EP12 – Meet Lil’ Miss Perfect and Learn to Tame Your Inner Critic
Meet Little Miss Perfect, my worry-ridden inner critic!
In a creative twist, explore how assigning personas to overwhelming emotions can transform your relationship with them. I’ll guide you through visualizing emotions as characters, providing a novel perspective that fosters understanding and detachment. By imagining emotions as personas with distinct voices and features, we learn to appreciate their protective roles while gently setting them aside to make space for joy and creativity. This episode offers listeners a fresh approach to personal growth, underscoring the importance of gratitude towards emotions that once served us, and inviting newfound positivity into your life.
Transcript
Sharise Parviz: 0:00
Well, today Little Miss Perfect came for a visit. Hi, this is Sharisse Parviz and you’re listening to Burn the Boats, baby. And today I wanted to talk to you about a chat I had. So it all started last night. Last night I was working on my website and realized for some reason it was really working slow. Like all the pages were loading super slow. It was just pausing and then I realized that links on some of my pages weren’t working and then when I tried to load up an episode of Burn the Boats, I couldn’t get the sound to work. So I was having all these issues yesterday with my website and then, on top of that, I was checking out, trying to get on Spotify. I started okay, we’ll start linking or loading these episodes onto Spotify, and I created the graphic, which I had already created. But when I looked at it on Spotify, I said, wow, you know, the little box is so small. It just looks really, really crowded. That’s not going to work. So I realized that I had to update or change the graphic for Spotify. All right, so all these things, and I’m just kind of going right.
Sharise Parviz: 1:17
So I asked my husband. I said you know, but why is it loading so slow. I get that the links maybe need to be fixed or whatever, whatever. But why is it working so slow? And at first we were thinking, well, maybe it was because we just changed over to a new hosting company. My husband actually owned a hosting company for quite a few years and hosted our websites on that, but he closed that company down and then we moved to a new hosting company. That company down, and then we moved to a new hosting company and it was just, uh, transferred, oh, I guess last week, but yet it was still really slow.
Sharise Parviz: 1:54
And so he went in and did some research and looked at it and blah, blah, blah. And then, um, he went, oh, your theme is outdated. And I said, well, didn’t just update it. He says no, no, no, no, I can’t update it. I said why? And I said, well, didn’t just update it. He says no, no, no, no, I can’t update it. I said why? He said because, um, he said because it’s expired or whoever created? We do WordPress, just a simple WordPress theme, nothing big. And, um, that is whoever created, whatever the slider on it, for whatever reason, it’s no longer, you can’t update it, it’s just expired. And that’s why your website is so slow because your sliders won’t upload. It’s slowing everything down. I’m like, okay.
Sharise Parviz: 2:32
So I realized that I need to go in and create, choose a new theme and recreate my website, and I’m hoping everything will carry over. But I think there’s going to be some things that were unique to this theme that I’m going to have to recreate in another theme. So I got to go find a theme, okay. So there was that issue and then, as I said, there was the issue that my podcast, the, for whatever reason, the sound of my podcast episode wouldn’t work. And then I have the image of Spotify that I need to change. All right.
Sharise Parviz: 3:03
So, all of that, I decided, you know what? Okay, I’ll go to bed, I’ll think about this tomorrow. So tomorrow comes, that’s today, and Little Miss Perfect comes visiting first thing in the morning. And so who is Little Miss Perfect? Well, little Miss Perfect is the part of me that I shared about earlier on in, I don’t know, episode one or two, and she’s the worrier, she’s the perfectionist, she’s the overthinker, she is the you know, just the task master of me. Okay, and the part that I said, yeah, she’s not going to run me anymore.
Sharise Parviz: 3:42
Well, she came visiting and she didn’t wait to get invited, she just decided to barge right in, and so I thought I would share with you a bit of the conversation that we had. And you might be asking wait, this, is you talk to yourself? And I would say, yes, I talk to myself. I remember there was a meme going around at some point that said something like of course, I talk to myself whenever I need expert advice, right, and something like that, and it’s pretty funny, but the truth is is it’s pretty true too, because everything that we really need to know, like really need to know is inside us.
Sharise Parviz: 4:23
So it is wonderful to gain knowledge, book knowledge, intellectual knowledge and understanding. I mean I love learning. I’ve mentioned that before. Learning is just I love it. All right, I love learning, I love learning about new things, and, and I mean I love reading and studying and it’s it’s wonderful, it’s, it’s it’s just something I truly enjoy doing and gaining an intellectual understanding of why and how and what right.
Sharise Parviz: 4:50
All of that is super fun and super important and really important when we have decisions to make, right, whether it’s a medical decision or whether it’s, I don’t know, it could be just a decision on what college to go to. You know when you’re young, or what house to buy when you’re older, or what state to move to, right, when you’re in your 50s and you’re ready to start off and chart a new path, and your new, you know new second part of life, your new spring. So all of these things you know. You may do the research for you may do the comparisons and intellectualize all of these things so that you have your options and you understand what your options and choices are. And then it comes to the decision making. Then it comes to what do you do with these choices? And that’s when you tap into yourself, because everything that you need you already have inside you.
Sharise Parviz: 5:50
And when I say that to my clients, I go I don’t know what I’m supposed to do. I don’t know. Yeah, yeah, you do, you do, you really do. In fact, you know better than I do. I don’t know you better than you. You are the expert on you. I can help you tap into that part of you, but the answers really are all inside you and they are.
Sharise Parviz: 6:11
And because when it comes down to making that decision, we have all the information, but when it comes down to making that decision, it’s in our hearts that we make it. It really is. It’s like gut feeling that we have and we can intellectualize. Well, this is pro, you know you can do the whole, you know what’s the pros and cons of a decision. You can do all of that. And even if it just sounds like you know you have everything, it sounds so logical inside. You could go, but something doesn’t feel right. Right, and you know, I’ve learned to listen to that. Yeah, I get it logically, this all makes sense, but I don’t know. I don’t know. Maybe I need to sit on this just for a little while longer and pray about it and ask myself the questions and really consider what’s right for me, not just what looks logically, looks correct, but what’s right for me.
Sharise Parviz: 7:10
And because we have those answers inside us, we have everything we need. And where does that answer come from? Well, I believe it comes from God. It comes from the Holy Spirit who dwells inside us. And in order to get into that space where we can hear the truth inside our hearts, inside our spirits, our souls, you know, we have to come out of the place of being highly emotional in, say, a state of fear, state of worry, anxiety or depression or these overwhelming emotions that kind of suck us in and take our way our higher thinking. It certainly takes away our logical thinking, but also takes away just our higher thinking. To be able to tap into what’s intuitive for us, we have to get away from the ego of ourselves and all of those emotions that kind of want to keep a hold of us and really keep us in captivity, and come to a place where we can have equanimity and composure and compassion and therefore a deeper understanding, so that we can hear the voice of God, hear that inner truth that is right for us. So, yes, talking to yourself, asking yourself questions, having a conversation with yourself is absolutely important to do and it can be fun.
Sharise Parviz: 8:37
So I will share with you my conversation I had with Little Miss Perfect. All right, we’re here. We need to get going. The website is a mess. We’re going to spend all day today just working on the website. Everything has got to get perfect, absolutely perfect. We’re going to work on changing out the theme. We must find a new theme. We must rebuild the pages that need to be rebuilt. I say we just do everything. We do no yoga, no dance, no, nothing, but sit here and just put all day’s energy into the website.
Sharise Parviz: 9:13
Well, hello to you there, little Miss Perfect. How are you today? It’s good to see you Listen. Before we go any further, the first thing I want to say to you is thank you. I thank you because I know that you are concerned this morning because you really care about me. I know that you’re concerned because you’re worried about me and you want to protect me and you want anything that we do, we decide to do together, that we do it to the best of our ability, and I really, really appreciate your effort, effort but I’m not sure that we need to spend all day today, a day of our retreat, and spend it all on fixing everything that needs to be fixed.
Sharise Parviz: 9:58
What is it, little Miss Perfect, that you are so concerned of, so worried about? Well, if your website is too slow, no one will come and visit, no one will comment, no one will email you, no one might sign up. Well, now, hold on. Little Miss Perfect, that’s not necessarily true, is it? Because we just got some new clients from our website just a few days ago, and I believe the website was just as slow then and we’ve actually had already had some emails and some comments that came through the website. So is that really true? Well, all right, maybe not, but okay, but we have to get the sound working on your episode, your latest episode on your podcast, on your website. Yeah, yeah, we do, we do.
Sharise Parviz: 10:45
And if the worst things happen, we just postpone. Well, all right. What about Spotify? You want to put this podcast out on Spotify? The graphic is too messy and no one will listen to it. They may not find it. We must fix this and we must fix this now. All right, listen. If, again, the worst thing that could happen, little Miss Perfect, is that we postpone, that’s it. We just postpone. Well then no one might listen. Well, no one might listen anyway. We knew that going into this.
Sharise Parviz: 11:25
So how about this? I’ll propose to you you and I will sit down for two hours today and you can help me decide what two hours of the day we’re going to put into this thing, and we’ll work on the most pressing issues and you can decide what those pressing issues are. Sound good, but the rest of the day you’re going to enjoy yourself with me and we’re going to dance and we’re going to do our yoga and we’re going to do our meditation and we’re going to do some sound healing and we’re going to do some walking and we’re going to do some creative cooking and we’re going to have some fun, lots of fun, and you’re going to love it. So two hours today, you decide when, and the rest of the day we’re going to enjoy ourselves, and then tomorrow we’ll reevaluate. How’s that sound? Well, all right, I’m not pleased with it, but it’s doable. Okay, I will go along with it for today and we’ll talk about it again tomorrow. All right, we’ll do that, okay? So that is a little bit of how my conversation went.
Sharise Parviz: 12:37
Now I’m being a little silly, a little bit dramatic and just having some fun and actually just kind of practicing my accent, because it’s been a while, so I thought I’d have some fun with it. But, truthfully, there’s a reason. Actually, this is actually a tool, a technique that you can use when you have emotions that come up for you, that are a bit overwhelming and you’re having a difficult time managing them. Let’s just say they’re managing you, and part of doing that is being able to separate yourself from the emotion so that you can look at the emotion, as I mentioned, with equanimity, with compassion and as an observer, so that you can look at that emotion from a point of view that’s not enmeshed in that emotion, and that is how you can find your way out of it and find some creative solutions. So one of the ways to do it is the way that I do it is I actually turn that emotion into a character. Now, part of this is because, well, I love, I’m an actress, so doing characters and having characters is fun. But it’s actually a wonderful tool in coaching because you are taking this emotion and you’re creating a character out of it and you’re taking that emotion, taking it outside of you, and you can get as elaborate with it as you want, right?
Sharise Parviz: 14:01
You give it a name, like I gave Little Miss Perfect. Give it a voice. It could be a silly voice If it’s a critical part of you, give it a Minnie Mouse voice, right? So every time she talks to you in your ear, you can give her this little Minnie Mouse voice, right, give her a voice. How does she dress, how does she walk, how does she talk, right? Or you know, it doesn’t have to be a she, it could be a he even.
Sharise Parviz: 14:27
But creating an emotion, a character, out of an emotion, again, what it does is it pulls that emotion away from you so that you’re not sucked into that emotion. Because when we’re sucked into a deep emotion we can’t think Right, we can’t really. We’re sucked in so much that we can’t separate ourselves from it and we stop coming up with solutions and we stop thinking and we just start reacting and just start reacting. But when we can pull that emotion outside of us and communicate with it and understand why, one of the things I do with an emotion like that comes up for me, like Little Miss Perfect, is I do think it Because, for whatever reason, you created this emotion. This emotion came up for you, not you created it Well, yes, actually we do, but we’ll talk about that at another time.
Sharise Parviz: 15:20
But we, this emotion came up at a time in our lives to help us to feel safe. And for me, little Miss Perfect was a way for me to feel safe around my dad, because I felt like I had to be perfect for him. So she would make sure I dotted all my I’s and crossed all my T’s before talking to him so that I didn’t feel like I was an idiot talking to him, and so I didn’t come off as an idiot. So Little Miss Perfect helped me to survive my situation.
Sharise Parviz: 15:59
All of our feelings are really our friends, even the feelings that we don’t particularly like, because they have a message for us and they served us in some way to protect us. The point is is at some point they’re no longer serving us. They’ve kind of just, you know, they’ve worn out their welcome, they’re no longer necessary. And then that’s when we thank them for what they’ve done for us, for how they served us, how they protected us, and then we have to decide. But you know, I’m a different person now and I appreciate the way you served me back then, but I don’t need you to serve me that way anymore. You know you can relax. There are other parts that can take over. You know, your joy, your creativity, your acceptance, right, all of that is also part of you too. You have those emotions in you too, it’s just which ones do allow free reign over your life. So thank any emotion that comes in, because they’re friends, they’re messengers and they want to keep you safe. So little. Miss Perfect wants me to do things right, because she still thinks that I’ve got something to prove that I’m smart and I’m worthy and I’m all these things. But I need to tell her and I did tell her hey, we’re already worthy, we’re done, we don’t need to prove anything anymore, we’re good and we’ll figure all this out. So that was my visit with Little Miss Perfect.
Sharise Parviz: 17:48
And you know, if you have an emotion that comes up, maybe today, maybe tomorrow, whatever, whenever, maybe for that moment, just step outside of it and say, hmm, this were a person or maybe it doesn’t have to be a person, it could be an animal, it could be a yapping dog, yap, yap, yap, yap, yap. Right, whatever it is, what would it be? What would it look like? What would it sound like? What would it sound like? What would it dress like? And imagine it, have a conversation with it and talk with it and see what comes up, see if you don’t get some answers, see if you don’t come up with some solutions, and also just make sure to thank it too, because that’s a part of you and remember it was a part of you. That was created to help you, to protect you and to love you. All right, so have a great day and we’ll talk soon.