Roots of Performance Orientation

I have known for a loooong time that I am a performance oriented person. Not a perfectionist. I won't go into my ideas about perfectionism but I know I'm not that.

I got some insight from a friend this weekend about how I came to be this way. (And it's kinda funny that in conversation with my cohort here at work this morning she commented that I am so hard on myself. I told her I was working on that.)

So yesterday Larry and I spend the day watching the video by Paul Hegstrom (you know, the one about the mind and how we have to build a new axon when we want to change) with some friends. I say the day because we also had lunch and had to pause the dvd at least a thousand times to talk about what we were hearing. It was great.

In the process I shared the nutshell version of my history with depression and J picked up on something I said about my parents requiring so little of us.

They set no boundaries. They set no standards and there was no instruction concerning the reasonable setting of standards. Whatever standards were there were there by default by reason of society and school, etc. But Mom and Dad did not require of us so - let me just stop saying us here and focus on me - I performed at a mediocre level. I suppose I knew in some place in me that I could do better but as long as I was passing in school, not getting into trouble, etc. then I guess I thought that was it. It was good enough.

Maybe good enough would have translated just fine into the future events and circumstances of my life if not for the next big piece of the puzzle. Religion. Church life. A works oriented existence for the next ? years.

I became a Christian at 19 and suddenly I had around me a culture of high standards - at least ideally if not always in actuality. What my friend saw yesterday was that since no boundaries/standards had ever been set for me when it came time for me to set them myself I set them higher than I could possibly achieve. In my mind the Christian was to be living "right" or at least pursuing "right" living. And that "right" living was all about the doing. I thought that what God wanted me to be was a doer. I was quite willing to do what ever it took to be that doer. So I tried and I tried against all odds and always, always feeling my failure. I could not possibly have succeeded according to my standards.

So instead of just enjoying life I was always trying to make it something else, something more and I thought - better. Always striving for myself and my family to reach some "higher level" of something. Not only did I not know how to judge myself correctly - with grace and mercy as Father does - I did not judge my children or my marriage with grace and mercy either.

I understand, now, my Father's grace and mercy as he watches me in my life. I feel that same grace and mercy towards my children now. I still struggle to feel it towards myself. I think I am going to have to have a sit down with Jesus and work this out that way.