my deadline.  But in order to do that, I’d be missing needed sleep and down time.  Instead, I chose to spend the evening resting and wrote the post the next day, even thought that meant it would be posted later than I intended.

How can you start to make this intentional choice in your life?  Practice mindfulness.  Rest.  Play.  Take a nap.  Read a book.  Take a leisurely walk.  Pray.  Sleep in.  Give yourself permission to take a break, to simply “be.”

What does it look like in your life to “be” instead of “do”?  How can you embody this in your life this week? 

This article was originally posted on May 12, 2017.

It's Time To Let Go: Letter to a Perfectionist

Dear perfectionist, 

I know what it’s like to walk in your shoes.  I call myself a “recovering perfectionist,” but most of the time I’m not sure what makes me different from someone who’s not “recovering”.

There are days where the drive to achieve, to do more, to get it right overwhelms me.  And there are days where I’m able to give myself more grace.  But often, I have no idea what kind of day it’ll be when I wake up in the morning. 

So when it is a tough day, I need something to hold onto. A reminder to give myself grace. And the words that have been coming to mind repeatedly have been simple: It’s time to let go.

Can I share these words with you, my perfectionist friend?

Let go of the “have to”s.

You have a to-do list that will never truly be finished.  Your thoughts tell you all the things you have to do before you can truly feel settled.

Problem is, that list will never be fully completed.

Maybe they’re saying, “I have to do this or else I don’t matter” or “I have to do this because this is the right way.”  In some way, your value or worth is tied up in completing tasks or accomplishing goals.  If you don’t finish, you’re not worthwhile.

What do your “have to”s sound like?  And are they really true?

Remember this: worth and value are inherent in who you are as a person.  You cannot attain more value by performing better, beating everyone else, being the best, producing perfection. 

Let go of expectations.

My guess is you have pretty high expectations for yourself. 

Likely you beat yourself up for the smallest of mistakes and have high standards.  You question and doubt yourself.  But those high expectations set you up for a crash when you inevitably can’t meet them. 

And what about your expectations of others?  Are they a mirror of your expectations for yourself?

Do you judge others for not doing what you’d expect them to do?  Not producing the quality of work you would do yourself?  Allowing their failures to define who they are?

Careful, perfectionist, for this will cost you relationships.  No one can live up to these high expectations, especially if they don’t know you have them.

Perhaps your expectations of others don’t even come close to the standard you set for yourself?   Why is that?

If this is true, use this knowledge to set more realistic expectations for yourself.  When you’re beating yourself up for yet one more failure, ask yourself how you’d speak to your best friend.  Their words wouldn’t be nearly as harsh as you are to yourself.

We are our own worst critic, after all.

Let go of “doing it right.”

Answer me this, perfectionist: how often have you found yourself obsessing over details? How much extra time do you end up spending on that project?

Is it worth it?  What is it costing you?  Time with your family?  Peace and calm?

What you produce is not the same as who you are.

It is okay for you to make mistakes.  Making a mistake does not mean that you are a mistake.

Let go of control.

This is a hard one for you, perfectionist.  You know that if you’re in control, what you need will get done, and it’ll get done right. 

But my goodness, carrying the weight of the world gets heavy sometimes.

There is so much that’s outside of your control. 

The weather.  A crisis situation you didn’t expect.  The choices and responses of others.

If you try to grasp at control in everything, you will fail.

I know letting go of control is scary.  It can feel unsafe, as if you’re giving up your security.  Focus instead on what you can control: your thoughts, your feelings, your actions, your attitudes.

Let go of all or nothing thinking.

Perfectionists tend to have pretty rigid thinking patterns.  Remember the “have to”s?

All or nothing.  Right or wrong.  Good or bad.

These false dichotomies trap you in an endless tug-of-war where you always lose.

Acknowledge the “and.”

This document can have a typo and I still did a great job.

I can love you and forget to stop at the store to pick up the thing you asked. 

I can be a good and worthwhile person and still make mistakes.

Let go of doing it all yourself.

You aren’t responsible for carrying the world on your shoulders. You aren’t Superman or Wonder Woman.  You need help.

“But if I let someone else help, what if they do it wrong?  What if it’s not the quality I know I can do myself?”

True, they might make mistakes.  They might not follow exactly the same path you would. 

But perhaps an exercise in releasing control and learning not to be perfect is to ask someone for help.  Notice how it feels when you let them complete the work you believed you had to do. 

Let your kid do the dishes one night.  If there’s a little bit of food left on them when you pull them out of the cupboard tomorrow, you’ll know you’re in a good place. 

Let go of comparison and being the best.

It’s so easy to look at someone else’s life and believe that they have it all together while you’re completely falling apart.  Social media is a beast for this, as friends post photos or comments about their most positive moments and neglect to mention the struggles.

It’s impossible to be the best at everything.  To have the perfect family vacation every time.  To have a flawless body.  To be #1 in your line of work. 

What if you thought of it as giving it your best instead of trying to be the best?

And know that your best will change in different seasons.  Your best as a mom of littles isn’t quite the same as your best was when you were single and had much more time on your hands.

Let go of letting go.

I know where your mind might go with this letter, perfectionist.  It might just be one more yardstick you apply to your life to which you’ll never measure up.

Have a little grace for yourself.  You’re not going to be perfect at letting go.

Give it a try.  A little at a time.  Celebrate your victories and learn from where you go wrong.

Let yourself experience moments of peace by not adding to the demands on your life.

You’re going to be okay.  I believe it.

How Recognizing Grace Transforms Counseling

I’ve been a traveling therapist these past few weeks, jetting off around the country for various conferences. Some have been counselor-focused, and others have been for personal growth and healing, because in order to offer the best care I can to my clients, I need experience my own healing.  I sat in on a talk given at a conference by a favorite speaker of mine, Mark McMinn, who taught my graduate school professors and was influential in my educational experience as a result.  He spoke about integrating grace in his counseling sessions and the impact of the message of grace.  This message felt like a personal devotional time of reconnecting with the grace in my own life.

Here were a few reflections I’ve since had from that session.

How do we define grace?

When I first became a Christian, I had no idea what grace meant.  I’m sure I heard sermons about it, read about it in the Bible, and heard other people talk about their experience of grace, but I was clueless as to how it affected me.  It wasn’t until I read The Ragamuffin Gospel by Brennan Manning that the true message of grace sunk in.  I learned that no matter what I did, no matter what mistakes I made, no matter how many times I failed, I could rest in the love that God had for me and know that it was enough.

McMinn talked about grace in this way: Grace is a free gift of love, forgiveness, and God’s favor with no strings attached.  It is above and beyond all we could ever want or need.  There is no hidden agenda or any way we could pay God back for the grace we receive.  It isn’t contingent on how we respond.  It is unconditional and is given to us before we decide to receive it.  It doesn’t make sense.  It changes us.

Ultimately, grace is about believing that I am enough.

In my personal retreat this past week, I engaged with the question of “Am I enough?”  This is a common question we face, and we often answer this question one way or the other based on what we see in our lives.  But what grace tells us is that our actions cannot add to or detract from our fundamental worth and value.  If I am going to experience grace for myself and extend it to my clients, I must rest in the truth that we each have individual and inherent worth and value, and that because of that, we are enough.

Grace allows us to practice acceptance.

As I talked about in an earlier post, there is a surprising freedom that comes as we take stock of our circumstances and give ourselves grace for how we are handling them.  Often we are plagued by the “tyranny of the shoulds,” where we wonder about how we “should” be facing a certain circumstance, or we fret over how our circumstances are not working out as they “should.”  However, the energy spent on “shoulding” all over ourselves and others simply increases our distress.  As a therapist, one of my goals is accept and love you in the middle of your circumstance, offering you grace when you aren’t able to offer it to yourself, with the hope that you will learn the path to offering grace to yourself.

Our values are incredibly important.

While we may accept our circumstances, that doesn’t mean throwing our hands up in defeat.  Accepting our circumstances doesn’t magically fix them. What it does is provide clarity on what actions we can take to move toward our values.  In the urgency of the day-to-day, we can lose sight of the things most important to us.  If you make a list of all the things you value and compare it to your current schedule, you would likely find some inconsistencies.  Identifying and reminding yourself of your values and choosing to act in accordance to them even amidst chaotic circumstances allows you to experience peace.

Addiction treatment is vastly different with an outlook toward grace.

Manning, the author of the Ragamuffin Gospel, suffered from a lifelong pull toward alcoholism.  Alcoholism and addictions of any kind are driven by shame: as the addict feels shame in their life, they will choose to medicate or run away from that shame with addictive behaviors.  However, addressing shame with grace removes the fuel for the fire of addiction.

Resist shame by befriending the thoughts that are plaguing you.  Accept them, normalize them, and allow them to be there while also making decisions based on your values.  Imagine a sex addict feeling the urge to view pornography.  In the moment when she feels that urge, she may experience shame and “should” all over herself, which will lead her to medicate that shame with the most effective tool she has – acting out in her addiction.  With an approach of grace, however, the addict can choose to normalize her urges (“Of course I’m wanting to view pornography, I’m an addict and there’s a chemical imbalance in my brain.”) and then choose to act in a way that is in alignment with her values (“Sobriety is important to me, so I’m going to choose to call my sponsor instead.”)

Grace is humbling and helps us admit we are wrong.

Grace offers us the opportunity to admit that we don’t have it all together.  Over the years, McMinn named that he had adapted his counseling style from one focused more on concrete thoughts and emotions (cognitive behavioral therapy) to a method that involved more mindful awareness and acceptance of the present state of circumstances (acceptance and commitment therapy).  He even wrote a book about the first style of therapy that he admitted to his audience was not in alignment with what he currently practices.  Grace gives us the humility to adapt and change our response.

We develop empathy as we connect with our personal brokenness.  Accepting grace requires us to admit that we are human, that we’ve failed or done wrong or made a mistake.  It makes it easier to forgive others when we see how broken we are ourselves.  Imagine the difference this could make in marriage if couples extended grace to themselves and to one another.  Imagine the effect this forgiveness could have.

Where do you need grace in your life today?  Are you ready to ask for help?