• Do you spend a lot of time paying attention to details and postponing projects or completing tasks because they’re not good enough?

• Are you doing the things you feel confident about but avoiding the things you’re not good at?

• Are you working super hard so you don’t make mistakes?

• Do you want to invite your friends over to your home but you’re concerned about being seen as lazy because the walls of your apartment are blank months after moving in?

• Do you stay in the same position at work or the same major in college, even though you feel that another opportunity would excite you more?

• Do you want to start a new hobby but are concerned about messing up?

• Do you spend hours criticizing yourself because of mistakes you have made?

• Are you a go-getter, doer, and maker that pushes harder and harder when caring about stuff?

• Have you been told to let go of your standards but you resent those messages and despite your best efforts you keep working harder and harder because you know that “working hard pays off?”

• Your relationships
  (e.g. searching for the perfect partner or the perfect date).

• Your career
  (e.g. spending hours & hours on a project until it fully reflects your true character).

• Your studies
  (e.g. avoiding participating in class so you don’t make a fool of yourself).

• Your community
  (e.g. worrying about what your neighbors will think if your garden looks less than the ideal).

• Your parenting style
  (e.g. making sure that your kids don’t have stains on their clothes otherwise that could mean that you’re a disheveled parent).

• Your exercising
  (e.g. blaming yourself for hours for skipping the gym twice and not following the exercising routine exactly as recommended).

• Your eating habits
  (e.g. feeling guilty for eating forbidden foods on the weekend even though you strictly followed your diet the week before).

High-achieving actions can go unchecked and unrecognized for a long time, to the point that they keep you stuck in a perfectionistic trap, thinking and thinking in your head and missing life around you.

• A new framework to harness the power of perfectionistic, high-achieving, and striving actions?

• What if this means that you could enjoy the golden nuggets of striving, perfectionistic, and high-achieving behaviors without hundreds of hours of self-criticism, worrying, and sleepless nights?

• What if this means that you can do what you care about – according to your standards – without hurting your relationships or the relationship with yourself.

• An expert to learn from?

• Apply Acceptance and Commitment skills on-the-go.

• Play the workability game, ACT style!

• Approach skillfully your pronness high-achieving actions.

• Finding what works for YOU.

• Discover what’s behind those perfectionist actions.

• Make values-based choices

• Hold your mind lightly

If you feel trapped by perfectionism or are a stressed-out high achiever–this is for you! Dr. Z’s work on the topics is stuffed full of helpful information, tips, and strategies to help not only identify what’s important to you but how to go after it in a flexible and compassionate way.

She doesn’t try to talk you out of working hard or striving to be your absolute best, but how make sure you are working towards the life you want and to make sure you are enjoying yourself along the way. It is encouraging without being preachy. It is a resource I’ll go back to again and again!